Behind the bid scenes

GENEVA – It was SBP executive director Sonny Barrios who put the pieces together in the Philippine-led consortium’s winning bid to host the 2023 FIBA World Cup. Barrios, a former PBA commissioner, was the man tasked to coordinate with FIBA on the nearly endless requirements to formalize the consortium’s “candidature,” the term used by the Swiss-based international governing body.

Barrios’ job wasn’t easy, requiring close communication with SBP chairman emeritus Manny V. Pangilinan particularly on financial matters, event specialists and media handlers who were assigned to produce the 20-minute presentation to the FIBA Central Board before the voting and to create a crescendo of public support leading to D-Day or Decision-Day. FIBA required financial guarantees which Pangilinan delivered. There were financial obligations tied to the bid amount and FIBA laid out a schedule of payments to provide an income stream up to 2023.

Barrios is well-known and well-liked in FIBA circles as an efficient executive with a heart for the game. He counts among his mentors the late PBA commissioner Rudy Salud and the former Asian Basketball Confederation (now FIBA Asia) secretary-general Moying Martelino. Barrios has a direct line to FIBA secretary-general Patrick Baumann and other FIBA officers whose inputs were critical in guiding the consortium through the maze of requirements to lock up the candidature.

TV5 Sports head Patricia Bermudez-Hizon was another key player in the bid. She was on top of producing the presentation which meant working closely with media experts DDB and TLA Worldwide. DDB (Dane Doyle Bernbach) is a global advertising giant whose head office is in New York City while TLA is an international media company whose base is in Melbourne. DDB Philippines group marketing head John Lucas was assigned to the bid project and TLA appointed Brendan McClements.

Hizon and Lucas were with the Philippine delegation that flew here for the bid presentation last Saturday. They spent sleepless nights working on the precise delivery of the 20-minute presentation.  Hizon arranged for a one-minute video produced by ESPN New York to introduce the presentation. The video featured popular ESPN TV host Rachel Nichols who appears on “The Jump” weekdays and was once described by Sports Illustrated as “the country’s most impactful and prominent female sports journalist.” She made a name for herself by standing up to Floyd Mayweather Jr. and confronting him on his domestic violence issues.

McClements produced a video called “The Power Of Three” which was shown to bridge the two groups of speakers in the presentation. A narrator with an accent that doesn’t sound foreign to an international body like the FIBA Central Board was tapped for the video. The first set of speakers was made up of Pangilinan, Indonesian Basketball Association (IBA) secretary-general and member of the House of Representatives Budi Satrio Djiwandono, Deputy Speaker Rep. Pia Cayetano and Japan Basketball Association (JBA) deputy secretary-general Mitsuhiro Hirota filling in for Okinawa City Mayor Sachio Kuwae. The second set was composed of Pangilinan, IBA chairman and SEABA president Erick Thohir, JBA president Yuko Mitsuya and SBP president Al Panlilio. Pangilinan, Thohir and Mitsuya are members of the FIBA Central Board. Pangilinan opened and closed the presentation as the consortium’s prime mover.

Thohir is an Indonesian media magnate who once had a 15 percent stake in the Philadelphia 76ers and now owns 30 percent of the football club Inter Milan. Mitsuya was on the Japanese women’s volleyball team that took the bronze medal at the 1984 Olympics and is highly regarded in Japanese sports circles. When FIBA suspended JBA for political wranglings a few years back, it was Mitsuya who rose to the occasion and cleaned up the mess leading to the lifting of the suspension.

TV5 CEO and Gilas head coach Chot Reyes joined Pangilinan on the trip to Switzerland. Reyes is a familiar figure in the FIBA family and rose to prominence when he called the shots for Gilas at the 2014 FIBA World Cup. He brought the Philippines back to the World Cup stage after a 36-year absence and created a stir with Gilas’ close losses to Argentina, Croatia and Puerto Rico. Cayetano and Panlilio were in the delegation as speakers. Also in the traveling cast were Barrios, PLDT head of business transformation and First Pacific assistant director Ricky Vargas, Dr. Raffy Bejar, Pangilinan’s executive assistant Abet Dungo and Cayetano’s assistant Che Reginaldo.