Toronto host NBA all star game tomorrow

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NBA All-Star Weekend 2016 Invades Toronto

The National Basketball Association’s global invasion is entering its next phase. This weekend’s 2016 NBA All-Star Weekend festivities in Toronto will mark the first time the league has held its annual showcase event in a city located outside the United States – a crucial development for a league increasingly fixated on expanding its business overseas.


Like the National Football League and Major League Baseball, the NBA has been aggressive in efforts to reach new fans around the world. The league has used internationally-focused events to access untapped markets in China, Africa and several other countries. Global outreach helped drive league revenue to more than $5 billion in 2015, according to Forbes. By holding one of its flagship events outside of America’s borders, the NBA is sending a clear signal that international expansion isn’t just a gimmick – it’s an ongoing marketing strategy.

Toronto was a natural choice to host the first-ever international NBA All-Star Game, given the league’s strong presence in Canada. TV viewership of NBA games has doubled in Canada over the last three seasons. A total of 12 Canadian-born players were included on opening-night rosters this season, more than any other country in the world. And the once-woeful Toronto Raptors have become one of the league’s most popular teams, thanks in part to rapper and Toronto native Drake, the franchise’s “global ambassador.”

“The time was right to take it to Toronto,” Dan MacKenzie, NBA Canada’s vice president and managing director, told FOXBusiness.com. “The [Toronto Raptors] had expressed interest. They’re one of the top teams in the league in terms of organizational capacity. Toronto’s just a fantastic city, it’s an international city. If you were going to have the first international All-Star Game, it just made sense to have it in Toronto.”

Planning for the 2016 NBA All-Star Weekend began more than three years ago, when Toronto beat out several other bidders for hosting rights. This year’s events will generate anywhere from $80 million to $100 million for the city of Toronto, MacKenzie said, citing various estimates.

Aside from the logistical challenges of coordinating a major sporting event on the other side of an international border, league officials faced another dilemma – how to turn the All-Star Game from a few isolated events in one Canadian city into a national affair that would create new international fans and attract local sponsors to the NBA’s product.

The NBA has enacted a three-fold strategy to build its brand north of the border: bring the courtside experience to uninitiated Canadians, increase basketball participation among the country’s youth, and capitalize on social media to drive fan engagement. It’s the same plan league officials have applied in other marketplaces, such as Europe and China.

Those efforts have already begun to pay off. The league’s base of 19 million Twitter (TWTR) followers includes more than 650,000 Canadians. Events such as the “NBA Canada Series,” which consisted of four preseason games, and the “Bell NBA All-Star Challenge,” which invited fans in 14 Canadian cities to participate in All-Star-themed events, have helped with fan engagement.

NBA Canada has gained six major sponsors in the last 18 months alone, including Air Miles and the Bank of Montreal (BOM).

“They’re not just extension of U.S. deals or global deals,” MacKenzie said. “They’re Canadian companies who are realizing that there’s a groundswell of fan interest here.”

But the business opportunities afforded by a successful All-Star Weekend aren’t limited to new sponsors. A strong showcase of the NBA’s best players and overall entertainment value on an international stage can attract the type of business leaders that drive a sports league’s expansion. Interest from billionaires like former Microsoft (MSFT) executive Steve Ballmer, who purchased the Los Angeles Clippers for $2 billion in 2014, can lift franchise values across the league.

“You want the wealthiest potential owners in the world interested in buying NBA teams. You’ve got some very wealthy billionaires in Canada, notably the people who own the Raptors,” said Rick Burton, former commissioner of Australia’s National Basketball League and a sports business expert at Syracuse University in New York. “You constantly want to know who’s out there with billions of dollars. Who’s the next Steve Ballmer? If he’s in Canada, you want to know about him and you want to entertain him at the game.”

If all goes well, the Toronto All-Star festivities may just be the beginning. Aside from exhibition contests in Africa, China and other foreign locations, the NBA has held several regular-season games at O2 Arena in London. The most recent game took place last month, when the Raptors traveled across the pond to face off against the Orlando Magic.

London is the logical choice for the NBA’s next international All-Star Game, according to Burton.

“It’s your jumping-off point for all of Europe. You could do Berlin, you could do Paris, and the NBA has played around in those cities before. But it’s always tied to the arena,” he said.

This weekend’s slate of action kicks off Friday from Toronto’s Air Canada Center at 7 p.m. ET on ESPN with the NBA All-Star Celebrity Game. The 2016 NBA All-Star Game tips off on Sunday at 8 p.m. ET on TNT.

www.foxbusiness.com/features/2016/02/12/nba-all-star-weekend-2016-invades-toronto.html

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Canada’s basketball rise hits a new peak with NBA All-Star Game

Toronto Raptors General Manager Masai Ujiri stood in the bowels of the Bell Centre in Montreal as roars from a capacity crowd a few hundred feet away drowned out his voice. But the boisterous fans were not there to watch the city’s beloved Canadiens; hockey, the sport synonymous with Canada, was absent on this night. They were there instead to watch the Raptors, the country’s only NBA team. Not only that, but it was late October, before the games even counted, and the Raptors were merely concluding their preseason schedule — which included stops in four Canadian cities — against the Washington Wizards.

