I've said all along in the PBA threads that the league is nothing but a billionaire's boys club and for tax relief purposes only, there's no way that gate receipts and TV rights earns the league and the team's money.
In my experience as a marketing consultant one of the SMC companies was a client of mine during a time when one of the brands in their portfolio was selected for the PBA team to carry.
The way the budget for the PBA budget was managed already told you that they weren't in it to make money, for one it while was folded into the brand's media and communications budget the PBA money was "hands off" to the marketing director, group category manager and brand managers. Only the PBA team manager had access to and control of the money, plus the PBA team manager was not reporting to the marketing manager - meaning he doesn't need a green light from or required to give a FYI to the marketing manager on how the money is being spent. Moreover, the PBA money item in the brand's total media and comms budget was actually bigger than money budgeted for media placements and advertising development.
I asked the marketing manager back then if she has a way of measuring ROI of the PBA money since its in one of her brand's OB and can impact marketing KPIs. She told me none and that it was all senior management decision which she has no control over.
When I probed her if she the company has done their due diligence and has any analysis that their PBA participation yields any commercial results, she just told me that their C level peeps only have anecdotal evidence that championships results into sales spikes but there's no hard proof like audits or correlations thru marketing mix models. I also asked her if there is at least an effort to monitor impact of PBA participation on brand equity and she told me there was none as well as management assesses brand building efforts based purely on their communications. Many here might not get what I just wrote down but basically it means there is no monitoring done if a team's PBA spending is yielding significant sales or making contributions to brand building.