MUMBAI: The National Basketball Association (NBA) and Sports Marketing Japan will provide basketball fans in Japan with daily video highlights to their mobile phones.
This marks the first time that a US sports league will provide video highlights to wireless phones in Japan. In India, viewers can catch NBA action on Star Sports.
The agreement also furthers the NBAs leadership in delivering its content to fans around the world in fresh and innovative ways.
The NBA will continue to engage its growing Asian fan base by providing video highlights beginning at the start of the 2005-06 NBA season for users of NTT DoCoMo i-mode, KDDI Ezweb, and Vodafone Vodafone live!. Highlights will continue throughout the season and will also include footage from NBA All-Star, the Playoffs and The Finals. In addition to video footage, fans will receive NBA news, scores, special columns and information about Japanese players. Fans will also be able to decorate their screen with NBA wallpaper and use NBA-related ringtones.
Sports Marketing Japan MD, Kenneth Berger says, With the NBAs tremendous fan base in Japan, we are confident that the ability to experience the worlds best basketball on a mobile phone will be very popular in a country well-known for their consumption of cutting edge technology .
NBA Japan MD, Hideki Hayashi says, From playing regular season games in Japan to our NBA.com/japan web site, we have made a commitment to provide our Japanese fans with every opportunity to enjoy the NBA on their terms. By teaming with an innovative company like SMJ, we are continuing to provide our fans in Japan with an NBA experience that is customized to their language and culture
NBA adds that it was the first sports league to deliver video highlights to mobile phone users in the US and the first US sports league to deliver video highlights to mobile phone users in China. The NBA has held season opening games six times in Japan since 1990, the most recent being the 2003-04 season opener between the Los Angeles Clippers and Seattle Supersonics.
