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| FIBA Secretary General
Patrick Baumann |
As Secretary General of FIBA,
PATRICK BAUMANN presides over the world governing body for basketball from the organization’s Geneva HQs. Founded in ’32, the non-profit FIBA comprises 212 national federations and is recognized by the IOC as the authority in the sport. Baumann, who has been a player, coach and referee in
Switzerland and
Italy, joined FIBA in ’94 and was appointed to his current position in ’02. During a recent stop in N.Y., Baumann spoke with SportsBusiness Journal’s
Jerry Kavanagh.
Q: What’s new at FIBA?
Baumann: We have entered into a new era with the results on the court, which indicates to us that the game has truly grown globally. We have South Americans and Europeans at the same level as the USA, and that is really a new chapter in the history of basketball. FIBA is a 73-year-old baby, and it’s grown. The membership is more than 200 countries, and now we can say that we have ten or 12 countries that are able to compete at the same level.
Q: That was certainly proved at the last Olympics, and in the disappointing showing by the U.S. team.
Baumann: I don’t think it’s disappointing. From the perspective of FIBA, it’s the natural result of a ten- or 12-year coming together of the best players playing with the rest of the world. It’s the natural course of things, and I think that’s what makes sports exciting.
Q: Tell me about “FIBA World Basketball,” a 26-minute weekly basketball magazine television show.
Baumann: We will start that in October. We would like to educate the world that basketball is played every week around the globe. And the best way to do this is through a weekly television show. We found a very good partner in Australia that is willing to take the investment because he believes in our sport and he believes in the opportunity for such a show, and I think this will be a perfect promotional vehicle for our sport. The key point for us is that an African country or an Asian country can see it and can start comparing where it stands with the rest of the world.
Q: How do you assess the state and health of the game today?
Baumann: I think it’s one of the healthiest sports in the world. It has not reached the excesses of some other sports.
Q: What do you mean by excesses?
Baumann: I think that when there’s too much money, there are a lot of scandals, a lot of problems with refereeing that suddenly come along. Betting is behind the scenes. Clubs go bankrupt. We’ve seen this, unfortunately. It is a European problem. I think that our sport is growing slowly but surely. We haven’t had too many doping problems. We do not have economic or financial scandals. We see the people keep investing, and grow their investment, in our sport, whether it’s in Asia, South America, Europe or here in the United States. We are really a healthy game.
Q: What is the biggest challenge in your position?
Baumann: To keep the world together. In the basketball world there are a lot of people and a lot of organizations that do not have the same interests. For sure you have those who have purely economic interests and use basketball as a tool for that. And then you have those who just do it on a voluntary basis, and that’s the majority of those that are practicing basketball around the world. We have to take care somehow that these very large groups of volunteers, of people who just love the game and are every day on the court and are forming young players, that they still get motivated in spite of the fact that maybe others are earning millions from the game and may like to go around and say it’s their game. That’s the difficult part. And we’re a political organization at the same time, so it’s a tricky thing to keep the world together.
Q: You have said, “Rather than speaking about achievements, we should speak about the challenges which are ahead of us,” one of which you identified as “finding the right balance between basketball as a business and the integrity of the sport.” Is that a delicate balance?
Baumann: That balance depends very much on the human beings driving the game. And if they’re able to maintain their passion for the game and not over-commercialize it and look for the last cent out of everything, I think that balance can be achieved.
Q: You identified another challenge as “the development programs for high-level competition without neglecting the promotion of grass-roots basketball.” How do you address that challenge? One criticism of the game in the U.S. is that there has been a depreciation of fundamental skills.
Baumann: It’s very tempting for a young coach in a small country. He’s got 12 kids and his goal is to win. So, the first thing he will try to do is set those kids on a court and simply play a zone. These poor little kids have a feeling that they know how to play basketball, but when they go to the next level, they realize that they are missing everything. In the key basketball schools, in Europe mainly or in countries like Serbia Montenegro and Lithuania, at 14 years old, either you have the skills or you’re gone. It’s extremely important for coaches to raise their quality standards so that they understand that the fundamentals are key and that the tactics, which they usually use when they are not so skilled as coaches, are for a later stage in the development of the players. Our role is to try to make a transfer of that know-how that is in certain countries and move it around to other countries.
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| Baumann Says U.S. Players
Make Game More Interesting |
Q: You have been with FIBA since ’94. How has the game and the business changed since then?
Baumann: The players have become more performers and so the game has become more interesting. With the play, level to level, a bit more equal, it makes the competition more interesting at the international level, and therefore the interest has grown. Certainly the introduction of professionals in the Olympic movement helped very much.
