Visit strengthens NZ-India basketball ties
“What interested me most was how familiar India’s challenges felt once you looked beyond the scale,” writes New Zealand basketball’s Rob Smith. As general manager commercial for the NZ NBL and professional women’s basketball league Tauihi, Rob recently travelled to India to strengthen connections between the two countries’ basketball leagues. In this article, he reflects on the people he met, what he learned and the opportunities for future collaboration. Rob’s visit was supported by a grant from the Asia New Zealand Foundation’s Sports Leaders Fund.
Rob with the founder of Indian sports community and booking platform Khelomore, Jatin Paranjape
I have a few regrets from 25 years in the business of sport. First among them being never making it to India while working for Warnie.
I have ticked that box now, thanks to the Asia New Zealand Foundation and Basketball New Zealand who provided a wonderful opportunity for me to represent Basketball New Zealand and our national basketball leagues in India.
What an experience it turned out to be.
Why this trip, why now
2026 is a significant year for the New Zealand-India relationship. The two countries have signed a free trade agreement and marked 100 years of sporting ties, a connection that traces back to 1926 when an Indian Army hockey team toured New Zealand.
Rob: "My trip was about pushing the strategy forward, enhancing relationships and converting opportunities."
Basketball's evolving relationship with India was building well before I arrived. The latest chapter being Basketball New Zealand CEO Belinda Edwards s joining a New Zealand Sport Leaders Delegation to India in March, widening doors with the Basketball Federation of India (BFI), the India Basketball League (IBL) and NBA India, among others.
My trip was about pushing the strategy forward, enhancing relationships and converting opportunities - strengthening ties with BFI, IBL and NBA, meeting state associations, building a better understanding of India's broadcast landscape and opportunities for our content, testing where commercial and other partnership opportunities might sit and better understanding a country and a sport and entertainment sector that matters more to us every year.
Ahmedabad: Proud parents and a Commonwealth Games in the making
In Ahmedabad Rob attended the final day of the FIBA U18 Asia Cup
At BFI's invitation, I combined the trip with the final day of the FIBA U18 Asia Cup in Ahmedabad. I was privileged to sit with a group of proud Kiwi families to watch the Junior Tall Blacks dig deep for a third-place win over Korea, before Australia ran over an entertaining and skilful China to take the title. Both games were crackers.
Ahmedabad has plenty of work ahead of it before the 2030 Commonwealth Games. But the tournament, a long and demanding one to deliver, was well presented and seamless on the day I was there. I am confident the Commonwealth Games will come together and convinced that the trip to Ahmedabad will be worth making again.
I also spent time with BFI General Secretary Kulvinder Singh Gill. It was a positive conversation and one that moved us a little further up the court.
Mumbai: A network that delivered
Rob with Raghav Gupta, CEO of Indian sports travel and hospitality company, Fanatic Sports
A seven-hour train ride south and five days of meetings and Ubers followed. The network delivered in spades.
Almost everyone I met or reconnected with, from NBA Sunny Malik to IBL investor Karan Singh, was generous, interested, seriously qualified (MBAs from all over the world, time at BCG, Nike, Red Bull) and, importantly, having a go. They were looking both inward and out to the world for answers, opportunities and partners.
JioStar's Siddharth Sharma was a highlight, one of the most impressive broadcast leaders I have met. From a 29th-floor office looking over the cranes of Mumbai, he told me, without hesitation, that the answer to growing a league is to empower and enable our teams to market and promote themselves from the ground up - activate local markets, make heroes of our players, be organic and authentic and give fans a reason to come back. It was not a new strategy by any means but hearing it delivered with such conviction by someone operating at the top of the content game made it land differently.
Rob meeting with Siddharth Sharma, head of content at Indian sports broadcasting and media business JioStar Sports
Both IBL and JioStar were interested in how our move into virtual on-court signage was tracking as a broadcast and sponsorship enhancement as well a cost saving and revenue lever. That felt significant and was a small reminder that New Zealand basketball has something to offer India too.
What surprised and challenged me
Cricket is the lens through which too many of us view Indian sport. It matters enormously. But there is a lot more to India than cricket. Kabaddi, hockey, badminton and football all feature prominently. Basketball is on the rise.
What interested me most was how familiar India's challenges felt once you looked beyond the scale – getting kids into sport and keeping the volunteers who make it possible coming back, building infrastructure, creating pathways into elite programmes and national teams, turning participation and audiences into long-term financial sustainability. These issues matter just as much in a country of 1.4 billion people as they do in one of 5.4 million.
India is not simply a huge market we should be trying to exploit. It is a basketball ecosystem facing many of the same questions we are, with different resources, constraints, pressures. There is plenty we can learn from and do with each other.
What's next
I came home with more balls in the air than I expected - live conversations on broadcast rights, interest in player, coach and match official exchanges and a programme of games to be developed, among other things. The challenge now is to work out how and in what order to land each ball.
"I came home with more balls in the air than I expected - live conversations on broadcast rights, interest in player, coach and match official exchanges and a programme of games to be developed..."
Rob Smith
None of this happens without a sound strategy and the face time this trip brought us. Relationships evolve through building trust and action. This trip helped materially with both.
India is part of the conversation when we think about the future growth and positioning of New Zealand basketball and I suspect the same should be true of other Kiwi sports.
I am grateful to the Foundation and Basketball New Zealand for making the trip possible. The test now is converting opportunities into a lasting reality for basketball and for the wider New Zealand–India relationship, which the Foundation is working hard to strengthen.
The Foundation's sports programme provides New Zealand sportspeople and administrators opportunities to grow more knowledgeable, connected and confident with Asia.
The Foundation's Sports Leaders Fund enables New Zealand sports leaders to travel to Asia to deepen their understanding of the region’s sporting landscape, enhance cultural awareness and establish meaningful connections.
