The P15-M PBA team

A professional basketball team for P15 million is laughable. Within the Philippine Basketball Association, the average annual cost of maintaining a team is P85 million. After deducting its share of television revenues, the net cash out for a corporate member of the PBA is P70 million.

The PBA, however, has such a team this year. It’s called the Selecta-Philippine team.

"It was serendipity," said RFM president and concurrent Selecta Wall’s chairman Jose Concepcion III. "On the one hand, we had just sold our PBA franchise to The Coca-Cola Co. for P120 million. This would have been the first time in 26 years that RFM did not support a basketball team. On the other hand, the aspirants to the Philippine team were preparing for the Asian Games this September by playing in two PBA conferences."

Elmer Yanga, who has served as team manager since RFM joined the Philippine Amateur Basketball League in 1977, appealed to the PBA board to let RFM play a role in selecting the Philippine team.

"The Philippine team has been a pet project of Joey (Concepcion)," said Yanga. "We’ve also had a good working relationship with the PBA. In the last 13 years, we’ve won four PBA championships, two under Sunkist and two under Pop Cola." It took Yanga one week to work out the details with PBA commissioner Emilio Bernardino, Jr.

The deal

For the ongoing Samsung PBA Governors Cup, RFM and Selecta Wall’s-a joint venture between Selecta Dairy Products Inc. and the Unilever Group-agreed to split the P7 million for the right to put Selecta’s name on the jerseys of one of two Philippine teams.

If the Selecta-RP makes it to the finals, RFM/Selecta will pay an additional P5 million to the PBA to help defray its administrative expenses.

In separate negotiations after the Selecta deal was clinched, PBA agreed to a Lamoiyan Corp. proposal to support the second Philippine team. Lamoiyan agreed to pay P8.5 million for the regular season and an additional P6.5 million if the Hapee-RP team makes it to the finals.

"We chose to support the faster Philippine team rather than the taller team. In the Selecta-RP team are five players who used to play for Pop Cola and now play for Coke," said Yanga

The two Philippine teams will be merged during the second PBA Conference. Selecta will pay P8 million to support this team during the regular season. If it makes it to the finals, Selecta will pay an additional P5 million to the PBA.

The best team

For the two PBA conferences, RFM/Selecta will shell out a total of P15 million and a variable P5 million to P10 million if the Philippine team makes it to the finals.

"The Philippine team came cheap because we don’t have to pay the salaries of the players during the two PBA conferences or for about seven months. Their home teams do," said Concepcion.

For example, if Marlou Aquino plays for the Philippine team, his salary will be paid by Sta. Lucia Realty and Development Corp., which owns the Realtors team. Should the Realtors bag the championship in any of the two conferences where the Philippine team is participating, Aquino will also get his bonus as a regular team member.

"It wasn’t hard to sell the idea to the corporations which support the PBA teams. Everybody wants to help the Philippines field the best team to the Asian Games. Everybody feels this is one way of returning something back to the country," said Concepcion.

For each of the 10 corporations who own PBA teams, the cost of supporting the Philippine team may run in the millions. Within the PBA, there are about 20 players who are members of the P500,000 a month club. The cost of maintaining Fil-Ams or imports of Filipino heritage do not also come cheap, averaging $38,000 a month for two imports for each corporation.

To make up for its players playing for the Philippine team, each of the 10 PBA members are also expected to beef up their teams with additional players.

"From a marketing point of view, we can’t say that sales will go up because of the Selecta-RP team. There will, however, be a higher brand awareness of Selecta among the C-D-E markets, which is the core market of the PBA," said Concepcion.

As part of its growth strategy, Selecta Wall’s has been introducing more low-priced impulse products such as the P6 ice drop and the P15 crushed ice (which uses a new technology that doesn’t harden the crushed ice product even when frozen).

"We want to bring down Selecta and widen its consumer base. We want more people to buy our products because it’s both affordable and of high quality," Concepcion.

For RFM/Selecta, there’s indeed serendipity in ice cream and basketball, in game and country.