The NBA's Play for India

By Sean Gregory

NBA Commissioner David Stern has already executed a beautiful pivot move into China, where, thanks in part to Houston Rockets center Yao Ming, hoops is hotter than Sichuan cooking. There's still work to be done in Europe, even though it is now a source of many NBA players, including seven Frenchmen and six Slovenes. Before the season, the Philadelphia 76ers and Phoenix Suns played exhibition games in Germany, a challenging NBA country, as part of a four-team, five-country full-court press of Europe--Italy, Spain, France and Russia were also hosts of training camps and games.

But there's a new frontier that the commissioner finds riveting. "You must think I'm nuts," Stern says, "because we're also spending a fair amount of time scoping out India."

Expanding to the world's second most populous market hardly seems loony. After all, no American sports league has exported its brand better than the NBA, which sells more than $750 million in merchandise overseas annually. Its games are broadcast in 215 countries. And India offers a growing, tech-savvy economy with a billion potential consumers--60% of whom are below age 30--who could sop up NBA merchandise and follow their favorite players on NBA.com

Despite India's stunning market potential, Stern knows that it is no layup and, as a sports market, may be among the least global. First, he is up against wicket competition, firmly planted in the country's psyche. "Cricket is our religion," says Harish Sharma, secretary-general of India's national basketball federation, of India's premier pastime. "Basketball is just another sport." In India, even soccer pales by comparison with cricket.

To build interest in basketball, Stern is starting at the grass-roots level. "We have the potential, and we have the ability," says K.K. Chansoria, head coach of India's men's and women's basketball teams. "What we lack is the infrastructure." China had seven-footers wandering the countryside and a government so dedicated to hoops it put backboards in most cities. In India, basketball facilities are sparse and mostly substandard. India's national women's team often practices on a cracked concrete court, adjacent to a scrubby field, in New Delhi. The government places less emphasis on sports growth, and trumpeting the country's hoops tradition is like bragging about America's team-handball stars. "I can't tell you there's a groundswell calling for the NBA in India," Stern admits.

Another deterrent is India's lack of a big-time pro league. "My dad would prefer that we study," says Divya Singh, 24, who plays on the national team with four of her sisters. "What's the point of spending all your time playing basketball if you can't get a job?" Corporate and government-sponsored teams often give players clerical jobs. Singh, for example, files and answers phones for MTM Telecom. Players earn benchwarmer salaries: Singh makes about $3,500 a year, and male players earn about $4,800, far less than the $15,000 for an entry-level IT pro and a microbe compared with the $360,000 in salary, plus hundreds of thousands more in endorsements, a top cricketer can earn.

And without a homegrown star to inspire the masses, basketball officials fear that the sport won't gain traction. "[Cricket legend] Sachin Tendulkar is a household name, whereas hardly anyone out there knows me," complains 6-ft. 5-in. Jaishankar Menon, a former standout on the Indian national team. Another foot would surely help him. "What we need now is a Yao Ming," says Sharma, the Indian roundball raja. "Once Yao played in the NBA, the color of China changed. It became a basketball nation. If we have an Indian playing in the NBA, the color of this country will change too."

The NBA, with the help of several marketing partners, is searching for that Indian star. In December the league will dispatch a group of top executives to the subcontinent for its first Indian basketball summit. They will finalize initiatives like coaching clinics, refurbished neighborhood courts and youth- development camps. The NBA is talking to Time Warner (the parent of Time) about producing hoops-related programming on Pogo TV, the company's Indian children's channel, and to espn Star Sports, a joint venture of Disney and News Corp., about increasing the league's presence on the network's Indian sports channels. The NBA is also in discussions with Nokia about supplying league content on Indian mobile phones.

Knowing that India is an NBA priority, Adidas, which signed an 11-year apparel deal with the league in April, this summer sent Minnesota Timberwolves star Kevin Garnett on a whirlwind, three-day tour, the first official trip by an NBA player to India. He gave a clinic in Bangalore, cut the ribbon at Adidas stores in New Delhi and Bangalore, and attracted throngs of fans. Adidas released nearly 900 pairs of a $189 limited edition, India-only Garnett basketball shoe, stitched with the country's orange, white and green colors and its iconic symbol, a tiger. Betting in part on a basketball explosion, Reebok, which Adidas purchased last year, recently announced it would more than triple its Indian stores, to 1,100 locations by 2010.

Basketball is slowly creeping into the culture. Several recent Bollywood blockbusters have featured basketball: in Koi ... Mil Gaya (I Have Found Someone), aliens visit the nerdy hero and give him Jordanesque abilities. Once aliens like your sport, you have arrived. Indian cell-phone carriers have featured kids shooting hoops in recent TV spots. "As a business opportunity, the potential is huge," says Anil Kumar, president of SportzIndia Management, a marketing and consulting firm. The key for the NBA, Kumar insists, is TV saturation. "Cricket on the small screen? It's impossible to see the ball. You have to do replays every time. Basketball is a sport made for TV."

Stern remains realistic about his Indian experiment. "With [India's] middle class and some focus on the world's games, basketball is starting to get a little interest and a little traction," he insists. "So we have to be respectful and realize it's going to be small steps up." Given the NBA's global track record, its Indian steps could end up looking like Garnett. Bigger, and quicker, than you think.

With reporting by Aryn Baker/ New Delhi, R. Bhagwan Singh/Madras