“The support has really picked up,” Ujiri said. “There’s a strong following, and that’s why we’ve kind of traveled around the country. We hope to keep growing as a team, and I think you can see the support is growing around the country.”

Canada has a long basketball history. James Naismith hailed from Ontario and attended and taught at McGill University in Montreal before inventing the sport south of the border in 1891. The first NBA game, on Nov. 1, 1946, was played at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto between the Toronto Huskies and New York Knicks. And Steve Nash, raised in British Columbia, won two MVP awards with the Phoenix Suns, revolutionizing the point guard position in the mid-2000s.

But never before has Canadian basketball boomed like today. Twelve players from Canada are on NBA rosters, more than any country besides the United States, and all but one — Detroit Pistons center Joel Anthony — are younger than 27. The nation’s basketball moment comes this weekend, when Toronto will host the NBA’s first All-Star Game held outside the United States.

“It’s definitely evolved,” said Jamaal Magloire, a Toronto native and a 12-year NBA player . “It’s come a long way. It’s just totally taken off.”

Now a Raptors assistant coach, Magloire, 37, was a senior in high school when the Raptors, along with the Vancouver Grizzlies, joined the NBA as expansion franchises for the 1995-96 season. Basketball was prominent in Toronto before NBA, he said, but resources and facilities were scarce. He played outside in the dead of brutal winters. There wasn’t an AAU team in Toronto, so Magloire — a 6-foot-11 center — joined clubs in Buffalo and Seattle before he went on to the University of Kentucky. In 2004 he became the second Canadian, after Nash, to be named an NBA all-star.

Two decades later, basketball courts dot the city, Canada’s grassroots programs are flourishing, and there’s even a D-League team in the Toronto suburbs. An eight-team domestic pro league, the National Basketball League of Canada, was founded in 2011.

An influx of Canadian talent is entering the American college and professional ranks. The country produced consecutive No. 1 overall draft picks — Anthony Bennett and Andrew Wiggins — in 2013 and 2014 and 13 selections overall in the past five drafts. Jamal Murray, a 6-4 guard from Kitchener, Ontario, is averaging a team-high 18.5 points for No. 22 Kentucky as a freshman.

More top-flight prospects are projected to filter through the NCAA ranks, partly a product of immigration reform that allowed more than 2 million people to enter Canada between 1996 and 2006. More than 1 million immigrants settle in Canada every four years, and basketball trails only soccer in popularity among first-generation Canadian children, according to a 2014 study by Solutions Research Group, a Toronto-based consumer research firm. One of those new Canadians, Thon Maker, who grew up in Sudan and Australia, attends high school in Ontario and is among the most coveted prospects in the American college recruiting class of 2016.

The wave, Magloire says, traces back to the Raptors’ inception.

“The fact that the Raptors are here now in town, it’s just changed the whole dynamic of the game in Canada,” said Magloire, who didn’t attend a Raptors game until he played against them as a rookie with the Charlotte Hornets in 2000. “They had a tremendous impact. It gave all of us in the inner city hopes and aspirations of becoming a Toronto Raptor someday. Canadian basketball wouldn’t be like what it is without the Raptors.”

The Raptors became Canada’s lone NBA franchise when the Grizzlies moved to Memphis in 2001 and have executed a concerted effort to mobilize the country’s 35 million people behind them in recent years.

“It’s somewhat of an identity, being the only team outside of the United States,” said Ujiri, whose Raptors (35-17) sit in second place in the Eastern Conference and will have two players — DeMar DeRozan and Kyle Lowry — in Sunday’s All-Star Game. “Before, it was perceived more on the negative side, but the positive sides are coming out. It’s one team, one country, and that makes a difference.”

Raptors games are broadcast from coast to coast. In 2013, the team named hip-hop star Drake, a native of Toronto, as its global ambassador. In the spring of 2014, just before the start of the playoffs, the organization launched its “#WeTheNorth” social media campaign, targeting the entire country. The Raptors’ uniforms, redesigned before this season, no longer include the word Toronto; their dominant colors are red and white, after the national flag.

“We’re on the map with Canadians as Canada’s team,” said Shannon Hosford, vice president of marketing and communications for Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, the Raptors’ ownership group.

The Raptors, who have two Canadians on their roster, Bennett and one-year Texas Longhorn Cory Joseph, have held training camp and played preseason games across Canada with marketing and growth in mind. Last fall, they spent training camp more than 2,000 miles from Toronto, in Vancouver, and played their first preseason game there before holding exhibitions in Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal.

