ABL CEO Kuhan Foo: “The challenge is getting teams to market themselves.”
By Jan Lin/Red Hoops
The CEO of the ASEAN Basketball League (ABL), Kuhan Foo, pointed out at the post-finals press conference in Jakarta that for the existing teams to survive, teams will need to learn to market themselves well. (Photo 1 © Koh Yizhe/Red Sports)
Kuhan Foo, the chief executive officer of the ASEAN Basketball League (ABL), has revealed that the league will know by April the status of new teams coming on board for the 2010/11 season. He also pointed out that for the existing teams to survive, teams will need to learn to market themselves well.
“The challenge I think is getting teams to market themselves and finding the major support, sponsors, pulling in more crowd and creating a basketball culture,” shared Kuhan at the post-finals press conference.
“We know it is possible,” Kuhan added, “if we look at KL Dragons for example in Malaysia where the crowd is usually Chinese and men, but now their crowd has 40% Malays, 30% women because of the ABL.”
Four of the six ABL teams in the inaugural season are new teams set up in conjunction with the inception of the ABL. Only Indonesia’s Satria Muda BritAma and the Singapore Slingers are existing professional teams with the experience of engaging the community.
It has indeed proven to be a challenge for the new teams to fill the stadiums on game day. Thailand Tigers and Philippine Patriots gave free entry to their home games in a bid to draw in the crowds and drum up the support in their first season.
While the Thailand Tigers, who finished at the bottom of the table in the inaugural season, struggled to bring in the home crowd all season, the Patriots crowd picked up significantly towards the playoffs and finals.
The KL Dragons, singled out by Kuhan as the role model for having done an exceptional job in expanding and diversifying their fan base in their maiden season, credited their fans and media partners for their success.
“I don’t think other teams can do so because they don’t have Malaysian blood in them!” the KL Dragons owners said jokingly when asked how they managed to pack their stadium to the point of having to turn away spectators.
Turning serious, they continued: “I think to be fair, this game, except for Philippines, is quite new to other countries, including Malaysia. I think if you look at any leagues when they have just started, even the NBA, the English Premier League, the crowds were not there either.”
“It takes time to develop these things,” they added. “Give it time to slowly grow, it’s about creating the awareness. It has a lot to do with our media partners as well, we need to say a big thank you to them.”
Besides a massive revamp of their dynamic website mid-season and heavy utilisation of social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, the Kuala Lumpur-based team also organised road trips for their fans to Singapore for their away games.
Indonesia’s Satria Muda is the only other team that had fans travel to an away game. Satria Muda, who have the most number of fans of all the ABL teams, have been actively building their fan base since the team joined the Indonesian Basketball League in 2003. Satria Muda have won four domestic titles since, plus the SEABA Champions Cup in 2008.
Philippine Patriots owner, Mikee Romero, who also owns the Philippine Basketball League (PBL) team, Harbour Center, the team that Satria Muda beat in the 2008 SEABA Champions Cup final, said after the ABL finals: “When we (Harbour Center) played against Satria Muda two years ago, it was a very different team. The level of Indonesian basketball has become higher.”
While the team’s success and progress will be a crowd puller, according to Kuhan, what is essentially more important is the building of a basketball culture, or a culture of identifying ABL as ASEAN’s pride.
While the Philippines have built an unrivaled basketball culture, elsewhere in ASEAN, Malaysians and Indonesians would not find local sporting pride unfamiliar too, with their history of having homegrown athletes claiming top honours at international competitions such as the Olympics.
But for the rest of ASEAN, building a strong fan base that would attract sponsors and support to ensure the sustainability and survivability of the team does seem like a mountain-moving task. The teams taking ownership of the ABL dream is the instrumental first step.
“This finals is the fruit of the ABL dream,” shared Mikee Romero at the post-finals press conference in Jakarta. “It is a common dream of Tony Fernandes and his friends (who became the owners of the six teams). There are a lot of people backing this.”
“And one day, we will grow into Asia and this league will become a big, big league,” Romero continued in zest, “and maybe even rival the NBA (National Basketball Association) or CBL (China Basketball League). Watch out for this league.”
