A FAMILY-owned corporation offering varied products and services thru separate enterprises always has a holding company that makes the final decisions. Personnel and staff can always be pulled out and swapped from branches to maintain and improve sales. This could prove beneficial to both employee and employer.
Having all the resources to do so, results will always be on the positive side for these family-run businesses. Investors with no blood relations are rarely entertained or not at all to maintain a controlling interest.
The same can be said of the current state of things with the Philippine Basketball Association (PBA), which had prided itself as Asiaâs first pro basketball league.
Two major companies monopolize the 12-team league fielding several teams. Not your ordinary team just for the sake of participation, mind you, but with the intent of ruling each conference year in and year out, with or without COVID-19. A food and beverage company is head and shoulders above the rest of the league with 27 championships. Two of its subsidiaries have 27 titles combined.
Three other teams are subsidiaries of a company dealing in communications, power, and construction. These teams are perennial final four contenders and had so far won seven championships.
Only one independent team had escaped the league corporate choke hold and managed to win 14 titles of their own. Another team had two trophies to show. The rest of the field is battling for scraps because of the disparity of talents.
The league board is mostly populated with tunnel-visioned members, with a largely titular commissioner dependent on the desires of the bosses. The expansion would have been ideal to gain back the interest of the fans, but this will be outweighed by biases to their teams, with the rest becoming a âfarmersâ marketâ whose top players will be subjected to ridiculously loop-sided trades, as what had been the norm recently.
The defunct regional-based MBA could have been ideal as teams had rabid supporters from the provinces. Some unforgettable team and player rivalries were made. Its popularity rattled the nerves of the PBA in the early stages but sadly, because of player transfers and lack of sponsors, it folded.
A revival of sorts is thru Sen. Manny Pacquiaoâs MPBL and so far, so good. More regional corporate backers will be needed to sustain the league as PacMan canât be forever forking out from his own pockets. Even the NBA, with its billion-dollar owners, now has corporate sponsors. Maybe with more promotions, the MPBL will be shown on prime time.
PBA, tayo ang bida! Of course, because itâs sagip kapamilya, liga familia./PN
