Unlocking the Business of Basketball_ NBA Africa’s Expansion, Media Rights & Global Reach

0:00This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human Earners, what's up? Look, building wealth isn't just about making money. It's about knowing where your money is working for you. That's why we partnered with Empower. Empower is all about helping you invest well so you can go out and live a little. Their free Empower personal dashboard gives you a complete view of your financial life in one place. Track your net worth, monitor your budget, analyze your investments, set retirement goals, and more. You've worked hard for your money. Now make sure it's working hard for you. Download the Empower personal dashboard or visit Empower.com.

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1:14This is Malcolm Glaubel from Medal of Honor Stories of Courage. This episode is brought to you by Navy Federal Credit Union. At Navy Federal, they want you to know that if you need a positive sign towards achieving your goal of home ownership, this is it. Because even though today's housing market can seem discouraging, the Homebuyers Choice Loan offers members down payment options as low as 0 % with no required private mortgage insurance. Look for your sign today, Navy Federal Credit Union. Navy Federal is insured by NCUA, Equal Housing Lender. Terms and conditions apply. Loans subject to approval and eligibility requirements.

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2:33Powered by DoorDash. Just 35 bucks a month with auto pay and a voice line. Plus taxes and fees. Same day delivery for most internet eligible customers. See if it's an option during checkout. He said your husband was up at three in the morning watching NBA. I'm gonna tell you something. That was me last night. It'll probably be me tonight. New York is playing tonight. But it got me to thinking about media rights. revenue streams and so for the BAL is there a Nick fan is it a traditional model where it's it's media rights it's merchandising it's tourism how is it structured here and what's the plan for scalability for that I thank you so mainly four ways that leagues like ours can monetize and I think the more common one for africa and for our league is sponsorship and marketing partnerships and and that's where you see some of the partnerships we have here service now visit rwanda africzimbak and and randair so yes sponsorship and marketing rights uh and using our you know platform that we give to market products and services uh we have overall nba has over 1 billion funds within africa we have millions we have 1.2 you know impression billion impressions in the last season and when you look at our social media platforms we have a big reach so that reach allows you know partners like ours to really access the funds that we have and that that's how we monetize one way the other one is merchandise and good news is that we just opened an e-commerce portal it's called balstore.nba.com where you can buy merchandise from anywhere using our e-commerce platform now we know that the market not just in Africa, but also especially the African diaspora all over the world has been looking to own something with BAL whenever they interact with it.

4:25We saw pictures last year of season four with a family in Brazil walking around with BAL and we wondered where they got the BAL merchandise. You know, we've seen pictures in Heathrow where people are crossing security and they're wearing BAL and those anecdotes showed us that there's really appetite for consuming BAL beyond the African market, but also with especially the African diaspora all over the world, who are really big. In fact, one of the statistics that a colleague of mine shared with me is if you take out China and India, the African diaspora is the third country in terms of population globally.

4:57So interacting with that market as part of what we have to offer as BAL continues to be important for us. The third one is ticketing. When you come to watch games, every year we see ticketing revenues go up because more and more funds are coming to watch our games and paying to watch our games. and that has been really important as well. Now the media market obviously as well is a big part of sports leagues. It's a growing aspect in Africa whether it's pay TV it's still very limited in terms of the coverage, free to air, many of the free to air broadcasters are national and therefore kind of free access in the countries where they serve but we see that changing and I think one when you say what does the future look like, one of the areas we see the future changing is very much around what Lewald talked about, which is integrating markets in Africa.

5:46I think the more integrated services are, the more integrated we can be, the more you can actually use platforms to provide, whether it's streaming or broadcasting to markets across the continent. Now, people like to say we need to integrate Africa more and we really need to. We've talked about the African continental free trade area. It's big aspiration to really break down all these barriers so we can trade as one market but a lot has to be done for that to happen and i think you all touched on a couple of those how do you adjust a business in rwanda and be able to you know give your services across the 54 countries that's not happening yet today how do you you know get a license to broadcast in one country and broadcast in many countries so you can actually access a much bigger market on the continent those kinds of things need to be solved so that we can actually provide services across the continent The good news, I think, especially for media rights, is what we see in some of what the telcos are doing.

6:39If you give an example of MTN, 300 million subscribers across the continent, I know that they're thinking about using that platform that already is connected by subscription all over the continent to provide content such as content that we would be interested in. So I think that's going to change, and I think we're going to see more access to media, more media integration, and media contributing a lot more than we're seeing today. And for me, the future is bright.

7:08Claire, just to piggyback on that, you talked about the challenges as far as only having five arenas in continent Africa, and obviously that makes it difficult to expand. But when you're looking at expanding to either having different teams or just a focus in a different area, what are some of the top areas on the continent that you guys have on your board as far as you want to have more expansion in? Well, we would like to be in all the countries in Africa if we could. But today we play in four countries, but we have 12 teams that play. So ideally, those 12 teams should be representing countries that we have, that there's interest in playing in.

7:50But beyond the 12, even before we get the qualifiers for the 12, we have the road to BAL. A lot more countries actually participate. So actually countries that are participating in the wider community that BAL brings together is more than four countries at once, is more than 12 teams at play. It's a lot more if you come from the qualification road to BAL until the final competitions. And so our goal is to work with as many countries as possible that wish to be part of this story. And they're there. Every day we get, as I said, I know Nigeria is building an arena, Benin is building an arena. We were in Morocco for the first time after Egypt.

8:25you know we are going to South Africa the many countries Kenya for example we have an office in Kenya and the Nairobi City Thunders came you know for the first time representing Kenya in the BAL and so you can Uganda had a team city oilers that has been coming for the last seasons so there's potential in a lot more countries I think the question is how do we work with investors how do we work with the governments to put in place that environment of infrastructure that could allow this to happen. The good news is that every year as we grow and we see the impact of BAL, we get more interest including from development financial institutions like Afrexin Bank, AFDB.

9:02We've seen investors come to us and say what does it take to build an arena, who do we build an arena for and I think that's going to change. I really think that over the next five years you're going to see a lot more standardized arenas than you've seen today and that's going to allow us to play in as many countries as we could. Our goal is to have many countries come to be part of the BAL experience. Ernest, what's up? Look, building wealth isn't just about making money. It's about knowing where your money is working for you. That's why we partnered with Empower. Empower is all about helping you invest well so you can go out and live a little.

9:37Their free Empower personal dashboard gives you a complete view of your financial life in one place. Track your net worth, monitor your budget, analyze your investments, set retirement goals, and more. You've worked hard for your money. Now make sure it's working hard for you. Download the Empower personal dashboard or visit Empower.com. Not an Empower client paid or sponsored. What if your soda actually did something for you? Introducing Sky Pop Protein Soda. Sky Pop Protein Soda has 10 grams of complete protein, zero sugar, and real delicious soda taste. Sky Pop Protein Soda. Reach for the sky.

10:13Get your Sky Pop Protein soda now at Target or Walmart. This is Malcolm Glaube from Medal of Honor Stories of Courage. This episode is brought to you by Navy Federal Credit Union. At Navy Federal, they want you to know that if you need a positive sign towards achieving your goal of home ownership, this is it. Because even though today's housing market can seem discouraging, the Home Buyers Choice Loan offers members down payment options as low as 0 % with no required private mortgage insurance. Look for your sign today, Navy Federal Credit Union. Navy Federal is insured by NCUA, equal housing lender.

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12:03Goodbye. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.