MUMBAI: MultiScreenMedia (MSM), which got the exclusive rights for four years with the National basketball Association (NBA) last year, intends to take the relationship to the next level by building the NBA brand and getting fans closer to the game Earlier this year, the rights had been shared with Zee.

MSM CEO Man Jit Singh says, ?the aim for the year is to grow the reach, viewership and time spent on the NBA and build it as a platform. When we did the deal last year we realised that for focused marketing and cross promotional activities it is better to have one platform. We are looking at on-air content as well as on the ground grassroots initiatives. On-air we will go beyond just showing live games.

"We are looking at showcasing the NBA lifestyle through special content like player profiles. The NBA fits in very well with our strategy of showcasing sports and entertainment. The TG is 14-35 in the Metros and tier one and two cities. Other properties are coming up in this space and we will evaluate these opportunities?

While specifying no plans, he did not rule out having an NBA feed in Hindi. On the ground MSM will do grassroots initiatives with the NBA. ?This will allow us to offer cross promotional opportunities to sponsors. Later this year we and the NBA will do a three-on-three competition across the country. The activity will spread across India and will run for around three months. Winners will get a chance to play against members of an NBA team. This event will be packaged and shown on Six. The appeal of basketball is that it is fast paced. Also, doing grassroots events is not difficult as the infrastructure requirements are not huge unlike other sports like soccer.?

Today NBA and MSM announced a tie-up with the NGO Magic Bus to launch an NBA Cares programme in the country. Weekly basketball programmes will be used to promote education, health and fitness for boys and girls ages 7 to 14. The initiative kicks off in June.

?The NBA is a brand that I admire as they also give back to the community. At MultiScreenMedia we are committed to Magic Bus as part of our Corporate Social Responsibility programme. This will bring the sport to underprivileged children. It will help children compete in a new sport, become active and improve their health? added Singh.
 
NBA Commissioner David Stern is visiting the country for the first time. He noted that while China is the largest market for the NBA outside the US, the expectation is that India will catch up in a shorter period of time. ?India has a large youth population. They will want to consume other sports besides cricket. Globally year on year we have been seeing double digit revenue growth?.

Referring to the tie-up with Magic Bus, he noted that social responsibility was a part of the league?s mission. ?We are proud to work with our partners at Magic Bus and MultiScreenMedia to promote the values inherent in our game ? dedication, discipline, teamwork and sportsmanship and the importance of fitness and good health among Indian youth. The NBA has conducted over 450 grassroots events in India in 10 cities over the last five years?

Magic Bus and the NBA will identify a community in Mumbai and launch a pilot programme for underprivileged youth that will include a jointly developed basketball curriculum. There will be weekly sessions that will feature and basketball activities and will teach life skills in the areas of education, gender equality, health and fitness. The programme is a part of Magic Bus? ?Sport for development? approach.

Basketball will also be integrated into existing Magic Bus programmes in 12 Indian communities and NBA coaches will conduct basketball and fitness clinics for youth enrolled in each community. NBA legends and players who travel to India in the coming year will also participate in clinics for Magic Bus youth.

Magic Bus CEO founder Mathew Spacie said, ?We are thrilled to partner with the NBA to pilot a programme where we will use basketball as a base for our award winning ?sport for development? curriculum. The Magic Bus curriculum works to help provide youth with guidance to make dignified life choices from childhood to adulthood and integrating basketball as a sport for development can diversify our programme benefits to help more and more children learn and grow.?

MUMBAI: Yannick Colaco, who recently quit Nimbus Sport where he was chief operating officer, has joined the National Basketball Association (NBA) India as managing director.

Colaco will manage the NBA?s India office, based in Mumbai, and oversee all of the league?s business and basketballdevelopment in the
country. He will report to NBA President, International, Heidi Ueberroth.

Ueberroth said, ?Yannick Colaco has the ideal combination of experience and knowledge of the sports landscape in India necessary to lead our expanding operations in the country. Basketball is on the rise in India and we are thrilled to have Yannick lead our extremely talented staff as we build towards the future.?

