GUSTAVO DE MELLO is senior VP, strategy, planning & integration for the NBA. He dives into consumer trends and cultural data to spread the NBA’s influence globally. Last week, the NBA held a Sport Business Summit in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where the league met with business, entertainment, sports and technology leaders to foster relationships. De Mello spoke with SBD Global about what was discussed at the summit as well as the key takeaways from the meetings.
On what prompted the Sport Business Summit ...
Gustavo de Mello: We think that a lot of the NBA’s business will have to come from the international side. So, we feel very happy to be able to share best practices in establishing relationships with not only the sport side of the market but also the business side. We have a lot of things we think we can exchange ideas about, and we think that the bigger exposure of the brand on that side is very important for our growth -- to win hearts of the fans and the partners that we want to do business with.
On the significance of holding it in Argentina ...
De Mello: We are a company that needs to be consistently looking for new ways to promote our game, our brand -- and our main property, which is our game, is very hard to take overseas all the time. We did this for the first time in Spain a couple of years ago, we’ve been to London too. Argentina is a key market as part of our Latin America support. Think about basketball being a global sport ... and say, ‘What are the main countries in Latin America?’ You can easily talk about Mexico, Brazil and Argentina. Moreover, if you think about the tradition basketball has in that market, and openness to our game -- this makes it an easy place for us [the NBA] to go and to bring our expertise and our approach to the industry.
On what businesses attended ...
De Mello: Some from Latin American overall. From Mexico down, a lot of people from Uruguay and Chile, but it was primarily Argentinian businesses. Both from sports marketing and overall business -- partnerships and sponsorships, including two of our global partners. Gatorade was part of it, Nike was part of it, with very good conversations not limited to Argentina. Antel, our telecom partner, had a very strong presence and we were able to have very strong conversations and demonstrate the benefit of that relationship. The objective of the summit was not necessarily having negotiations on the table. We wanted to not only promote the brand but promote the product and the game and all the aspects of what come out of a relationship.
On media and fan presence ...
De Mello: The sports media was present, which was interesting, because we got a lot of coverage in the daily sports [columns] of Argentina about the meeting. The presence of the NBA in town was a big deal. The level of the people there included [former NBA players] HORACE GRANT and ANDRÉS NOCIONI, and the ability to demonstrate the [Larry O’Brien] trophy -- we had the trophy available for the public to look at and take pictures with. You merge the idea of doing business with promoting with the fans and creating that push and pull relationship with the market.
On what the Summit accomplished outside of talks ...
De Mello: One of the things that we are trying to do globally is demonstrate that there are multiple ways to activate and engage with our brand. A lot of the conversations in Argentina and other places go around this format. ... One way is Junior NBA. To establish a relationship with the NBA doesn’t mean it has to be with the 30 teams in the game. Junior NBA is a way that we can activate and we can promote not only our business but our partners' business in a healthy lifestyle mode with some of the values that we share. Another is the activations we are doing in Rio [Brazil] this weekend which is [music festival] "Rockin Rio," which is around music and culture and how the NBA fits into that. ... Two weekends with 700,000 people in Rio. For the first time, a sports league is in a music festival, with a fan zone where fans can come and interact. Those two examples demonstrate the options of how we can do business with partners around the world, where the NBA brand, NBA value, NBA structure is available, but we don't necessarily need to take the game. The NBA and basketball are much bigger than simply taking the game to the country.
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