Now that was a truly record-breaking season.

After producing three different champions, three different runners-up and recording several live attendance records that led to an all-time mark of more than P200 million in gate receipts, the Philippine Basketball Association is now busy charting the direction it will take to sustain its gains.

The league’s board of governors arrived in Sydney, Australia on Monday afternoon and immediately buckled down to work, shaking off the effects of a tiring eight-hour flight from Manila to welcome a new chairman in Mon Segismundo of Meralco and hear the reports of the outgoing Robert Non of Barangay Ginebra.

Non’s report will be a glittering one, especially if one takes into account that the league enjoyed its biggest success under his watch, counting the all-time crowd record of 23,436 that saw Game 3 of the Alaska-Ginebra Commissioner’s Cup title series.

Under his tenure, the country also got back into the World Championship stage, when Gilas-Pilipinas, with the PBA taking the lead by lending its top players for national cause, bagging the silver medal behind powerhouse Iran in the 27th Fiba-Asia Championship, the qualifier to the Spain joust next year.

“It would have been a perfect year had (Barangay) Ginebra won a championship,” said Non, who represents the crowd-darling Gin Kings in the board. “(The season that passed) proved to be a bigger hit in terms of gate attendance, gate receipts and TV viewership.

“I have the Office of the Commissioner and my fellow board members to thank for that, because of their all-out help,” he said.

The league produced three different champions that went up against different foes, and parity like this one is what Commissioner Chito Salud believes to be the reason why the fans have started flocking to the games again and watching them on television.

Talk ‘N Text won the Philippine Cup for the third straight year after beating Rain or Shine; Alaska was the Commissioner’s Cup champion over Barangay Ginebra and San Mig Coffee pipped Petron Blaze in a Game 7 to remember just last Friday to win the Governors’ Cup.

Salud’s master stroke of reverting back to the three-conference format from the 2010 season has worked wonders.

From a meager P70 million in gate attendance after the first year in 2010, the league amassed more than P110 million in 2012, a mark that seemed unbreakable when Non took over from Rain or Shine’s Mamerto Mondragon in Macau in August 2012.

“We hope to sustain our gains for the year and maintain not only the resurgence of the PBA but of Philippine basketball as well,” Salud said.

Aside from Non and Segismundo, Ely Capacio of San Miguel, Lito Alvarez of Air21, Mamerto Mondragon of Rain or Shine, Richard Bachmann of Alaska, Manny Alvarez of Barako Bull, Patrick Gregorio of Talk ‘N Text, Rene Pardo of San Mig Coffee and Erick Arejola of Globalport are also in Sydney.

“Our mandate from the team owners is to make the games more exciting and be responsive to the fans,” Salud added.

“This is the result – a banner year each year since the time we reverted back to the three-conference format in 2010,” Salud said. “We are back in the stream of consciousness of the fans, unlike before, when they were saying that the PBA was slowly becoming a niche, tayo-tayo na lang.”

The first activity of the 39th Season will be the Annual Draft on Nov. 3, where Ginebra is expected to make either Greg Slaughter or Ian Sangalang as the first overall pick.

Non said that his squad is fixed on just either of the two.

“It’s not every year that you get to pick a 7-footer like Slaughter from the Draft,” Non said. “But the athleticism of Sangalang is also being considered. And he is just giving away a few inches to Slaughter being 6-foot-7.”

San Mig Coffee, which is entertaining tryouts, will be selecting second and coach Tim Cone has made it no secret that they will select whoever Ginebra leaves out.

Rain or Shine selects third overall and Yeng Guiao would most likely tab former Letran slotman Raymond Almazan, a 6-foot-7 banger who was one of the most dominant big men in his NCAA career with the Knights.

Barako Bull owns the fourth, fifth and sixth selections overall, and the Energy will use these picks to rebuild an aging nucleus that is centered on Danny Seigle and Mick Pennisi.

The next Season gets off the ground on Nov. 17 and the PBA will be playing four double-headers each week to be able to complete a compressed schedule that would allow the country to field PBA stars for the Fiba World Championship in Spain.