Colaco will be responsible for leading the growth of the NBA in India. He will continue to build on the league?s efforts to grow participation in basketball in partnership with the Basketball Federation of India (BFI).

Colaco -- who played basketball at the national university level in India -- will work with the league?s media, marketing and merchandising partners to make the NBA more accessible to fans in India. He will also be responsible for growing further the NBA?s social media presence in the country.

He said, ?The sports market in India is poised for significant growth and as basketball participation increases further there is a tremendous opportunity for the NBA. The league has a strong staff in Mumbai and I look forward to joining their efforts to carry out the NBA?s mission to grow basketball in India.?

The NBA?s Mumbai office opened in October 2011 and includes Akash Jain, Senior Director, Business Development and Partnerships; Troy Justice, Senior Director, Basketball Operations, and three other employees.

NBA headquarters in New York also has a cross-departmental team dedicated to NBA growth in India.

Colaco was named Nimbus Sport COO in June 2009 after joining the company in August 2002. During his tenure he worked extensively across a wide range of sports properties and drove Nimbus Sport business to record profitability.

Prior to Nimbus Sport, Yannick began his career at IMG where he worked on a number of prominent event properties including India?s first ATP Tour Event, Asian PGA Tour Events and the Indian Fashion Week.

The NBA is committed to growing basketball in India and
has hosted more than 450 events in 10 cities since 2008. The league has marketing partnerships in India with adidas, Coca-Cola, Nike, Reebok and Spalding.

NBA has merchandise widely available in 200 adidas locations. Earlier this season, NBA announced a new television partnership with Multi Screen Media?s Sony Six channel providing fans in India the most comprehensive NBA programming and game coverage.

MUMBAI: NBA All-Star 2013 will have global coverage, reaching fans live in 215 countries and territories in 47 languages on their televisions, computers, mobile devices, and tablets.

More than 312 international media members from 46 countries and territories ? including Bulgaria, Kenya, Korea, Mongolia, Qatar and Switzerland - will converge in Houston to cover NBA All-Star from 15-17 February.

The league has also added 11 new television partners for All-Star this year from countries such as China, Georgia, Germany, India, Russia and Tanzania.

The convergence of television, digital and social media will make this the most interactive All-Star ever for international fans. More than 386 million fans globally will follow the NBA on social media and for the first time the world feed broadcasts will feature real-time tweets from celebrities, NBA players and fans from all over the world at NBAAllStar.

NBA LEAGUE PASS International will provide subscribers access to live streams of the BBVA Rising Stars Challenge, State Farm All-Star Saturday Night, and the 62nd NBA All-Star Game on computers, tablets and mobile devices.

NBA TV International will give viewers in 88 countries and territories behind-the-scenes access at events during NBA All-Star 2013.

A new free All-Star app, The Ultimate Guide to All-Star, will provide fans globally with live scores, video, news, event information, predictive gaming, and the fan voting for the Kia NBA All-Star MVP award on computers, tablets and mobile devices.

In China, the NBA?s largest international market, NBA All-Star 2013 will be televised live nationally on CCTV5, regionally through a network of partners, and streamed live or on demand on Sina, Tencent and NBA.com/China. CCTV will also be capturing All-Star footage for a new weekly two-hour show titled NBA Prime Time that will debut on Feb. 21.

The league?s 53 million social media followers in China on Sina Weibo and Tencent Weibo ? more than any other sports league - will interact in real-time and cast votes for the Sprite Slam Dunk champion and All-Star Game Most Valuable Player.

NBA All-Star 2013 will have unprecedented reach in emerging markets. For the first time, Sony SIX and CNN India will be onsite gathering footage and conducting interviews to give fans in India an all-access look. Al Jazeera Sports will provide live coverage throughout the Middle East; SABC will provide national free-to-air coverage in South Africa; and ESPN and Space will carry the action live in Brazil.

