PBA teams up with Tag Heuer
The Philippine Basketball Association and Tag Heuer formally announced its partnership in style at Privé Luxury Club at Bonifacio Global City in Taguig.
The PBA and Tag Heuer, one of the world’s finest luxury watchmakers, came together with big plans ahead as the Asia’s pioneering professional basketball league enters its second conference.
“It’s very exciting for us. First ever big partnership here in the Philippines for Tag Heuer, which is a very strong partnership in between us and the Philippine Basketball Association. We’ll become the official time keeper, official watch, official clock of the PBA. But not only are we partnering with the PBA, we are developing a further partnership with the draft,” said Romain Cans, sales director of Tag Heuer, during the league’s kickoff event Tuesday night. “I’m pretty excited about the new area that the PBA is developing today which is the 3-on-3 women’s championship in which we are going to be involved as well.”
“We share a lot of values together. We have this idea of pushing ourselves to the maximum, of challenging the boundaries.”
League commissioner Chito Narvasa believes what brought the PBA and Tag Heuer together is their high regard for excellence.
“We’re very happy to have Tag Heuer as our newest sponsor. I think it’s a good blend for us because we share a lot of values. One is excellence, really,” Narvasa said. “Tag Heuer, they look for world class athletes and hopefully that’s how they view the players in the PBA as world class athletes also. That’s the same direction that we’d like to get into.”
“I think that’s the expectation of Tag Heuer also – excellence in the games. If we’re able to do that, I think the fans are going to benefit from it because there will be better games and more exciting. So that’s what we aim to do for this season.”
The tie-up couldn’t have at a better time.
“Our motto is, ‘Don’t crack under pressure’ at Tag Heuer and I thought that was something alive in the championship. We saw it last week. It couldn’t have been better with the finals between San Miguel team coming over after losing 0-3 to Alaska,” Cans said, refering to the historic PBA Philippine Cup Finals. “If we think about the “don’t crack under pressure” moment, this was just perfect.”
“The PBA has made quite an impression on them. They saw the Game 7 in line with the ‘Don’t crack under pressure’ branding of Tag Heuer,” said Narvasa.
Tag Heuer is very much acquainted in the sporting world tapping renowned athletes in different fields — from tennis superstar Maria Sharapova to basketball hero Jeremy Lin and Formula One greats in Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton.
“They usually hire athletes to endorse their products and I think it also speaks very well of the PBA in the areas that it’s able to reach already now,” said Narvasa.
The Swiss brand sees its partnership with the PBA going a long way.
“It’s the beginning of a very long relationship we hope to have with the PBA. We started discussing just a few weeks ago and now we are here tonight celebrating this partnership so we’re discussing lots of different projects together and I’m sure the relationship we’re starting will be of high quality because we love the people at PBA, which is making this pretty exciting,” said Cans.
“That’s the first big partnership we’re signing here in the Philippines. We’re not signing for one year, we’re signing for three years. I’m sure we’re gonna be happy at the end of these set of conferences. It’s gonna be like three years going on forever. We’re starting to write history altogether here.”
Subscribe to INQUIRER PLUS to get access to The Philippine Daily Inquirer & other 70+ titles, share up to 5 gadgets, listen to the news, download as early as 4am & share articles on social media. Call 896 6000.