Youth participation in basketball is soaring, but hockey remains the sport ingrained in the Canadian identity, especially outside of the Toronto area. Mayaz Alam, a student at McGill and a rabid NBA fan who grew up in Vancouver, said his first basketball memories are of the end of the Grizzlies’ stay in Canada. Their departure, he believes, initially hurt basketball’s growth in the area because there wasn’t a team to follow, but Alam has noticed interest spike in recent years as Canadians infiltrate the NBA.


“During the FIBA Americas [Olympic qualifying] tournament last summer, when Canada went to the semis and were doing really well, you could feel sort of a palpable buzz,” said Alam, who attended the Raptors’ preseason game in Montreal. “Like, shoot, Canada is worth watching. There are players that are Canadian that are putting their stamp on the game. I think once guys like Wiggins hit their primes, you’ll start seeing people care about it more.”

This weekend, the country will have the opportunity to display its love for the sport when the NBA schedule comes to a halt and the league descends on Canada’s new basketball mecca.

“We all aspire to do well and take care of our country, and basketball is a means to that and we’re not taking that lightly,” Magloire said. “Toronto and Canada as a whole, the players, are taking it very seriously.”

www.washingtonpost.com/sports/wizards/canadas-basketball-rise-hits-a-new-peak-with-nba-all-star-game/2016/02/12/759d3014-d19a-11e5-88cd-753e80cd29ad_story.html

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One of Toronto's 2 all stars DeMar DeRozan plans to stay with the Raptors. Kyle Lowry the other all star resigned a before last season.

DeMar DeRozan planning to stick with Raptors

Eastern Conference All-Star guard DeMar DeRozan says it will be "pretty tough" for interested teams to steal him away from the Raptors in free agency this summer.

"My whole mindset has always been this is home for me," DeRozan said in an interview that will air in full on Saturday's Meet the All-Stars show on ESPN Radio at 5:30 p.m. "I never think otherwise unless it's brought up to me, or you see things, or people ask you about certain things.

"This has always been home to me. I took pride in putting on this Toronto Raptors jersey since I've been drafted here. And my whole goal was to get this team to the point where it is now. And I feel I've been a major key to that."

ESPN.com's Zach Lowe has reported that the Los Angeles Lakers, among other teams, are planning to offer DeRozan a maximum contract this summer once the Southern California native opts out of the final year of his current four-year, $40 million deal.

But Kyle Lowry, DeRozan's backcourt mate with the Raptors and fellow All-Star co-host this weekend, expressed confidence in his visit Thursday with NBA on ESPN Radio that Toronto can retain the seventh-year player.

"He will be a free agent," Lowry told ESPN Radio. "That's the best thing for him to do. And for me as a friend, as a friend, and what he did for me during my free agency, I'll do the same thing. I will just listen and sit back. I won't give him no advice, and I won't push him anywhere. Because, as a friend, friendship comes before basketball, and that's my guy.

"Wherever he makes a decision to go -- and I'm hoping it's back here, which I think it's gonna be -- I won't push him or persuade him or anything. I'll just say: 'Hey, listen, bro. I'm here to listen to you.'"

DeRozan, the No. 9 pick in the 2007 draft, is averaging a career-high 23.4 points per game as the Raptors entered the All-Star break placed second in the East, sitting three games behind the Cleveland Cavaliers at 35-17.

Sources tell ESPN.com that the Raptors, emboldened by that success after establishing themselves as the foremost challenger in the conference to the Cavaliers, have been active in assessing their trade options in advance of the Feb. 18 trade deadline as they search for an upgrade at power forward.

The Raptors, sources say, have had exploratory discussions to gauge the possibility of acquiring Denver's Kenneth Faried, Brooklyn's Thaddeus Young and the Phoenix duo of Markieff Morris and P.J. Tucker.

espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/14760444/demar-derozan-no-plans-leave-toronto-raptors-free-agency

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NBA all-star game in Toronto a ratings hit in Canada and the U.S.

The recent NBA all-star game at Toronto's Air Canada Centre was a ratings winner on both sides of the border.
The West's 196-173 victory over the East was the most-viewed NBA all-star game in Canada since 1996. A total of 3.1 million unique viewers in Canada watched the TSN and Sportsnet simulcast of the Turner Sports broadcast, the NBA said Wednesday in a release.
The mid-season showcase delivered 7.6 million viewers in the United States, up six per cent from last year's game in New York. The 2016 game was the highest-scoring all-star game in NBA history.

A record 3.1 billion impressions and 453 million video views of NBA all-star content were generated across social platforms from Feb. 12-15, the league said.
There were 26.8 million video views for the NBA's video of highlights form the slam dunk competition, making it the most viewed NBA video ever on Facebook. In addition, a record 244 million video views were generated on NBA.com and the NBA App, doubling last year's totals.
It was the first time that the NBA all-star game was played in Toronto. The 2017 NBA all-star game will be played in Charlotte's Time Warner Cable Arena.

www.ctvnews.ca/sports/nba-all-star-game-in-toronto-a-ratings-hit-in-canada-and-the-u-s-1.2782289