SportBusiness.com

The contract involves a A$3.5million ($1.8m/?2m) up-front payment by Sportsworld for 15 percent equity in the league and a reported A$25-A$30m ($13.3m/?14.5m) incentive-based guarantee from the company over ten years.
The deal was finally agreed only moments before an announcement in Sydney when the NBL clubs voted 11-0.
The league is also keen to find sponsorship and free-to-air television deals ? the new partner's responsibility ? before the season starts on October 11.
The Sportsworld contract, however, is seen as a way of adding muscle to the NBL's push for sponsorship dollars and commercial coverage in the long term.
There is a mutual review clause that takes effect halfway through the ten-year deal, and Sportsworld can sell off its equity to a buyer which the league approves of. But the partners say that is a pre-nuptial agreement and Sportsworld chief executive Mike Gower added that there were "three-and-a-half-million reasons to make basketball work".
Gower described the sport as the mother of youth sports that Sportsworld, a young cashed-up company based in London but with offices worldwide, has made its own: triathlon, surfing and extreme sports.
Its aim, naturally embraced by the NBL, is to make men's basketball what it calls a tier-one sport.
The NBL's chairman, John Harvey, described the deal as the next wave in the growth of men's basketball in Australia. He said Sportsworld paying A$3.5m for 15 percent valued the league at more than A$23m ($12.2m/?13.4m).
The deal involves all sponsorship, endorsement, television and marketing rights being taken over by the company, which will attempt to recover its money from sales in those areas.
In addition to its 15 percent ownership, Sportsworld gets one seat on the eight-member board.
Mitsubishi, which pumped about A$30m ($16m/?17.5m) into basketball over a decade without taking any ownership, quit at the end of last season.