ESPN+ to stream semifinal, championship games of Native American Basketball Invitational tournament
Native American Basketball Invitational President and CEO GinaMarie Scarpa called the tournament’s streaming on ESPN+ a “Cinderella story.”
NABI, an annual basketball tournament for Native American teams around the country, will host 136 teams in Phoenix from July 17-23. For the first time in NABI history, ESPN+ will stream the semifinal and championship games on July 22 and 23.
The championship games will also take place at the Footprint Center, the home of the Phoenix Suns and Mercury. The 2022 NABI will be the first all-Native American youth tournament hosted on a major sporting network.
“When you have these goals you like, ‘Okay, let's try to do this in three years. Let's try to do this in five years.’” Scarpa said. “You know, we really didn't think it would happen in the second year, so NABI continues to have these Cinderella stories.”
Scarpa said NABI decided to start streaming its games in 2021 because of COVID-19. Their producer, Robert Judkins, came to her with the idea in April 2021, and Scarpa said she was skeptical that they could be capable streamers by the tournament.
But NABI pulled off a full production of their championship games by July 2021.
“We started streaming our games last year and they did really well,” Scarpa told the Republic on July 6. “Even more so, better than expected. And our goal was to really produce a high-quality production and hopefully getting the attention of sporting platforms such as ESPN.”
Scarpa hoped for a reach of 10,000 on NABI’s self-produced 2021 championship games, but they reached over 65,000 people with streaming on their website. This year, Scarpa said multiple platforms reached out to them to stream the NABI championships.
LTN Global helped the NABI organization connect with ESPN+. Scarpa said they chose ESPN+ because it allowed NABI to also provide free streaming.
Scarpa said the ESPN+ streaming deal will cost NABI about $100,000, with talent, production, and other costs.
“It really was just our producer having that conversation with LTN Global, and they have the connections and they work really a lot with ESPN on other productions,” Scarpa said. “And they were the ones that introduced NABI to them.”
ESPN+ is a paid service at $6.99 per month, but Scarpa and her team are committed to also streaming the games for free. Scarpa said the semifinal and championship games will be on AZ TV, NABI Network and their NABI YouTube.
“I think family and Rezball fans like it, and Indian country, because we've been around for 20 years and we're one of the biggest and premiere tournaments,” Scarpa said. “So, for our fan base and families to be able to say, ‘Hey, I can just log on,’ especially with NABI Network, we made it free access.”
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: ESPN+ to stream semifinal, championship games of NABI tournament
