PBA secures partnership with East Asia Super League (EASL)

By Leobert Julian A. de la Peña

The Philippine Basketball Association (PBA) bared its plans of going global after inking a partnership deal with the East Asia Super League (EASL).

Earning its moniker as the “best league in Asia”, the PBA aims to improve more and just became EASL’s newest member.

With the partnership now a done-deal, the Philippines is now a part of the growing EASL family together with Japan, China, Taiwan, and Korea.

“When we do have stronger ties there, we will be able to see to it that we respect each other’s rights in terms of movements of players. We will have better coordination in terms of movements of players,” said PBA chairman Ricky Vargas during the Philippine Sportswriters Association online forum.

The PBA is no stranger to the EASL before and participated during the last legs of the tournament with San Miguel, TNT, NLEX, and Blackwater as their representatives a few years ago.

For Vargas, this is just the first step for their ultimate goal of going global, adding that the EASL is already planning to stage a tournament that will be joined by their member countries.

“The reason we also joined that is we also wanted to show that we are the best league in Asia. It will be good for us to show that the PBA is alive and the PBA is competitive in a league such as that,” shared Vargas.