Where’s the Cost-Benefit Analysis on International Ball?

The NBA offers the world’s best basketball competition in which players can play for any of the league’s clubs regardless of nationality. FIBA offers the world’s best basketball competitions in which players compete only for teams representing their countries of origin or naturalization. Because the two groups draw on much of the same player pool, injuries sustained in one competition affect the other.  Paul George’s recent mishap has led to suggestions that the relationship disproportionately favors FIBA.⁽¹⁾

That may indeed be the case and the NBA office needs to find out if it is. The league needs to perform a cost-benefit analysis to determine if the risks of endorsing international player participation outweigh the rewards. If it determines it receives more from FIBA and the IOC than it puts in, it needs to put together a really kick-butt PowerPoint to demonstrate how to its owners, since at least one loud one believes the opposite.⁽²⁾ If it determines the arrangement needs alteration, it should do it in a hurry to give any outrage a chance to die down as much as possible before the next wave of Olympic hype.

The most crucial area the NBA needs to analyze is how much benefit it derives from its international exposure and what role having its players compete internationally plays. Can we feel certain that marketing benefits flow to the NBA from inter-country games and not the other way around? The point has been made that the NBA’s ability to make money internationally skyrocketed after the Dream Team’s 1992 Olympic appearance. ⁽³⁾⁽⁴⁾  While the time frame matches up to the beginning of a rise in the league’s global fortunes, measuring Barcelona’s impact is complicated by a couple of other synchronous developments. First, the Cold War had just ended. It is likely that NBA teams would have long been signing Sergei Belovs or pre-tendon-injury Arvydas Sabonises had not the players’ governments forcibly prevented such freedom of association. That related notions of “amateurism” held a certain sway didn’t help, but NBA/ABA money could have defeated those shams. Also in the early 1990s, Sky Sports launched.⁽⁵⁾ Soon, Europe would have sports-only channels to help popularize NBA games and other contests. The internet would shortly follow. Thus it is by no means clear that having pros in Olympic competition was the essential tipping point in the league’s rise in worldwide popularity. The NBA’s high level of international investment in recent years has also provided it a present-day marketing prowess that does not depend on its players wearing the red, white, and blue or the bleu, blanc, et rouge. 

The Association should also evaluate just how much its players value the opportunity to compete in their countries’ uniforms. They could attempt to monetize it in the next CBA by requiring players to make contractual concessions to participate. The NBA could also allow individual clubs to decide whether to allow their players to play internationally. Free agents could then decide if they preferred, for instance, the team that offered the most money or a team that would allow them to suit up for Scotland in the Commonwealth Games. The league could also, as Mark Cuban has suggested, simply part ways with FIBA and launch its own nation-specific tournament.⁽⁶⁾ That possibility brings us to the organization that needs to perform a cost-benefit analysis even more than the NBA.

FIBA’s bottom line reads as follows :

If the NBA forbids its players from playing internationally, FIBA will lose most of its top players. If FIBA forbids players from playing in the NBA, FIBA will lose most of its top players. Even the International Olympic Committee won’t be able to help FIBA overcome guaranteed contracts financed by a percentage of the NBA’s massive revenue pie.

FIBA may decide it doesn’t need the top players because fans will support its competitions solely because of the names on the fronts of the jerseys. If it decides instead, however, that its business model depends on having elite talent, then the organization needs to take some initiative and figure out how to make international competition into a partnership with the NBA that is sustainable. They can't risk the NBA's cost-benefit analysis showing them as anything but an asset. Maybe FIBA should be the ones to show up at the owners’ meetings with a kick-butt PowerPoint. Otherwise, they risk another Cold War – one they can’t win.

Rush Olson has spent two decades directing creative efforts for sports teams and broadcasters. He currently creates ad campaigns and related creative projects for sports entities through his company, Rush Olson Creative & Sports.

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Footnotes

⁽¹⁾ Marc Stein, “Mark Cuban wants 'own World Cup',” espn.com. http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/11301340/mark-cuban-dallas-mavericks-feels-paul-george-renews-call-separate-quadrennial-competition (accessed August 5, 2014)

⁽²⁾ IBID.

⁽³⁾ Mac Engel, “Cuban concerned about cash, not player safety,” Star-Telegram.

http://www.star-telegram.com/2014/08/05/6019805/cuban-concerned-about-cash-not.html (Accessed August 5, 2014)

⁽⁴⁾ John Smallwood, “Mark Cuban has it all wrong,” philly.com. http://www.philly.com/philly/sports/sixers/20140805_Mark_Cuban_has_it_all_wrong.html  (Accessed August 5, 2014)

⁽⁵⁾ “Timeline,” Sky. https://corporate.sky.com/about_sky/timeline (accessed August 5, 2014)

⁽⁶⁾ Stein