"Whither the NBA, Whither America?" Reading

David L. Andrews' article "Whither the NBA, Whither America?" (1999) was an interesting piece describing the growth and success of the NBA from a smalltime league that was in danger of demise to the giant that it is today.  As I am not a large basketball fan, I had never thought about how the NBA evolved to become the sport and entertainment behemoth of the 21^st century.  The marketing plan of the NBA overseas is of particular interest.  The fact that the NBA was only generating $30 million annually from television rights to 105 different companies is amazingly low when you compare it to the amount a single commercial during the Super Bowl costs (Andrews, 1999).   I would be interested to learn what the NBA is charging for television rights in 2011, 12 years later, with the brand firmly embedded in international culture.

I was also slightly confused by Andrews’ (1999) article as it seems to be about two completely separate topics.  The first half of the article focuses on the ways in which the NBA changed the nature of sports leagues by focusing more on entertainment and how they grabbed a larger chunk of the marketplace by first improving their domestic market and then reaching for the international market.  Andrews’ (1999) then uses the movement of the NBA into the international market to talk about the role the NBA plays in the ethnic culture of Britain.  While the two are slightly connected, I believe that Andrews has two separate articles that would both be very interesting to explore, but when combined leave the reader slightly confused as to his overall point.