Good players are helped by marketing

BUENOS AIRES (Martín Seldes’ Brave New World) – While I was opening my computer and listening to that horrible Windows sound, Peñarol was about to host the sixth - and probably the last - game of the series against Obras.

But before that, a whole final series was played between Goliath -Peñarol- and David -Obras.

Even if they can lose tonight (you will be reading this after the game was over, so you tell me the result), we will talk about David and how they did things to make it here.

Goliath had won three national leagues until this final, including the previous two. It has both the coach and the player with most titles in the league’s history. It’s the team with the biggest crowd in the country and they play in the biggest stadium of the league.

Goliath (or Peñarol) has won two of the five Americas Leagues and the last version of the Interligas (four Argentine and four Brazilian teams).
Compared to the others teams in Argentina and part of the Americas, they have it all.

David, instead, has to fight for everything little step. They made it to the final because they have a great coach, a great player and a group that is ready to play aggressively.

During the finals, when we travelled from Mar del Plata - Goliath’s city - to Buenos Aires, we could feel the budget’s difference inside the stadiums.
However, and this is why we will talk about David, thanks to their intelligence and new ideas, they were able to fight head to head with the giant.

They changed how fans and journalists could watch the games in the stadium. From nothing, they went to an interesting 2.0 network that includes an exclusive Youtube channel useful that the few fans they have can enjoy.

And that’s something important. Fans. In order to become a better club with more fans you need better players, better sponsors, better coaches and, especially, better marketing.

It was something special for this city to have a complete HD screen, a halftime show, an original band to play while people were arriving to the stadium and a professional announcer.

The Argentine league needs more clubs like Obras. Even if some teams are small and they struggle to hire a good roster, marketing is important.

Marketing is what attracts people, TV and sponsors, which of course allow the club to hire better players. All together, you have a great show and more money in their accounts.

Of course Peñarol and many other teams give a better show than Obras, but the thing we are trying to emphasise is how Obras is trying to improve.

Obras can win or lose this year’s championship but David can’t lose the new idea of bringing marketing to the national league. The same league that is about to miss the opportunity to take real profit from the best national team in the country’s history and the same league that was an example to other leagues in the region and to other sports in the country.

We now hope they continue these ideas with investments.

The league has good players as many came back to Argentina after playing in Europe and the NBA. Now it’s time for the second step: promote them. Obras or David is just a little example.

Martín Seldes

FIBA

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