Recently, the long-silent NBL league finally ushered in good news. NBL officially announced that the first stage of the regular season will be held in Nantong, Jiangsu province from November 10, 2022.
It is reported that the 2022-season NBL league will be divided into two stages: the regular season and the playoffs. The regular season will adopt a double-cycle competition, and the top eight teams in the regular season will enter the playoffs. Among them, the first cycle of the regular season will be held in Nantong, Jiangsu province, and the second cycle of the regular season and the playoff game will be held in Xuancheng, Anhui province.
It is worth mentioning that after several operators have been moving for many years, NBL will be in charge of League operation for the first time by deep basket Sports, a wholly-owned company of China Basketball Association. Under the epidemic, what difficulties will NBL face and what solutions will deep basket sports come up? Recently, Yan Xiaoming, general manager of sports big business and deep basket Sports, held an in-depth talk.
Backtracking: the previous life of NBL after several changes by the operator
As we all know, NBL is called the national men’s basketball league and is one of the three major professional basketball leagues under the Chinese Basketball Association. At first, in the era of CBA promotion, NBL was the secondary league of CBA league. The top two of NBL league could be promoted to CBA, and the last two teams at the bottom of CBA dropped into NBL. In 2004, CBA canceled the upgrade level, but every few years there will be a window period for army expansion. NBL’s top-ranking teams still have the opportunity to enter CBA. For example, Sichuan men’s basketball and Nanjing Tongxi all entered CBA during the window period of army expansion.
In 2015, NBL became the first national top sports league with separate management and management of the State General Administration of Sports. At that time, the Chinese Basketball Association allowed NBL to operate the league independently from 2015 to 2019. However, during this period, NBL broke out a lot of disputes in the field and business development, and the chairman of the league company also changed several times, it was also because of the dispute with the subsidiary of Zhimei sports about the agency of the business operation right of the league. In short, the NBL league management in the era of separation of management and management was extremely chaotic, which made some investors miserable.
Therefore, in October, 2019, the Chinese Basketball Association announced to take back the NBL operation right, and the League was re-operated by the Chinese Basketball Association. However, many NBL investors believe that the Chinese Basketball Association does not attach importance to the NBL league, whether it is commercial development, brand promotion or competition organizations lack bright spots. In addition, the outbreak of the epidemic in early 2020 has significantly reduced the brand value of NBL league. NBL is no longer allowed to register foreign aid. It can only be participated by local players and completely become an incubator for CBA to train talents. In the 2021 season, the league was once interrupted due to the epidemic, and finally recovered after several months at the club’s request, but the confidence of investors was further hit.
In the second half of 2021, China Basketball Association formally established its own wholly-owned company Deep basket Sports. Yan Xiaoming served as the general manager of the company and Yao Ming served as the chairman of the board, the Basketball Association has gradually arranged deep basket sports to be responsible for operating all kinds of basketball IP addresses under the Chinese Basketball Association, including NBL, which is equivalent to the middle basket company in the era of basket management center, china Basketball Association hopes to promote the separation of property rights and operation rights of its IP with the help of deep basket sports, so that professionals can do professional work.
Currently, NBL is hard to restart but still faces three major problems.
Needless to say, as China’s first basketball match with separation of management and management, it is also China’s second largest men’s basketball league. NBL league has made many detours over the years, and it has also revealed negative competition, unpaid wages, the number of clubs has decreased year by year and the confidence of investors is insufficient due to scandals such as the private share of senior executives of league companies. After the epidemic, there was no foreign aid participating in the competition, and the appreciation and attention declined further, which was really annoying.
Nowadays, NBL’s operation right officially belongs to deep basket sports. While restarting NBL, there are still some problems to be solved. Yan Xiaoming said, first of all, the start-up funds of the league are very tight. It is understood that the basketball association would issue an operating fund for NBL before. However, with the long-term wandering overseas of national teams this year, the Basketball Association’s funds were not sufficient, so NBL did not receive any funds this year.
Secondly, NBL has positioning problems. Previously, NBL was once the reserve pool for CBA expansion, and many strong teams of NBL also had the belief of promotion to CBA. However, in recent years, with CBA stopping expansion, to find a new direction with NBL investors.
Recently, former CBA player Tang Jie joined NBL Anhui Wenyi
Finally, it comes from the impact of the epidemic. Yan Xiaoming told sports big business that under the epidemic, NBL investors had their own difficulties. In addition, due to the delay in confirming the start time and place, it was impossible to further formulate the league plan. This year, many cities were inspected, and the two host sites of Nantong and Xuancheng were decided. The following is the difficulty of business development. Due to the uncertainty of the event, it is difficult to confirm the information such as the host place, the broadcast platform, and whether the event is empty, which further increases the difficulty of sponsoring investment.
“When we just took over, the business progress was very difficult, and now we only talk about one. So we are telling the club that this year is a transition, and living is hope. Now we can only say that we need to make plans, discuss various possibilities, and strive to make some bright spots next year.” Yan Xiaoming said.
Future: NBL still has room for development to inject confidence into investors
At the end of 2021, China Basketball Association released the “China basketball Development Report”. The report shows that the population of basketball in China is about 0.125 billion, and basketball is the first sport in collective ball games. However, considering that the home court of NBL team is mainly located in the central and western provinces with a large population and no CBA team, these provinces cover nearly 0.6 billion people, and the potential of basketball market cannot be underestimated. How to effectively develop these potentials is also an urgent solution for deep basket sports.
On October 9th, the Chinese Basketball Association held a mobilization meeting for the new season of CBA league and a deployment meeting for warning education in Gypsy style competition. Liu Guoyong, deputy director of the State Sports General Administration, and other leaders attended the meeting. Liu Guoyong demanded to reshape the image of the league, adhere to the road of professional league development with Chinese characteristics, adhere to the positioning of people’s basketball, and handle the relationship between social benefits and economic benefits. In fact, this also points out the direction for NBL to some extent.
According to Yan Xiaoming, both the General Administration of Sports and the higher level have conveyed a strong will to strengthen the development of three big-ball sports, which will undoubtedly bring more confidence to NBL investors. As the second largest league in the field of basketball, NBL still has many possibilities. For example, Zhao Rui, Jiang Yuxing and other NBL players have now become star players or the main force of the first team in CBA. NBL can make more contributions to CBA at the level of talent transfer, at the same time, it also adds a new way for CUBA players.
Is it feasible to hold the joint draft of CBA and NBL?
In Yan Xiaoming’s assumption, NBL participated in the CBA draft, merged with the CBA Youth League (CBDL), and even accepted some overseas clubs to participate in the competition. In recent years, with the rise of “village BA” and other grassroots basketball events and stars, NBL has also brought a lot of inspiration in positioning and marketing.
“We have discussed multiple plans with the Basketball Association, CBA, Sports Association and other departments, and we are constantly communicating and coordinating with the clubs. These are all normal. At present, we do have some difficulties. I hope everyone can spend it together.” Yan Xiaoming said.