No home games?

For more than a week, I had been out of circulation and had gone with my family to the province of my birth for some personal reasons.  While there, I opted to be internet and newspaper free to bond with relations from overseas and some parts of the country that also came for the same purpose.  

Getting home the other day, I went through back issues of newspapers and aside from the Utah Jazz unexpectedly advancing to the semis of the WC playoffs, news on the upcoming second season of the Maharlika Pilipinas Basketball League (MPBL) caught my interest.

The MPBL, founded by our PambansangKamao, Sen. Manny Pacquiao had a successful maiden season which had Batangas City winning the league’s first ever crown over Muntinlupa City. Games were exclusively aired by ABS-CBN and basing on social media feedbacks, ratings were not bad.

Ratings would probably get better upon the proposed entry of expansion teams from the Visayas and Mindanao when the second season opens on June 12.  The Vis-Min area has a solid fan base and there are, in fact, a good number of Visayan-speaking players currently on the roster of Luzon teams which also added up to the viewership.

The league opened composed of Luzon-based teams with the idea of adding teams from the southern part of the country the following season.  Several teams from Cebu and Mindanao had signified their interest to join the second season but things at the moment had been iffy.

Initial plans bared that there will only be one home game for the southern teams with the rest of the games to be played in different Luzon localities because, as what league COO ZaldyRealubit said, there are conflicts with ABS-CBN’s schedule.

If the mother network can’t broadcast provincial games, let their regional broadcast networks do the thing.  People probably are already dying to have an alternative toProbinsyano that a few MPBL regional games would be a welcome change.  They can adapt what the NBA does, chose games to be aired on certain days.  Besides, all the efforts of the crime syndicates and politicians to eliminate Ador and Cardo always fail because the twins magically turn up alive everytime.  

If only to do justice to their province-mates and the Visayan-speaking regions, Sen. Pacman, Realubit and MPBL Commissioner Kenneth Duremdes, who are all from Mindanao, should find the ways and means to bring the games to the South. 

A team has to pay a franchise fee of p10million, a conference fee of P200,000 and another P200,000 as bond.  It would take an owner from the South of Lucio Tan or Henry Sy proportions to sustain a team to be in Manila for games at extended periods of time.   The logistics for salaries, accommodations, meals, transportation and other incidentals would be enormous. 

It was reported that games are open to the public.  It would be beneficial for home teams to earn some revenues for the upkeep and maintenance of playing arenas.  The league can give options to teams, specially from the South, to require minimal gate fees to playing venues as it could greatly help on team expenses.  There’s also the issue on fans.

Let’s say a team from Negros plays ten games in Manila and only one game in Bacolod or maybe in Dumaguete.  Surely, the Negros game will be packed with fans but what about the rest of the games held in Manila?  It wouldn’t be fun and encouraging for players facing a hostile crowd every playing night.  Just exactly how many Negrenses are there to watch and root for a Negros team playing in Laguna or Cavite?

Duremdes and company could entertain the idea of a Southern and Northern Conference.   They hold their own regional eliminations and the top five of each conference advances to a ten-team round-robin, home-and-away series.  Top four teams then move on to the Final Four for another round-robin where the top two teams battle for the title in a best-of-five series.

If the MPBL Season II opens with teams from the South and games would still be in Luzon, it defeats the league’s purpose of bringing the games nationwide.  Even though they’re broadcasted live, it’s different when fans see the games on their homecourt.  It would still be Manila-centric yet about half of the players in the league trace their roots from the South.

What’s the point in calling it MaharlikaPilipinas if only fans from Luzon can watch it live and in the flesh?Maybe they can rename it as the Manny Pacquiao Basketball League.  It’s still MPBL anyway.