Starting at midnight tonight, the BC Wolves will air free livestreams of their European North Basketball League (ENBL) games exclusively to the Philippines on their Facebook page. The trailblazing broadcasts will be emanating from all over northern Europe: Lithuania, Estonia, Poland and the Czech Republic. This is just another in a series of dominoes falling into place that began with the club’s signing of former Gilas Pilipinas and UP Fighting Maroons guard Juan Gomez de Liaño last October. In just two hours of the announcement, the team saw a jump in public participation on their Facebook page, from just over 8,000 followers to more than 16,000. As of this writing, that number now stands at well over 84,000 or a 1,000 percent jump in three months, mainly from the Philippines. Seeing this opened the organization’s eyes to how passionate Filipino fans are about basketball. The country is suddenly a big potential market for the team.
The Wolves make their debut tonight in Estonia against the home team Tartu Ülikool Maks & Moorits. While more than half of the 15 ENBL teams (seven in Group A and eight in Group B) have already played four games, the Wolves are the last team to see action, as they are simultaneously playing in the Lithuanian league, the Betsafe-LKL. While this may be unusual for Filipino fans, in Europe it is quite common for a squad to be playing in more than one tournament at a time. The heavy schedule will also allow for newcomers like De Liaño to get significant playing time.
Almost immediately after Juan’s recruitment, the Wolves sought to expand their presence in the Philippines, and hired marketing professional and former basketball player Glenmarc Antonio, who was first featured in The STAR five years ago as owning the largest collection of Gary Payton memorabilia in the country. Antonio, the franchise’s regional manager for the Philippines, quickly set about putting systems in place to bring the Wolves (and De Liaño) more attention locally. The streaming schedule is for six elimination-round games in Group B of the ENBL beginning tonight, with their first two games less than 24 hours apart. BC Wolves are grouped together with Basket Brno (Czech Republic), Tart Ulikool Maks & Moorits (Estonia), Valmiera Glas Via (Latvia), Trefl Sopot (Poland), King Szczecin (Poland), BM Stal Ostrow Wielkopolski (Poland) and BC Ironi Ness Ziona (Israel). If the Wolves finish in the top four of their group, they go on to the playoffs.
But since ENBL commentary is done in the participating teams’ native languages, it was decided that for the Philippine broadcasts, this writer would provide live commentary in English. It is an honor to be part of another ground-breaking basketball broadcast.
“We are delighted to sign Bill as our game commentator in the Philippines. We value his solid experience and believe that his familiar voice to the Filipinos will help us to reach more fans there,” says Andrius Ziauberis, CEO of BC Wolves. “Broadcasting of ENBL games with a well-known local commentator is a huge step for us. It allows us to give the fans what they want – to watch our games live. We hope you’ll support the Wolves and Juan Gomez de Liaño.”
Hardcore Filipino basketball fans are starting to recognize how familiar some of the Lithuanians are. Head coach Rimas Kurtinaitis was an explosive shooting guard for both the Soviet and Lithuanian Olympic basketball teams, winning the gold medal in Seoul in 1988 with Arvydas Sabonis and Šar?nas Mar?iulionis. Kurtinaitis fired 28 points, and Sabonis 13 points and 13 rebounds to clinch the historic win. The Lithuanians scored 62 of the USSR’s 82 points. Kurtinaitis also played against the US Dream Team in 1992. Today, three of Kurtinaitis’ Wolves players are on the Lithuanian team that will play in the FIBA World Cup in the Philippines. This will further endear them to local fans.