‘India is NBA’s fastest growing biz in Asia’

MUMBAI: Increasing popularity of basketball in India, coupled with the success of Satnam Singh and Sim Bhullar, has made the National Basketball Association ( NBA) see a bigger opportunity in the country. The premier men’s professional basketball league in North America has decided that it is time that the India business report directly to the association’s deputy commissioner.

“Since our launch of the Mumbai office in 2011, our India business has been reporting to Asia. We have seen that India has now become a big market and it should not report to the rest of Asia, but directly to the deputy commissioner in New York. We made this decision 45 days ago,” Mark Tatum, NBA’s deputy commissioner and chief operating officer, told ET.

India is NBA’s fastest- growing business is Asia, he said. “It is one of the youngest markets as we have been here for just five years.” While Tatum refused to share details on investments, he said India is a huge priority market for the NBA and it will “continue to make multimillion dollar investments in this marketplace to grow the game of basketball”.