Philippine Patriots owner Mikee Romero (right) seated next to Patriots’ star import Gabe Freeman. (Photo 2 © Koh Yizhe/Red Sports)
Satria Muda’s head coach Fictor Roring said that the Satria Muda fans provided the ‘X’ factor for his team’s success. (Photo 3 © Koh Yizhe/Red Sports)
Satria Muda take in the cheers of their supporters who traveled from Jakarta to Singapore for the final playoff game that went in favour of Satria Muda, sending them to the finals. (Photo 4 © Les Tan/Red Sports)
The KL Dragons, in their final regular season home game against Singapore Slingers, saw the stadium hit maximum capacity and had to turn away spectators. (Photo 5 © Les Tan/Red Sports)
ABOUT THIS AUTHOR
Do you really think people will immediately patronize the teams if they change the ABL logo and make it look like that of North American Leagues. Man, ABL is not a Pinoy league that aches to copy every basketball detail that America dishes out. I’m sorry to tell you but the other ASEAN countries don’t measure themselves against America. They don’t have that burden and they’re ok. Let the Pinoys deal with that. “Hail-America” has always been our hang- up. The current ABL logo will do. Meantime let us enrich what it stands for.
Branding is not just about colors, logo and its visual/aural/tactile identity.A logo, however intricate or ornate is nothing if there is no product value or positive product attributes associated to it. I am driving at knowing the needs of the market and then positioning the team to fill this need. Once everything is clear and lucid, the rest follows. What kind of ads will they make, what kind of gimmicks will they use, What kind of players are they gonna get, What kind of sports commentator to hire, how are they going to farm their finance centers and how are they going to embed it to their marketing programs, What CSR to employ… etc.
Currenty, the Patriots is lodged in a complicated situation. There’s the PBA brand of show off basketball, the youthful energy and intensity of the UAAP/NCCA, PBL as the league of future PBA stars and the Liga ng Bayan which has been trying to position as the league close to the countryside. In this convoluted basketball fiefdoms, where will the Patriots carve their dominion?
I’m sure the Patriots marketing people are in neck deep into addressing this situation.
@tabinge-
Man, ABL is a regional league ran by highly qualified people, do you really think that they don’t have rules/ constitution?
My apologies, this is off topic…
Does Salamat/Selamat means thank you in Bahasa Indonesia/Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore and Thailand? I’m just curious..
Rather than dwell and stagnate on our differences why not celebrate and magnify our similarities?
1ASEAN!
SALAMAT!
Ok! On my previous post with respect to the following comments, I’ve mentioned, “smallest and simplest detail”, which may take “part” on the identity and branding of the league, with its “logo” and the ABL “property”. These are the bits and pieces the league can look up to and improve for during the offseason. It’s up to the task in the league head office and its support staff to deal with. It’s not something of monumental, or makes miracles happen. It wouldn’t cost that high. It’s all up to you to ignore it, but once you see something ABL — it’s all about ABL. These are ideas — creativity that is, tend to put allotted time and bring it up, either satisfied or scrapped, at the very end. I only explained the contrast of a US/North American Professional Leagues, to those haven’t known it yet. It doesn’t mean the league must reach up like the NBA or Euroleague nor subpar with the PBA. Are we to market ABL and its affiliated teams? Are we to open and expand ideas? Are we ready to compete? These cases involved risks, rather doing nothing. My discussion doesn’t connote the solution or having the right equation, but only the “smallest and simplest” part. Pick it up or blew it down.
@3stars – What I’m trying to say by redesigning is to revise. Not necessarily draw everything from scratch. About the uniform, spectators and viewers find it appealing when a player (benched, mediocre, well-deserved, superstar) wears a good design uniform. It doesn’t necessarily have to be an Adidas Futuristic-Style All-Star Jersey or Nike Dry Fit (but of course, players on their side would like to wear it). Reebok (SMB’s official outfitter) and AtletA (Patriot’s official outfitter) will do. It’s the standard labelling what I’m trying to imply.
@bader – About the ABL Constitution, since a new organization has formed composed of bigwigs / companies, it has to. It’s not something like an invitational tournament; they rely on a 10-page booklet. In a situation, wherein a team can walkout or back off, when things are getting ugly and messy involving opposing team and fans, and will never play on their next scheduled fixtures — ala-Jones Cup.
Hi tabinge, so you’ve seen it? Their rules are on ten page booklet? Thanks. Are you a Patriot insider?
@tabinge..it seems like you already have something in mind when you talk about those “bits and pieces” and “smallest and simplest detail”
do you mind sharing it?
Yes, before marketing of the league, lets examine if these players are very happy with their salary?
Good example is Barracudas Tan, working with shell as Engineer,basketball is his second part time job.
Get your facts right please. Tigers had 1200-1500 people during the last 4 games.