Basketball fans vs Volleyball crowd

OVER the past few years, probably last decade, sports enthusiast, experts, society analists and fans have notice and witness a declined of one sport’ s in terms of attendance at the venue and the raise of another, into a superstar status and even catapulted itself as alternative or perhaps rival?

The two sports I’m referring are basketball. The sport regarded by every Filipinos as sacred and the national passion since we learned it from the Americans before the outbreak of the second World War and first played it competitively during the 1932 Berlin Olympics. Volleyball, on the hand, was first played during 1913 Far Eastern Games (later known as the South East Asian Games held in Manila and

Volleyball, regarded by Filipino male, then, as a sport devoted for women, not until in late 60’s or early 70’s, US Navy enlisted personnel played it on the sandy beaches of California, on a two-on-two matchup, which drew interest of the other Naval servicemen and had grown popularity through the years.

With that little bit of history I’ve shared. Now let's delve into the brief contrast of basketball and volleyball. The Philippine Basketball Association (PBA), is regarded as Asia’s professional league founded in 1975 that overrun and took over the popularity of the defunct Manila Inter-Commercial Athletics Association (MICAA), after all its member teams withdrew their support from the, governing body Basketball Association (BAP) and joined the PBA.

With its superstars led by the legend himself Robert “Sonny” Jaworski et.al… had made the PBA and basketball a truly national passion as popular of what it is today, being by younger generations and aspiring players seeing the league as their future. Other superstar players' emergence through years with the likes of Atoy Co, Ramon Fernandez, Philip Cesar, Francis Arnais, Manny Paner, Frankie Lim, Benjie Paras, Jojo Lastimosa, Alvin Patrimonio,Allan Caidic ,the late Samboy Lim and among others.

As the PBA enjoying its popularity at the “Top of the World”, for almost five decades now, But just recently Asia’s first “Play-for-Pay” hoop, is currently experiencing a down trend in all aspect. Affecting, attendance, gate receipts, viewership in the free-tv channels, quality players and most of all, higher pay.

Sports analyst, bloggers, and the likes pointed out several factors that resulted the PBA’s all time declined in attendance at the venue is primarily the rush-hour traffic leading to the game, the wide range of accessibility of social media platform, which fans can watch the games right at the comfort of their homes, computer laptops, ipad or tablet. and the emergence of other Asian league rivals, such as the Japan B-league, Korean Basketball League, Chinese Basketball League, Taiwan League and Australia’s National Basketball League.

Those leagues were confirmed and reported they offer higher pay even triple the amount any team in the PBA offer. as this was even affirmed by Commissioner Willy Marcial, in a Senate Committee hearing, saying that with that huge amount, the PBA can not compete with that. And because of these skyhigh salary cap, PBA lost its grip or lure the current crop of young talents instead went overseas to play overseas.

In contrast, volleyball started out from a humble beginning. playing in a semi-professional format under the former governing body, Philippine Amateur Volleyball Association (PAVA), bankrolled by former congressman Cocoy Chavez and the league on a three conference tournament, off school calendar season, since most of the teams and players are all college and university based.

Unlike the PBA, which gained outright venue attendance and followings during its first few months, women’s volleyball teams were being marketed as main selling point of the league, than their men counterparts. Games are played smaller venues like the Ninoy Aquino Stadium, within the confine of the historic Rizal Memorial Sports Complex and the iconic Rizal Memorial Coliseum. Attendance couldn’t even gather number more a thousand spectators.

On game days, games of the said venue were widely opened, as tickets were only sold by by handful of spectators, bought the players’ friends, family relatives and respective boyfriend and girlfriends. The ticket were price at the lowest price you could imagine.

After that struggling years, volleyball took a drastic turn over the last four years, the young and innovative and idealistic leadership of Ramon “Tats” Suzara, took the ruins of his predecessors, he took PAVA ( now as Philippine National Volleyball Federation) to level respect and recognition by initiating changes in the training the players, providing them with better international exposure and incentives.

And Tats was on track of his vision to make the national volley belles competitive like in the just concluded Asian Volleyball Confederation (AVC) held at the newly refurbished Rizal Coliseum, which packed up to the rafters, the women national team, known as Alas Pilipinas, earned a first-ever podium finished in the tournament by beating Australia for the bronze medal.

With these triumph, all member includes three pool players, Alas Pilipinas were gifted with P200,000 bonus incentive as promised by Senator Bong Go, who is the chairman on Senate-committee on Youth and Sports. The said incentives will channelled through Philippine Sports Commission (PSC) chaired by Dickie Bachmann.