The Philippines is now on a Holiday Break as Filipinos reflect on their sins and reconnect with their family members from their provinces during the Holy Week.
As I’m relaxing, I’ve stumbled upon this video from a content creator named Grindtime Sports where he criticised the PBA’s actions in “devaluating the title” of the recently crowned Season 49 Commissioner’s Cup champions, TNT Tropang Giga.
And honestly, I agree with him.
“Old School” Tournament Format
In the Facebook Reel of Grindtime Sports, he mentioned that after TNT won their 2nd straight championship this season, the PBA didn’t even allow the team to celebrate that long, as after exactly a week, the PBA Philippine Cup already began.
The match of TNT versus Brgy. Ginebra San Miguel went to a winner-takes-all Game 7 at the SMART Araneta Coliseum. Both of these squads get a 3-week break after the Finals before playing again.
As he pointed out in the video, not only did the team of TNT fail to immerse the feeling of being a champion, but also their fans since now, their attention must shift to winning the Philippine Cup. This of course is a must as the MVP led franchise aims to win an elusive Grandslam title.
And he’s right!
Having a three-conference format in 2025 is something inconvenient, as other competing major Asian basketball leagues aren’t really doing this. The B League of Japan doesn’t have this, the P+ League of Taiwan doesn’t have this, and the KBL of South Korea doesn’t have this. Heck, even the CBA of China may be surprised if they’ll ever hear something about this!
Perhaps once upon a time, this format of the second-oldest basketball league in the world did wonders, but times have changed now. I guess, there should be one single conference in one season and have an import all throughout the competition.
And from what I’ve seen on Facebook the other night, a report by Gerry Ramos of Spin.ph said that one more foreign team is potentially planning to join the PBA next season aside from the Hong Kong Eastern.
With that in mind, perhaps Asia’s first-ever basketball league must “accept modernity and reject tradition”.
Unorthodox Marketing Style
In the video of Grindtime Sports, he also called out the Marketing Style of the league as this is really ineffective.
Objectively speaking, I agree with him on that 100%!
Because in celebration of the 50th Season of the PBA, one great marketing technique they’ve used to attract a good crowd to watch their game was during April 9 2025 match wherein audiences who were born in the same year when the PBA started in 1975 got a free entrance to their game at the Rizal Memorial Coliseum.
Other than that? Umm…?
While we are on the topic of marketing, one thing I’d like to put some emphasis on is how the teams advertise their ballclub on all different social media platforms.
Heck, if we are going to have the NBA as the role model of how the PBA must look, then each team must have a designated, official, informative, and up-to-date social media page and accounts.
Two examples, Ginebra and Terrafirma Dyip. Ginebra is so popular that if you try to Google their Facebook page, there would be at least 20 basketball team Pages that will all appear, and none of them are even the official account!
I mean, at least, out of the 20 FB Pages, there will be 5 of those that will post the latest news and updates for the most popular ballclub in the nation. But how about for Terrafirma? I swear I’ve done this in the past, but I just can’t find them.
How can teams encourage their fan bases to watch games if they don’t even have an official FB Page or any other official social media accounts out there?!
I get it that what these teams market are their products or services, and not their “franchise player/s”. But having that kind of decision just makes the PBA a league that has been left behind by the advancements of time and the evolution of society.
CRITIC ≠ HATER
In the latter part of the video from Grindtime Sports, he mentioned that he is just a critic, pointing out the errors of the league and he’s not a hater at all.
And I’m on his side.
We, including myself, just want to see our beloved basketball league turn out to be the best among the rest. For the past 50 years, the PBA has had its fair share of ups and downs, but one thing has remained certain: they give quality entertainment to their fans by playing an elite type of basketball.
All of these videos calling them out about their marketing style and tournament format are just for the league to improve, and not to bring them down. We wish the best for the PBA, and we continuously hope that they will somehow fix these mistakes before it becomes incurable in the end.