On the business side, I would say we’ve grown in popularity and we’ve grown in generating revenues -- from the club side in particular. It has become very much a business in Europe. And we see now that the investments of both broadcasters and sponsors is growing in our sport, maybe not at the same level as soccer is, but it’s definitely growing. The achievements of a league like the NBA helped us. There’s a will to emulate around the world the league mechanisms or systems like the NBA, and that helps grow our sport. It brings other investors into it. The economics of a league in Europe compared with the United States are still a little different. You do not yet have a purely business approach in Europe. So you don’t find too many owners of teams in Europe who have the same kind of business approach as owners have here [in the U.S.]. Many times the owners in Europe feel that their personal investments and the promotion that they take from that investment turn up being on the first side of a newspaper all the time.
Q: You mentioned soccer. Are you making inroads, if that’s the right word, on soccer?
Baumann: It’s an interesting question. We compare ourselves to soccer in the sense of how are we managing our sports. Everybody does, whether it’s a league or a club or the international federation. But we compare ourselves to them in order to see whether the business courses that we are putting in place are similar to those that soccer puts in place and whether we are managing our sports in the same professional way. And I think this is the biggest change in the past 5-6 years: that we are getting more and more professional. Are we learning from the soccer experience how to become more professional?
Q: You mentioned management of the sport and learning from soccer. Do you take some of the best practices from soccer and think that might work for FIBA?
Baumann: We do. We have a good relationship with FIFA, whether it’s on the commercial side or the political side. We learn from each other. We have gone probably further than them in branding our own federation, which is an exercise we did two years back. We have a new brand identity. We’ve given it a different look, and we’ve changed it into something unique in international sports families. There is a global mark, and each one of the continental governing bodies has a [logo] across the family of branding.
Q: The N.Y. Times reported that the number of international players on opening-day rosters in the NBA increased from 29 in ’97 to 81 this past season. A record seven international players competed in the NBA Finals. That points to the global growth of the game.
Baumann: This is, for us, the best for the promotion of the game. At the same time, my European colleagues say, “Well, all those players are leaving from Europe to go to North America to play in the NBA. That’s bad. We’re losing the best talent.” But at the end it demonstrates a system of organized leagues and the possibility of creating a competition which generates consistent revenues. Most important is that the players performed well in the finals of the NBA. This was viewed all over the world and is excellent because the NBA is doing a great job in making sure that the rest of the world sees what’s happening in the United States. These same players go now in September to play for the European championship. This is a perfect complement. If [Spurs G] TONY PARKER goes back and plays with a shirt “France,” it’s for the whole country, and that’s a big difference between any other country and the U.S.
Q: Spurs Chair & CEO PETER HOLT said the biggest crisis facing sports today is the image issue: “The image of [the] players, the image of the league itself, the image of professional sports.” Is image an international concern?
Baumann: Yes, it is. As an international federation, we have to be a guardian for the integrity of our sport. We are the guardian to our players worldwide, to the international community, and we have to make sure that our sport is not involved in any scandals, does not have any doping issues, violence on the court, or any other troubles and that we do not have an exaggeration or over-commercialization of our sport. That is our daily role. We are extremely happy that there is no threat anymore of a lockout in the NBA. A lockout in the U.S. may be seen purely as a domestic issue, but it has an impact on our sport and the rest of the world.
Q: You have been a player, coach, and official. I would imagine that all of that has been valuable to you in your decision-making nowadays.
Baumann: All of that, yes. It still helps to keep the contact with the grassroots level -- and that’s something I miss because I don’t have the time anymore to be there -- because that’s where basketball is being created, at the very lowest levels. But now I’m seeing [the game] from the other side. I can see the finals of the Olympic games, the finals of the NBA and the European championship. It’s interesting to see how all that movement at the grassroots level actually can lead to those big plays of those great players.
Q: Who are the greatest competitors you’ve seen?
Baumann: KAREEM ABDUL-JABBAR and DRAZEN PETROVIC.
Q: Who are the smartest players you’ve seen?
Baumann: MARIA POWELL of Brazil and TIM DUNCAN.
Q: What is your favorite piece of music?
Baumann: The music of Vangelis.
Q: Who is your favorite author?
Baumann: DANTE.
Q: What is your favorite movie?
Baumann: “The Godfather.”
Q: Where is your favorite vacation spot?
Baumann: Barcelona.
Q: What are you reading?
Baumann: “Winning” by JACK WELCH and “The Empire of Shame” by JEAN ZIEGLER.
Q: What is a typical day off like?
Baumann: To play with my kids and try to help out my wife, who’s basically taking care 364 days for the rest of the house.
