The Bizarre Chaos of Taiwanese Pro Basketball League in 2020
As I wrote in May 2020 <Why Taiwanese Basketball Professional Leagues Are Collapsing?>, things have changed dramatically since then. Since SBL(Super Basketball League) was cut almost half now (in a total of 4 teams), a new league named Plus League (P.League+) has risen to become the biggest rivalry of the SBL. What is this new P.League+ coming from?
P.League+ consists of 4 teams. Two teams are former ABL teams(Fubon Braves and Changhua Formosa Dreamers), and the other two teams are entirely new (Hsin Chu Lioneers and Taoyuan Pilots). To be fair, the Pilots are owned by Pauian Archiland, so I wouldn’t say it’s a “brand new” team because the company has a team playing in SBL for a long time.
The biggest difference between the two leagues is definitely marketing strategy. P.League+ requires each team to have their own home court and a marketing team with at least twenty people. This rule was set because they knew SBL changes their marketing team EVERY SINGLE YEAR, and some teams don’t have their media/marketing team. Yes, you heard me. So, what does that thing makes a league difficult to promote itself? It makes fans unable to track everything around the league. Sometimes fans were even noticed when the SBL season started, and it is also making fans change platforms when SBL changed their marketing strategy company every year.
P.League+ just played their first season so far(still in the mid-season), and there is an average of 5000~6000 attendants per game. Is it a burst in a glimpse, or is it a flame that will soon be blown out by breeze? We will have to wait and see, but I will make a bold guess here: P.League+ is going to lose media focus and their fanbase in the next five years, and the fifth or sixth season is going to determine whether P.League+ is going to last a decade or shut down by then. I am saying this because people have to look back the history and know that Rome wasn’t built or demolished in a day, so was SBL or P.League+. The first five seasons of SBL look incredible; the tickets were sold out, and the fans were squeezing themselves to get into Taipei Stadium to watch these basketball stars. After that season, some Taiwanese players decided to transfer to CBA(China Basketball Association) because of higher wages. Suddenly, people were not coming back to the stadium to watch SBL anymore, and it seemed like these fans just vanished.
From my perspective, most Taiwanese fans were too optimistic about the P.League+and too pessimistic about the SBL. I am not saying the SBL is making a huge comeback and bring local basketball fans' attention. However, if the CEO of P.League+, Blackie Chen, is looking at a bigger picture and blueprinting this masterplan, he needs to absorb the SBL teams somehow and not causing conflicts like he is doing at the moment. For those who don’t know, P.League+ has already argued that their players won’t corporate with the Chinese Taipei Basketball Association to join the national team and play for Asian Cup 2021. The local basketball fans are sick of these conflicts, and they are losing their attention on P.League+ because these kinds of news weren’t even related to basketball itself. In conclusion, the current situation of P.League+ isn’t Blackie Chen or any basketball fan want. The best is yet to come, but things about Taiwan basketball need to be reorganized.
