Great Fiba Asia hosting job for PH

The 27TH Fiba Asia Championship has been a success hosting-wise and top officials in the region are happy with it.

In fact, the next Fiba Asia event slated for 2015 as the qualifying round for the Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, Olympics the following year is another tournament which the Philippines can host.

“Where else can you get 15,000 people to watch the game every night?” one Fiba-Asia official, who asked not to be named, told the Inquirer.

The biggest crowd to watch a game came in the first round of the preliminaries on Friday when Gilas Pilipinas played Jordan in front of close to 20,000 screaming souls.

Fiba Asia also dictates ticket prizes, which have skyrocketed for the KO stages as VIP tickets in the sky lounges are selling for P9,838 a pop and lower box tickets go for P1,500 each. General admission tickets are being sold for P150.

The Mall of Asia Arena is also making a killing at the tills and it could gross around P12 million a day in the last three days of the knockout phase from around P9 million a day in the preliminary round.