A Sincere Plea - PBA Website Total Fail
Now that a worthy TV partner has finally snagged the broadcast rights to the Philippine Basketball Association, I can only hope and pray that the PBA finds the decency to overhaul their pathetic excuse for a website. How bad is it? Anytime you litter the website of Asia’s longest running pay-for-play league with Adsense, you know there is something wrong. More crap here and here. It is that bad.
Give the site to Solar Entertainment? The BTV site also needs a lot of work, but at least it doesn’t look like it was designed on Microsoft Word. In fairness to their capabilities, aside from a few articles by some notable people in Solar Sports, it’s obvious that the site’s main function is to provide programming schedules only.
Judging from their coverage of the PBA draft, I am very optimistic that it’s only a matter of time before they do a People’s elbow on the league’s official website.
The next step I think, would be for Solar Sports to rehash all that content and make a new website out of it. If (and when) someone from Solar and the PBA finally agrees with me, this is what should happen.
- Get rid of solar-entertainment.com and btv.com.ph, and pimp the hell out of solarsports.ph. What did not work for Solar Sports Desk, has a good chance of working for an online portal.
- Fantasy Basketball baby. This right here is a decent effort, but just lacks the engagement I would expect from an online fantasy game. I know there’s a lot of back end work, but PBA Fantasy Basketball can be done. I’m excited to pick Kelly Williams, Arwind Santos, or Gabe Norwood for this already.
- Real-time stats please. If I’m goofing off at work, and want to follow the game online, that would really be great. People will come back and raise your page hits like crazy.
I say all of this because I know that a local basketball show will never ever survive. There’s not much that goes on in the PBA (and Philippine basketball for that matter), to sustain a weekly show.
And as much as I still believe that Studio 23 would have had an easier time bringing back the Philippine Basketball Association to the masses (Caguioa and Helterbrand in Singing Bee would have been great), I do have faith that Solar Sports will do good as well. With PBA and NBA coverage in their back pocket, they have a lot going for them. Take a page out of Gameface.ph’s is this good, you can definitely do a lot better.
What are you waiting for?
As much as I agree with you that the PBA would have done better with ABS-CBN, the network’s management wanted to control the PBA on its own terms, including scheduling one Sunday morning game at 10:30 before ASAP, the network’s noontime variety show.
In addition, not too many people watch Studio 23 because it’s not seen in many provinces who don’t have cable TV. If the games were to be aired on Channel 2 on the PBA’s current time slots, many shows would have been affected, most especially their telenovelas and TV Patrol.
As for the PBA website, I agree with you that it’s poorly maintained. There are times when its download is too slow.
The Solar and BTV websites are also not updated. I hope both parties get a good website operator to make them fully functional.
i agree. even the kings website is down.
i just voted for u. exchange votes tayo kasi nominated din ako sa isang contest. ill vote for u everyday.
my utmost concern right now is the coverage of RPN9 here in our area… i have been a good follower of PBA since the entry of Purefoods team in the league… the poor reception of channel 9 since its first viewing of PBA made me pissed off… worst it goes out of air for about two weeks or more. Poor PBA, they transfer to a channel who cant have a good reception for the viewing public. To RPN9 please correct your problem with your station here in Cebu before the start of the playoff.