Host John Jonas (episode 146) argues that basketball is culturally bigger than boxing in the Philippines. He contrasts boxing’s fame (e.g., Manny Pacquiao) with basketball’s pervasiveness: every school and many barangays have courts and teams, improvised play is common, the professional PBA has existed ~50 years with millions of fans, and tournaments (UAAP/NCAA) draw national fervor comparable to March Madness. Jonas also notes basketball’s social mobility effects—players can parlay fame into politics, acting, or business (example: Robert Jaworski became a senator).
Chapters
Welcome to the Secret Sauce of Outsourcing podcast that's dedicated to making you better at outsourcing to the Philippines. This is episode 146. Basketball is bigger than boxing in the Philippines. So this is a fun one because I learned some stuff as as we did this. A lot of people know that boxing is really big in the Philippines because of Manny Pacquiao. He is a national hero. People love him. There are boxing gyms all over the place in the Philippines. It's a really big sport. When, when Manny fights, the crime rate in the Philippines virtually drop zero because everyone pays attention. However, bigger than boxing is basketball. So how big is basketball? Well, my OFS say that every school has a basketball court and a basketball team. When you go to school in the Philippines, you will learn basketball whether you like it or not, which is really interesting. Every barangay which is a neighborhood in the Philippines has a basketball court, at least one basketball court. They make a basketball. They can make a basketball court out of any amount of space or any. Wherever it is, it doesn't matter how big or small it is, they will use whatever ball they can find. They've been known to use coconuts as the ball for playing basketball. The Philippines has a professional basketball league, the Philippine Basketball association, the pba, that has millions of fans and has been around for about 50 years. If you think like that, we go crazy with March Madness. It's the same thing in the Philippines when they have their UAAP or NCAA tournament, their Filipino version of it. In the Philippines, the NBA finals draws the same amount of excitement as like the super bowl does here. NBA finals are big here too, but it's bigger there. Basketball is so big that it, I mean it changes lives. And this is, this is interesting. So if you can play professional basketball, you can then have a career in politics, acting, business, there's all kinds of stuff. So like hopefully you can. If you're on YouTube, you get this picture of Robert Jaworski, who was a professional basketball player who then became a senator in the Philippines. So if you're on YouTube, hopefully you can see this picture of Robert Jaworski who was a professional basketball player in the Philippines. He had a good career. After his career he then ran and successfully won a senate seat and co wrote like 300 bills in his six year term. He was a pretty influential senator and that's because of his basketball career. If you're in government and you want to score points with your constituents, what do you do? You sponsor a basketball league, you build a basketball court as a form of public service. We've even seen people put basketball things on their profiles on onlinejobs. Ph. Like, here's this one that I that I found that says his experience is mechanical engineer, data entry, virtual assistant, sketchup, and NBA analyst. NBA analyst, meaning he loves the NBA and he has analyzed all kinds of data about it. He hadn't had a job as an NBA analyst, but he's going to put that on his profile because he loves basketball. The only reason I know about this whole thing is because Julia brought it up to me. And she learned basketball in school. She learned to play. She watched games growing up. Her husband loves it. Julia passes a basketball court every time she goes. She leaves her house and she hates basketball. But it's part of their culture and it's part of their life and just something interesting to know. So I was interested when we were in Europe to realize, you know, in France and Germany, they love soccer. Everyone knows that they love soccer, and they're really good at it. Did you also know that they love cycling? Now, I had an idea, because I'm a cyclist, right? We ride our bikes. We went there to ride our bikes. I didn't know how deep it was, though. Like, half of people in Europe ride their bikes, ride their daily, like, transportation or exercise or whatever. Like, half of people do it, which is. Man, in the US we are so dang lazy. That was an interesting thing. Yes, they love soccer, but cycling is almost just as big as soccer. There.
