NBA to score with local consumers
By Liu Baijia (China Daily)Updated: 2006-12-26 15:11
Ueberroth genes
Ueberroth comes from a family history of business success in the sports world. Her father, Peter Ueberroth, was a business and sports executive and president of the organizing committee of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, which reversed the trend of financially unsuccessful Olympics. He then served as a commissioner of major-league baseball.
Heidi Ueberroth says that everything about the NBA's strategy for its biggest overseas market starts with the challenge of how to make the game accessible to fans throughout the country.
More than half of the 14 first-time NBA game broadcasters in China are in rural western and northern China or county-level regions elsewhere in the country.
As a sports machine which generated US$3.2 billion in revenue in 2005, NBA games are tremendously popular in many international markets. As the chief international salesperson, Ueberroth believes that NBA globalization requires localization .
To this end, earlier this year the NBA began producing a TV programme in China this year called "Made in NBA," which features the lives of super stars off the court as well as their activities in China.
The sports league hopes such localized content will bring the fans closer to
the game.
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