When longtime sports marketer Rick Burton became commissioner of Australia’s National Basketball League in 2003, he quickly made several key moves, including re-signing Fox Sports to a five-year partnership; adding global partners Philips, Nike, Virgin Blue and McDonald’s; and expanding into Singapore. There’s more to do, though, and SportsBusiness Journal New York bureau chief Jerry Kavanagh recently caught up with Burton to talk about the challenges facing the league.
How did you end up as commissioner of the National Basketball League of Australia?
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| National Basketball League Commissioner Rick Burton (right) with Harry van Dyk, CEO of Philips Electronics Australia. The NBL signed Philips as a naming-rights sponsor in 2004. |
Burton: I had consulted for the NBL during my time at the University of Oregon’s Warsaw Sports Marketing Center and had gone down [to Australia] in the late ’90s to do some research and consulting for them on how they were strategically aligned. In 2003, I heard that they were interested in making a change in the chief executive. I indicated to them that I’d like to be considered, and ultimately was selected.
What are the biggest challenges facing pro basketball in Australia?
Burton: One is bringing our financial house in order from the team level. What you want to do in professional sports is create asset appreciation. You want the value of the franchise to grow. It’s to create a stronger marketing presence for the game, which creates more demand for all of the products, whether that’s merchandise, TV or Internet consumption, or fan attendance and participation.
How successful has that been?
Burton: We’re still what the Australians would call “hard yards” to go. There are a lot of things we need to do. We’re challenging some of our norms in ways that a lot of people wouldn’t have expected. We just added a team in Singapore. I think by that move we’ve become the first Western professional sports league ever to place a team in Asia. We brought back a number of events, such as the all-star game, that the league had been forced to drop. We created a preseason tournament. That allows us to do a lot of things that are beneficial in terms of working with the players association, with the coaches and with the referees because we have everyone in one location for an entire weekend. So, it’s been building some of the equity components of the league back to a point where they can be sponsored or create greater awareness for the league.
What are the differences in marketing to fans in Australia?
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One challenge Burton faces is increasing
the value of Australian franchises. |
Burton: It’s an incredibly competitive marketplace, perhaps in some ways not unlike the United States, but one of the few places in the world where there are four extremely developed football cults (Australian rules football, rugby league, rugby union and soccer), not to mention cricket and other sports that are vying for visibility. The challenge for us is making sure that basketball is seen and understood as a global game and not an American game. There’s a little bit of a … not an anti-American sentiment, but a sense of being Australian and being proud of being Australian. And we need to make sure that Australians can appreciate that they are among the best basketball countries in the world, even though they don’t see themselves that way. Australia has probably produced the best female basketball player in the world in Lauren Jackson and the most recent No. 1 NBA draft choice in Andrew Bogut. It has played in the medal round in three of the last five Olympiads.
David Stern has spoken about extending the NBA’s global reach into China. Do you foresee the day when there will be one world basketball league?
Burton: It’s an insightful question, and I’m not sure whether I foresee that day or whether David does. Around the world, a lot of the governing bodies that are involved with the management of the sport have their place under FIBA, the worldwide governing body for basketball. It’s different here in the U.S. because the NBA is not as connected to, let’s say, USA Basketball. They cooperate on things like the Olympics, but it is probably not a function of where the league is so connected to the governing body for the country.
It’s different in other parts of the world. So that if you tried to imagine a single league, it would involve a huge amount of politics. That being said, the precedent is really there at a certain level with FIFA, with soccer, where you’ve got a World Cup.
What has been your greatest accomplishment with the NBL, and what remains your biggest goal?
Burton: I hesitate to take any personal credit. What you think of is your stewardship of the league. When I got down to Australia, the league did not have a naming-rights partner and there was considerable interest in the procurement of a relationship where having that sponsor would then change the perception of the league. And by having Philips coming on, it’s allowed us to bring back the all-star game and put in the preseason tournament and just start to act much more like a professional league. That’s probably the single greatest step forward we’ve taken, but there are a number of others that are a part of this past three years.
The league had been on a downward slant, and I think we’ve stopped that and really started to turn the league. … I think we’ll play in a fourth country this year, and that creates the opportunity for us to talk to not only global sponsors but also global TV and Internet networks that are interested in our live content. My hope is that part of what we are doing under my watch is spreading the viability of the NBL Philips championship.
