Raine Group and several former NBA stars are backing a Hong Kong startup that is piecing together Asia's first major basketball club competition with the blessing of the FIBA.
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Asia League Holdings Ltd. raised $13 million from investors, including retired players Metta Sandiford-Artest, Baron Davis and Shane Battier, boosting its valuation to $100 million. The funds will be used to launch the East Asia Super League - consisting of eight teams from countries including Japan, South Korea and the Philippines - beginning in October 2022, it said.
A basketball tournament in Asia will fill a void in Asia, where the NBA rakes in hundreds of millions of dollars every year through sponsorships, merchandise and broadcast fees. The final four face-offs take place over a weekend accompanied by a music festival, and the 2022 EASL games will last five months in a home-and- away format. The organizers said top teams from the China Basketball Association are expected to join EASL in an upcoming season. The CBA is now chaired by Yao Ming, a longtime Houston Rockets player whose former agent, Bill Duffy, is an investor in and advisor to EASL.
Matt Beyer, a former interpreter for Chinese star Yi Jianlian who played for the NBA's Milwaukee Bucks, co-founded the EASL operator with former JP Morgan analyst Henry Kerins in Hong Kong. They hope that their new big-name investors will help boost an annual tournament that streams to some of the world's largest and most engaged social media audiences.
If you get the top teams, you have a higher standard of competition and national rivalry. Mark Dreyer, founder of the China Sports Insider website, said that patriotic fan base helps raise interest. The highlights in digital content could help expand the league as it grows and gets more popularity. That is a way to market it that wouldn't have been used in the past. The tech and media financier Raine Group is the biggest external backer, with Beyer and Kerins holding a majority stake in the venture. The Asia League wants to bring in strategic investors in key markets like China and South Korea by raising another $30 million to $50 million, Beyer said.
In China and Asia, soccer and basketball are the most watched sports. The attention of basketball fans has been largely fixed on the American NBA as soccer has the decades-old Pan-Asian AFC Champions League competition. The U.S. league has a lot of money invested in acquiring licensing rights with the help of the likes of Tencent and Kuaishou Technology.
The goal for the EASL is to be among the top three basketball leagues in terms of fan base and revenue by 2025, along with the NBA and Europe's regional league, Beyer said.
Battier, who played 13 years in the NBA, said that the EASL represents a huge opportunity but it does not come without logistical challenges that have prevented a league like this in years past. The EASL represents an opportunity to grow the game in Asia. None of the Wildfires Are Getting Worse, and One Chemical Company is Reaping the Benefits.