The New NBA Season on Philippine TV



DON'T expect big changes in the way the NBA games will be televised in the Philippines now that the new season is underway.

The NBA's Philippine TV franchise holders, Solar Entertainment, will continue to air majority of the games daily in the morning over its channels Basketball TV and NBA Premium TV.

Unfortunately, most cable TV subscribers, especially those who have Skycable, still don't have those two channels because of the ongoing court dispute between Solar and the NBA's free TV holders, ABS-CBN Sports. The case has been going on for more than a year now and no resolution is in sight. This is sad considering that it was Solar that tapped ABS-CBN to be the free TV broadcasters of the NBA starting in 2011 after the Wilson Tieng-owned company severed ties with RPN 9 which is now CNN Philippines.

The dispute between ABS-CBN and Solar stems from the charges they have filed against each other regarding the payment of carriage fees to Skycable, which is a sister company of ABS-CBN.

Recently though, an independent company has released a digibox-style unit where viewers can get both NBA Premium and BTV without a cable connection. The box costs close to P1,000 so it is affordable to those who want to get NBA games without paying too high cable fees.

As for ABS-CBN, the games will still be aired on Fridays, Sundays and Mondays over its S+A channel while Saturday games will still be on Channel 2 at 8:30 am with the first half slightly delayed and the second half live.

The Channel 2 Saturday games will still have the same Tagalized commentary coming from veteran UAAP anchor Boom Gonzalez and the tandem of PBA legends Benjie Paras and Ronnie Magsanoc.

However, TJ Manotoc will be a big loss as he is already based in San Francisco as head of ABS-CBN's North American News Bureau so expect other ABS-CBN sportscasters like Anton Roxas, Drei Felix, Eric Tipan and Mico Halili to cover some NBA games inside the ABS-CBN studios.

Majority of the ABS-CBN games will feature the defending champion Golden State Warriors and the Los Angeles Lakers with LeBron James leading the Purple and Gold this season. Both LeBron and Warriors stars Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant enjoy a huge following in the Philippines.

Fox Sports Philippines will also air NBA games but only on Thursday and Saturday mornings. Most of the Fox games will come from ESPN in the US although there will be some games that will come from Fox Sports regional affiliates here in the US.

This season marks the last year of Solar and ABS-CBN's five-year contract to air the NBA games on Philippine TV. And despite the dispute between both parties, it looks like a renewal is in sight unless ESPN5 can come up with a sensible proposal to the NBA office in New York when it comes to the bidding of the broadcast rights for next season and beyond.

Let's enjoy a new NBA season -- although many expect the Warriors to make a three-peat.



Location: El Sobrante, CA, USA

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