The transition of the PBA to a more corporate structure is a welcome development for long-time observers of the league. In an era where managing a successful company is something that people spend years studying for, it only makes sense that the league makes the necessary move to create new levels of management to run the league more effectively. There are still so many areas for growth, and possible new revenue streams that the PBA can consider. The commissioner has never really had the time to step back and take a long, hard, objective look at where the league is going.
Firstly, the job has become too time-consuming and thus, inefficient, for the person running the PBA to be physically present at all the games watching over the minutiae of each and every game. Given the responsibility of a league with such an encompassing influence as the PBA, it no longer makes sense to drain the league’s top official with the routine of going to the games, if he is also tasked with seeing the big picture and plan for the future. He simply cannot be bogged down with each and every game, when he will be of more benefit creating new ideas for the league to be more potent. Essentially, the commissioner has been expected to be as technically adept with officiating as the best referees, and still have time to do everything else. That simply isn’t done in any other corporate set-up.
Think about it. The PBA involves 12 multinational corporations, each with billions of pesos in resources. Each of the companies that owns a PBA team is in the top tier of the corporate world in the country, and has its own systems in place, including more than one advertising agency, for starters. Each is run by people who have decades of experience, have studied in the best business schools here and abroad, or both. Each team owner has beneath him an army of professional managers. Why shouldn’t the PBA catch up with its member corporations, expand its current in-house departments and form new ones to spread out the responsibility? More minds would produce more ideas and better potential for new directions for the league. After all, it’s been 40 years.
In the past, aside from presence at and command over the conduct of the games, the commissioner has been responsible for meting out punishments and conferring with erring players, coaching and technical officials. He has been the bridge between the team owners and board members and everybody else. He has been manager, marketing man, liaison and spokesperson; coordinator and top cop. He has been everything to the league’s sustenance, and it is no longer practical. It is the equivalent of five full-time jobs, an office which has barely expanded in the last three decades to keep up with the growth of the league itself. You never saw David Stern courtside keeping an eye on each and every NBA game.
Now, the PBA has a golden opportunity to do everything better than ever. A new corporate facelift allows for more systems to be in place, more tracking to be done, and for growth and expansion to be better plotted out. The PBA can be a more flowing, dynamic organization, with more people handling more tasks that used to have to wait until the commissioner and his deputies were available to look at everything firsthand. In an age of information, the PBA can study the demographics and spending habits of its fan base, and add more structure, something chairman Pato Gregorio has deep experience in, as well. As in all large corporate structures, the PBA has an opportunity to be guided by research and data it now has the flexibility to gather.
This will also be a sort of fresh mandate for the league’s officials to correct misperceptions, silence critics and forge stronger benefits for its present and past players and their beneficiaries. With more minds on board and more time to think of the long view, the league can now study ways to return the commitment given by the players in entertaining fans in the prime years of their lives. Though individual teams also have structures to help out their own players in time of need, the PBA can now create a model for that, working with sponsors who specialize in insurance and other investment portfolios, for example.
The old role of the PBA commissioner was valid for a simpler time, when it was still basically an aggrupation of family-run companies. But those days are long gone, and the PBA is now composed of sophisticated, high-stakes members who can all lend their depth of knowledge and experience in running big businesses to help the league evolve. There is still so much to be done. The league can pump up its merchandising efforts, create ancillary revenue opportunities, reach more audiences, prepare contingencies for calamities, and tailor its media presence. In some countries, professional leagues even own their television production unit. In this regard, the PBA can still develop more non-game products, building on its history and extending its heroes’ legend to a new audience. Salud as CEO can now work with the board with freer hands in drafting a blueprint for lasting change in the PBA.