The Magic Touch: The Chinese Basketball Association vs. The NBA

Because of the success of the NBA, many leagues in different countries are driven to offer better and better products.  The result is a high-level of competition in leagues around the world.

The Chinese Basketball Association (CBA) is one of these improving leagues.  For example, as the CBA has developed over the past several seasons, many former NBA players have joined the league (i.e Stephon Marbury, Tracy McGrady, Steve Francis, etc.). This infusion of talent has made the CBA much more competitive and prominent than ever before.

However, the NBA and CBA developed in different countries with varying conditions, and there are many fundamental differences between them. Through the observations of both basketball leagues for many years, I have summarized four major differences between them.

1. Competition System

There are 30 clubs in the NBA, but in contrast, there are just 18 clubs in the CBA. Like its American counterpart, the CBA also has pre-season games, playoffs, finals and All-Star games.  Although it emulates the NBA to a certain extent, it is limited by fewer teams and an uneven geographical distribution. Therefore, the CBA only has 306 games during a season, as opposed to approximately 1300 NBA games.

The distribution of CBA teams in 2013

Besides the difference in the quantity of regular season games, the NBA has a much more developed system of pre-season games and Summer Leagues. Because of this, players have abundant opportunities to adapt to the new season and get familiar with new teammates while teams can promote their global images through overseas games. However, since Chinese basketball clubs are not as wealthy as those in America and pre-season games lack chances to make high profit, the CBA does not have a Summer League or enough high-quality pre-season games.

2.The structure of management

In the NBA, the Board of Governors and Commissioner (management), along with the Player's Association (employees) work to grow revenue and increase competitive balance. For instance, these parties set the salary cap to make sure teams have equal opportunities to sign great players and play close contests. They try to make the resources of each team more equitable to guarantee the competitive balance, going so far as sharing broadcasting and ticket revenue. All of these functions show that the management approaches of the NBA are operated with the same principles as a successful business, because these methods are all market-driven and serve to enhance the advertising value of the games.

However, the CBA, is managed by the Basketball Department of the General Administration of Sport in China, which is greatly limited by the government. Even though the department has implemented many market-oriented operations, it cannot be fundamentally be turned into a market-oriented organization because of its inherent centralization.

The Management Structure of CBA

 3. Business Model of Clubs

NBA teams’ revenue sources are diversified. Some of those resources are managed by the league as a whole, like the national and international broadcasting rights (TV and online), derivative products, or sponsorships and media companies (NBA TV, NBA Tape/DVD). Each club controls most revenues from local TV contracts, gate receipts, and in-game retail sales.

In contrast, ticket income accounts for a much more significant percentage of total income for CBA clubs because of the immature nature of broadcasting, advertisement, and derivative products in China's sports industry. Another source of income for CBA teams is to sell the naming rights to other companies, which is common in Asian sports leagues.

Shanghai Maxxis Partnership

 

 

For example, the Shanghai team has sold its naming rights to Maxxis, a tire brand, so its name has become Shanghai Maxxis basketball team. In the 2004-05 season of CBA, the total revenue of selling naming rights reached 27,480,000 yuan, which accounted for 29.13% of the total income. Now, these numbers are skyrocketing. Last season, the Double Star Group spent 20,000,000 yuan to buy the naming rights of the Qingdao basketball team.

4.The way talents entered the league

Since 1947, basketball fans have always been accustomed to watching the annual NBA draft in June, and many players picked from it would become stars the very next season. As we all know, most talents in NBA draft are from NCAA, an effective talent pool for NBA. Because of the high-level matches of NCAA, many outstanding talents are trained to be qualified candidates to NBA teams.

Students from sports schools

However, in China, fans do not have chance to feel the excitement of the draft. The way talents enter the CBA is completely different from that of NBA. In every province in China, each has a sports bureau which is in charge of looking for and organizing sports talents in its sports school. When the talent qualifies for the professional league, he or she will be directly transferred to the CBA team or other professional sports clubs in this province. In Liaoning province, one of the best sports talent breeding-grounds in China, the sports school supplies the Liaoning basketball team in the CBA with many talents every year.

Certainly, most basketball leagues have a lot to learn from the NBA, the best basketball league around the globe, but each of the leagues still need to preserve their unique elements, which result in the heterogeneous prosperity of world basketball.