Dubai: While America's Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) and England's Anglo-Welsh Rugby Cup have both outsourced themselves to the UAE in recent months to break into Asian markets or raise foreign fanbases, Philippines' Basketball, instead, is in Dubai for love not money, according to PBA commissioner Chito Salud. Three PBA sides are in Dubai ahead of this weekend's Governors Cup preliminaries to be contested at Al Shabab Club. It's the third such occasion a PBA team has played in the UAE, the first being in 2007, long before the English Premier League even talked about staging games abroad.
Salud explained about playing in Dubai: "In terms of earning a profit it doesn't make that much sense. We could easily make $40,000 (Dh147,000) from these two games if we were to stage them in Manila. Out of respect, love and affection for our fellow countrymen and women, I won't disclose how much we make from staging these games in Dubai — but its not a profit.
"We are reaching out to our Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) because we feel we owe a debt of gratitude to our fans."
Asked if it was a case of tapping the sport into different markets like UFC and English Rugby was attempting with their Abu Dhabi experiment, Salud said: "Not at this time. Within our region where there are areas of high OFW's populace — that's where Filipino basketball has a strong market and is a good product to sell. Outside of that we don't really make it a priority."
