ABL to Air on ABS-CBN S+A Starting This Week

Games of the Alab Pilipinas team will now air on ABS-CBN S+A, thanks to a new deal that gave the latter the broadcast rights to the ASEAN Basketball League. (Photo credit: Philippine Daily Inquirer)

Add the ASEAN Basketball League to ABS-CBN Sports’ growing portfolio.

Beginning this Sunday, November 27, games of the upcoming ABL season will air on S+A channel 23 and on ABS-CBN Sports’ official website. The broadcasts will include all home games of the Alab Pilipinas team, as well as a select number of contests.

The ASEAN Basketball League will enter its seventh season of operation. While the league traditionally consists of teams based in Southeast Asian countries, two East Asia-based clubs will join the ABL this season.

The two clubs in question are the Hong Kong Eastern Long Lions and the Kaohsiung Truth. They will join the aforementioned Alab Pilipinas club, along with holdovers Saigon Heat, Westports Malaysia Dragons and the Singapore Slingers.

The history of the ABL in the Philippines has been influential and controversial, with one season featuring no Filipino representative. Twice a Filipino club won the ABL championship (2009-10 Philippine Patriots and 2013 San Miguel Beermen), while one other team (2015-16 Pilipinas MX3 Kings) managed to survive only one season due to mismanagement.

The league also saw some Filipino and Fil-foreign players suit up as imports for other teams, mainly to influence and guide local talent. And last season, current Phoenix Fuel Masters head coach Ariel Vanguardia won the ABL championship with the Westports Malaysia Dragons.

Despite that, the ABL remains a league that is not necessarily known to the average Filipino. Local television coverage of the league has been spotty, with networks such as ESPN Star Sports (later FOX Sports Asia), PTV-4, TV5 and Solar Sports providing only a season’s worth of ABL broadcasts.

That said, the deal with ABS-CBN Sports should give the ABL even greater exposure than before. With the former’s vast broadcast range and up-to-date facilities, it should help the ABL reach out further to every Filipino household.

Let’s just hope that the relationship between the ABL and ABS-CBN Sports will last longer than one season, provided that the Philippines will continue its representation. As for Alab Pilipinas, good luck.

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With NCAA Out, TV5 Focuses on International Multi-Sport Events

Coverage of the 2015 Southeast Asian Games will be held exclusively by Sports5. (Photo credit: Interaksyon.com)

The loss of NCAA rights did not stop TV5 from pursuing other sporting events.

Starting today, TV5’s family of channels will have a live and exclusive coverage of the 2015 Southeast Asian Games in Singapore. The SEA Games will be aired on three different platforms: VHF channel TV5, UHF channel AksyonTV 41 and livestreaming site Sports5.ph.

A majority of the coverage will be dedicated to the Philippine national teams, with major focus on the country’s basketball, volleyball and football teams. Sports5 will also provide highlights to the country’s other teams, such as athletics, boxing and swimming.

While the opening ceremonies will take place on June 5, preliminaries of events such as football, netball and table tennis will get underway today. Both the opening and closing ceremonies will take place at the Singapore National Stadium, which will also host the athletics and football events.

In the previous SEA Games at Myanmar two years ago, the Philippines endured its worst performance of the event, finishing a paltry seventh in the medal round. Much of the blame is centered on Myanmar’s inclusion of indigenous sports in lieu of other well-known disciplines, forcing the country to send a smaller-than-expected delegation.

The poor performance of the country was further justified by the lack of extensive coverage by previous coveror ABS-CBN Sports (via Studio 23), who only covered basketball, football and boxing. The reluctance and eventual unwillingness of ABS-CBN Sports to extensively cover the event marked the low point of the SEA Games on Philippine television.

With ABS-CBN Sports now focusing more on college sports such as the UAAP and the recently-acquired NCAA, TV5 decided to further its portfolio towards international multi-sporting events. And the SEA Games became their latest coup.

The acquisition of the SEA Games, along with prior additions such as the Olympics and the Asian Games, gave Sports5 the three most important events in the calendar of the Philippine Olympic Committee. Not since the early 2000s had the rights to these three events belonged to one network.

That said, it is now up to TV5 to bring back a sense of pride and honor to the Filipino athlete. This year’s SEA Games should be a proving ground for the Philippines to regain its place among Southeast Asia’s best.

The 2015 Southeast Asian Games in Singapore will be held from June 5-16.

‘It Takes Gutz to be a Gutierrez’ Heads to TV5

A ratings hit on E!, ‘It Takes Gutz to be a Gutierrez’ will now cross over to free TV, as TV5 picked up the series starting this July.

The highly-rated E! reality show ‘It Takes Gutz to be a Gutierrez’ is now headed to a bigger audience.

TV5 has announced that the series starring the Gutierrez family will premiere this July 5. ‘It Takes Gutz to be a Gutierrez’ will replace ‘Celebrity Dance Battle’, whose final episode will air tomorrow.

The series will showcase the personal, business and family lives of siblings Richard, Raymond and Ruffa Gutierrez, along with their parents Eddie Gutierrez and Annabelle Rama. It will also feature guest appearances from the other members of the Gutierrez family, as well as celebrity friends and staff.

‘It Takes Gutz to be a Gutierrez’ has been a ratings hit for E!. The reality series broke the network’s ratings records, not only in the Philippines, but also in Southeast Asia. It was also a hit in social media, particularly when Richard introduced audiences to Zion, his son with girlfriend Sarah Lahbati.

The free TV premiere of ‘It Takes Gutz to be a Gutierrez’ is only one of several programming changes that TV5 will implement this July. New seasons of ‘Face the People’, ‘Let’s Ask Pilipinas’ and ‘Talentadong Pinoy’ will also premiere, albeit with new hosts, while new programs ‘Trenderas’ and ‘Quiet Please’ will also join the network’s revamped lineup.

It should be an interesting quarter of change for the Kapatid network, beginning with the clan dubbed as the ‘Asian Kardashians’.