Jai-Alai Needs Salesmen

A couple of weeks ago I wrote on this blog a post titled "Great News". I mentioned the fact that a Jai-Alai company: Master Jai had created a sister company: Master Jai Producciones, related with the production for television of jai-alai partidos. Instead of depending on, specially, the public Basque Television, for first time in Jai-Alai´s history, a pelota company itself was "being the media", instead of "hating the media". However, besides producing a lot of festivals, the key question is: Are they selling the product?

Jai-alai is an amazing sport, spectacular, nothing like it... It has tremendous super-stars, we all know who they are, their names... Frontons in Europe, the U.S.A., Mexico, the Philippines... Last week though the Singles World Championship final game was covered only by ETB (Basque Public Television). Fortunately via satellite as well, giving the chance to follow the game all over the world if you have the acces to ETB-SAT. Is that enough? Such a magnificent partido between two giants of the sport, should not have bigger audience, more television coverage? I´m talking about having the possibility of watching the final on famous networks all over the planet. It may be a matter of time, but I feel that we are moving too slowly, that we are missing something. The industry has all the pieces but one. Nowadays, to complete Jai-Alai´s puzzle we need salesmen all over the world. Take our industry for instance, we know how to produce machines, but not until recently were able to travel and them abroad. As a consequence of the free market, of the globalization process, things have changed. Now you find supliers in any market, from China to Buenos Aires.

Same thing for Jai-Alai, over the decades the sport was inmersed in a "comfort syndrome" situation thanks to the Florida Pari-Mutuel industry, where all seemed beautiful, that things would not change in centuries.... Almost all that has gone down the tube. It is almost over, but not all lost. We still have the product, a golden product. But the value of jai-alai should be measure by our ability to sell it and, for that we have to find the right kind of salesmen doing their job in the right places. Unfortunately, I don´t see any of them here in the Basque Country. People around here are too short-sighted, locally oriented, extremely disappointed because Basque Television ignores jai-alai, complaining over and over because ETB offers, 90 percent, hand-ball, pelota a mano.

I hardly imagine something like Christian´s Fronton or Tiger´s website created by basques. A guy from Sweden or Connecticut or somewhere else has to enter the Jai-Alai scene to bring innovation, independently appealing products, showing that it´s possible to make the product more popular. Same weakness if we analyze jai-alai´s situation over here. The Spanish-Basque frontons, besides the big events, have levels of attendance similar to those at Miami Jai-Alai: depressing. On the other hand, we get into what I call "the French summer success phenomenom". Crowded frontons every night at Biarritz, San Jean du Luz, Hossegor, Mauleon... all of them, where are they located?... France. The French-Basques (a different branch of the Basque culture) know how to sell cesta-punta, mainly,to parisiens tourists, but what the hell !... They get the crowds, full house, again and again. By the way, thanks to the "French summer success phenomenom" Spanish Basque jai-alai companies don´t collapse.

It may be an illusion, I might be having a dream, being naive. I picture a future where the sport depends on a World Jai-Alai League (or Global Jai-Alai League), not depending so heavily on "the French summer phenomenom" for its survival. For that what we need is a bunch of Christians and Tigers. Talented and worldly people, uncontaminated with the past, without the baggage of nostalgia and able to convince sponsors and mass-media " movers and shakers" that the sport is worth propelling into a new era.