The NBA on Tuesday announced a multi-year partnership with Caribbean wireless provider Digicel that will give fans in the region access to live games and extensive programming. Under the deal, Digicel-SportsMax, formerly SportsMax, will carry up to 48 regular-season games and eight playoff games per year. The partnership will allow the NBA to enjoy a presence in more than 30 territories, from the Bahamas to islands just north of South America including Curaçao and Aruba. "The Caribbean for us is an important territory, but traditionally it has been very fragmented," NBA VP of Latin America Philippe Moggio said. "It's very hard to pick up market by market and be able to develop scale. … It's great that with one partner we can really look at the entire Caribbean as a market and develop scale through that partnership." The agreement will include NBA broadcasts in Spanish on the CDN SportsMax channel in the Dominican Republic. In addition to game coverage, fans will also be able to tune in to the league's weekly highlights program, NBA Action, and its 24/7 network NBA TV.
GROWING THE GAME: The NBA and Digicel will also establish skills clinics throughout a region that has produced current players including Tim Duncan of the San Antonio Spurs (Virgin Islands), Al Horford of the Atlanta Hawks (Dominican Republic), Jerome Jordan of the Brooklyn Nets (Jamaica) and J.J. Barea of the Dallas Mavericks (Puerto Rico). Coaches with NBA experience will attend the clinics, and participants who stand out will be rewarded with a trip to the U.S. Moggio said that every year, the NBA and Digicel will give a group of kids the opportunity to travel to the States, practice with an NBA team and attend a regular-season NBA game. "We think that over time, our popularity is certainly going to increase as part of this partnership, and also eventually the level of talent that we see coming out of the region," Moggio said. Another product of the deal with Digicel will be the league's 19th int'l website, NBA.com/Caribbean, which is expected to launch by the start of the '15-16 season.
