A Possible Compromise?
HERE in the United States, the NBA is enjoying tremendous popularity so much that its television coverage has earned millions of dollars. Since the NBA has a lot of teams, the games are spread out evenly among the national TV networks such as ABC and ESPN under Disney and TNT/NBA TV, which are owned by the Turner group. But over there in the Philippines, the NBA TV rights are owned by the Solar Entertainment Group under movie producer Wilson Tieng. The games are shown on NBA Premium and Basketball TV. ABS-CBN, on the other hand, holds the free TV rights and the games are shown on its sports channel S+A although Saturday games are aired on Channel 2 before the noontime show It's Showtime. Some games have also been shown on Fox Sports but only on Thursdays and Saturdays. Although ESPN does air some of the NBA games in the US, it's curious to note that these games aren't shown on ESPN 5 (formerly TV5) for the simple reason that ABS-CBN does hold the free TV right