More than 80 media members from Europe will be onsite including six broadcast partners doing live commentary from Denmark, France, Greece, Poland, Romania, and Spain. NBA Entertainment and Prisa TV will produce a customized feed, presented by BBVA for fans in Spain.

More than 50 media members from Latin America will be onsite. Fans throughout the region will enjoy comprehensive live coverage on ESPN, Space, and Direct TV.

The All-Star Game world feed broadcast will also introduce fans to NBA Challenge - the NBA?s newest real-time predictive game. Fans will have the chance to answer a question about the game in real-time to score points and be featured on a public NBA Challenge Leaderboard.

The first-ever NBA Digital Village at NBA All-Star Jam Session will feature a sampling of international broadcaster commentary from the 2012 All-Star Game. Fans will be able to watch an edited version of the game featuring commentary in Turkish, Mandarin, French, Spanish, Japanese and Arabic.

The NBA has 15 international NBA.com sites offering customized in-language content in markets such as India, Italy, Turkey, the Philippines, Brazil and Africa. The league has 13 international Facebook pages.

The following television and digital partners will have sweepstakes winners onsite for NBA All-Star 2013: beIN Sport (France), RCS (Italy), DirecTV (Pan-Latin America) and ESPN Africa (Sub-Saharan Africa).

NEW DELHI: Information and Broadcasting (I&B) Minister Manish Tewari on Tuesday suggested government should have a role in ?enabling regulatory architecture ? for media, noting that regulation was not keeping pace with march of technology.

Tewari said the media resented regulation of any sort but felt it was necessary to introspect whether the government should be given some latitude for regulating the broadcast media.

It was necessary that a regulatory and enabling environment is in place at a time when the media was on the cusp of a change, he said and described self-regulation as an oxymoron.

The news broadcasters have a self-regulatory mechanism under News Broadcasters Association (NBA) and non-news broadcasters under Indian Broadcasting Foundation (IBF).

Tewari noted that the broadcasting sector has grown from just one public service channel 20 years ago to over 850 private channels now, and the FM radio had also seen exponential growth.

While dwelling on the social media, Tewari said regulation had failed to keep pace with technology and stressed the need for an enabling regulatory architecture that helps in adapting to changes in newer media.

He wondered how the democratisation of the information paradigm will affect the social milieu. ?While the right to privacy is an intrinsic part of the Constitution, the right to anonymity could be corrosive to social order.?

He was also concerned over issues relating to television rating points which were skewed in favour of the private channels at present. Noting that digitisation may help resolve this issue, he said there was a need for greater deliberation on this issue.

Tewari was delivering the inaugural address at the three-day Broadcast Engineering Services Expo organised by the Broadcast Engineering Society (India). The theme of the conference is ?Convergence and New Broadcast Technologies?.

Earlier, I&B Secretary Uday Kumar Varma said the TRP issue would not ordinarily be something that the government should be worried about, but felt skewed TRPs should not lead to deterioration of content. Furthermore, Prasar Bharati was not getting its fair share in the TRP system at present.

Referring to digitisation, Varma said it was unfortunate that ?we are still struggling with the standards of set top boxes? and regretted that the STBs had no portability.

He expressed satisfaction that the first phase had been very successful, particularly since even developed countries had taken up to a decade to digitise and India had achieved this in less than a year.

He said the plurality and the number of channels had grown so vastly that India was now second only to China, having overtaken the United States.

The I&B Secretary said digitisation gives new opportunities, but how one uses this opportunity is up to the stakeholder.

Referring to radio, Varma wondered why medium wave (MW) could not be developed and helped the way FM Radio was being helped. He said MW had its own specific purpose.

He said the government was keen that India should develop as a digital hub and the relaxations in the foreign direct investment scheme and infrastructure were aimed to make India a preferred destination.

Sam Pitroda, advisor to the Prime Minister on public information infrastructure and innovation, said every fourth Indian will be connected via broadband within the next few years.