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This paper examines the US National Basketball Association's choice of South Africa as the primary location for its 'Basketball Without Borders' camp, with the long-term future of basketball in Africa in mind. It explores the associated basketball and community outreach activities of the camp and analyses whether the NBA is meeting its objectives for development of the sport.

This chapter undertakes a comparison of pay in women's basketball with an emphasis on its inception in North America. Through a quantitative approach, we find players are undervalued in the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) compared to men's basketball, men's soccer, and women's basketball in Europe and Asia. By comparing leagues at the same period in their life cycles, we show that women are underpaid even after accounting for the age of the league. The relatively low pay in the WNBA, even when compared to the identical formative time period in the men's professional league, led 48% of American WNBA players to seek employment in basketball leagues in Europe and Asia in 2019. In these leagues, players receive much higher salaries. We explain these wage inequities based on business structure and economic theory. In sum, both the WNBA and National Basketball Association (NBA) are primarily profit-maximising leagues, but NBA players have always been paid a higher percentage of league revenues than the women of the WNBA. This was even true when the NBA had a much lower level of revenue. Salaries in the WNBA are then further depressed by a league that seems to prioritise short-run profit maximisation over long-run investment, thus continuing to delegitimise the WNBA. Ultimately, the constraints to pay derive from not only gendered systems but also the structure of profit-maximising leagues and teams in the United States.

Empirical studies reveal Black male student-athletes have both positive and negative experiences on predominantly White college and university campuses. Mindful also of race-based stereotypic beliefs about Black male student-athletes in collegiate sports, these phenomena warrant further discourse and scrutiny. Critical race theory is a race-centered theoretical and analytical framework that has shaped discourse on race and racism in intercollegiate athletics in recent years. Discourse in this chapter is therefore grounded in the narrative of critical race theory and focuses primarily on the academic and athletic plight of Black male student-athletes matriculating at predominantly White colleges and universities with National Collegiate Athletic Association affiliation.

Building upon the framework of glocalization, the purpose of this paper is to summarize the development of National Basketball Association (NBA) in Chinese market, explore its successful and unsuccessful places, and propose strategies of glocalization for the NBA as well as other overseas sport leagues.

The current case study was organized by summarizing the developmental history of NBA in China, analyzing its current promotional practices, investigating into its marketing strategies, and extrapolating practical references for other sport leagues aiming to penetrating into the Chinese marketplace.

The current case study concluded that when facing the current challenges, the NBA needs to bring authentic American cultural commodities while adding Chinese characteristics to accommodate local fans. Meanwhile, the NBA management needs to continue seeking ways to work out and through the differences in government models and cultural contexts between China and USA. In addition, this study suggested that the research framework of glocalization would be an ever intriguing inquiry needed for other sport organizations or leagues seeking expansion to overseas markets.

A thorough case study with the NBA that has achieved huge successes in Chinese markets will provide valuable implications for sport leagues to broaden their overseas markets.

The purpose of this exploratory study was to identify those corporate sales activities that lead to teams' higher rates of retention of corporate customers. Twenty-two of 29 National Basketball Association (NBA) teams participated. Teams were categorized based on their success at retaining corporate customers for the three-season period 1998-99 to 2000-01. Key conclusions that led to higher rates of customer retention were: 1) teams having total control over the sale of corporate inventory; 2) corporate sales staff training; and 3) teams understanding that customers needed assistance in the activation of sponsorship programs.

Since the appearance of Simon Rottenberg's seminal paper on the baseball players' labour market in the Journal of Political Economy (1956), the literature on the economics of professional team sports has increased rapidly, fuelled by major changes in the restrictive rules which had pervaded these sports, themselves a consequence of battles in the courts and the collective bargaining arena. These changes have not been limited to North America, to which most of the literature relates, but also apply to Western Europe and Australia in particular. This monograph surveys this literature covering those various parts of the world in order to draw out both theoretical and empirical aspects. However, to argue that the existence of what is now an extensive literature “justifies” such a survey on professional team sports clearly begs a number of questions. Justification can be found in at least two major aspects.

This chapter deconstructs the carefully crafted marketing rollout of the US-based Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) in 1997, which was presented as the biggest launch in women's sports history. Through a textual and rhetorical analysis, this chapter argues that the WNBA and its corporate partners – through the bundling of distribution channels, sponsorships, and advertising strategies – created three distinct, and at times ideologically conflicting, images of the league: the WNBA as valid capitalistic enterprise, the WNBA as a masculine validation of female athleticism, and the WNBA as a symbolic moment in the political struggle of women for equality. Yet, while this initial, fractured marketing of the league provided a space for cultivating a challenge to dominant gender politics, this space was ultimately restricted to white, heterosexual conceptions of women as the league's array of marketing strategies were unified in reproducing regressive representations of race and sexuality that animate contemporary US sports. However, in institutionally maintaining this narrow, limited space for challenge and protest against inequality, the WNBA nonetheless sanctioned the league as one where players could still fight against injustice. Ultimately, this space would provide a platform for WNBA athletes to enact pioneering challenges against police brutality and racial injustice that would contradict the league's strategic aims.

Previous studies focused predominantly on wage dispersion within men’ sports teams. This study aims to reveal how the relationship between wage dispersion and team performance applies for women’s sport.

The sample comprises 168 observations of four consecutive National Basketball Association (NBA) and Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) regular seasons (2018–2021). Eight econometric models are performed for comparing the leagues.

The findings indicate that the wage dispersion within the squads affects the women’s and men’s basketball teams differently. Cohesiveness theory is applicable for WNBA teams, while NBA teams follow the tournament theory.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper which inspects the relationship between wage dispersion and team performance using data from women’s sports. Further research may examine whether the differences found in sports also apply in different labor markets.

The purpose of this paper is to use Twitter data to mine personality traits of basketball players to predict their performance in the National Basketball Association (NBA).

Automated personality mining and robotic process automation were used to gather data (player statistics and big five personality traits) of n = 185 professional basketball players. Correlation analysis and multiple linear regressions were computed to predict the performance of their NBA careers based on previous college performance and personality traits.

Automated personality mining of Tweets can be used to gather additional information about basketball players. Extraversion, agreeableness and conscientiousness correlate with basketball performance and can be used, in combination with previous game statistics, to predict future performance.

The study presents a novel approach to use automated personality mining of Twitter data as a predictor for future basketball performance. The contribution advances the understanding of the importance of personality for sports performance and the use of cognitive systems (automated personality mining) and the social media data for predictions. Scouts can use our findings to enhance their recruiting criteria in a multi-million dollar business, such as the NBA.