American Dream Comes to London As Nba Looks to Break New Ground

Six years have passed since NBA commissioner David Stern first floated the idea of expanding his league to include one or more teams based in Europe. "The internationalization of our sport is at a stage where those are not fanciful discussions or thoughts," said Stern at the NBA's 2002 All-Star game in Philadelphia, stating that the league was also looking at opportunities in Mexico. "Give us three to four years to come up with the right plan."

That plan remains, at best, a fuzzy one. Yesterday London hosted its second NBA preseason game in as many years - between the Miami Heat and the New Jersey Nets - and yet European expansion wasn't even top of the agenda at the pre-game press conferences. Instead Stern's first concern was announcing the league's new agreement with AEG to design and operate a number of new basketball arenas in China.

"The scale is, I think, going to be a dozen or so," said Stern yesterday, before suggesting that each arena would, like the O2, be designed as a family entertainment venue rather than simply a basketball stadium, and would feature cinemas, theatres and concert halls. [AEG president and CEO Timothy] Leiwenke will say 25, but I think that's a little high."

That Stern should have turned his dreams of expansion towards China is hardly a surprise, given both the country's economic emergence and the fact that basketball is already massively popular there. The success in recent years of Chinese players such as Nets forward Yi Jianlian - on display at the O2 last night - and Houston Rockets center Yao Ming has increased the country's interest in the NBA to the point where 1.6bn viewers watched league programming last year, while one-third of NBA.com's web traffic came from the Mandarin Chinese section.

Such figures make a stark contrast with the UK, where the NBA has struggled to hold the public's attention. Stern was quick to point out that tickets for this year's game had sold out more rapidly than they did last year, yet it took the league far longer to find a broadcaster for the event. A deal was eventually reached with Setanta, but Five, who hold the rights to the league's regular season games, once again plan to broadcast no more one game a week. Stern has specifically identified Britain as one of the countries he believes could eventually host a franchise, yet there is scant evidence to back his belief that such a team could fill a venue such as the O2 over the course of 41 regular season home games, the number NBA teams play every year. Basketball may be, as Stern points out, the second-most played sport in Britain among people under the age of 18, but that does not necessarily translate to supporters who would want to - and at prices of £30 and up - attend such a high number of games.

"I saved up for this one, but I couldn't afford it if it was every week, let alone more than once a week..." offers Jermaine, a 16-year-old Heat fan testing his skills at the NBA Jam Van - an "interactive basketball experience" put on by the league outside North Greenwich tube station. "It's fun to come down and see all the famous players, but really I think I'd rather just play."

The existing basketball leagues in Britain do not offer much encouragement. Following for the British Basketball League has improved slightly of late, but attendances rarely outstrip 3,000 and for some sides regularly fall below 700. Furthermore, just at the point when many observers felt the quality in the league was improving, it now faces competition from the upstart British Basketball Association, a situation that Stern himself acknowledges is likely to set back the sport's development in this country, rather than foster it.

More promising, however, had been the progress of the national side, with Britain set to compete in next year's European Basketball Championships in Poland for the first time in the tournament's 73-year existence. The team only emerged from a 14-year hiatus, during which time England and Scotland competed separately in 2006, but the presence of Chicago Bulls forward Luol Deng immediately helped them to win a group containing Israel, Bosnia and the Czech Republic.

Having taken up his post at the head of an league that was on the brink of collapse in the same year that Michael Jordan began his professional career, Stern knows all too well about the importance of star power. He will hope that Deng, a 6ft 9in 23-year-old who this year signed a six-year, $71m contract with the Bulls can do for the sport in Britain what Yi Jianlian and others have done for it in China, but in that regard the failure to bring the Bulls to Britain looks like a missed opportunity.

"We believe these games represent us moving past the point of simply having a player from the country in which we are playing," insisted Stern when asked why he had not selected teams featuring European players for this year's games in the continent, but the number of Bulls shirts bearing Deng's name in the crowd yesterday suggest he may have misjudged.

Stern might also argue he is in no rush. He has stuck to a loose time-frame of "the next decade" for European expansion and for now simply hopes to increase awareness of the sport ahead of London 2012. Nevertheless, he would do well to avoid moving too slowly. Both the NFL and NHL have now brought regular season games to Britain, despite the fact that neither can claim anything like such interest in the sport. Yesterday's game contained far more mistakes than you would expect in a competitive game, while both teams' biggest names were out on court for only a few minutes each.

"I think it's fair to say we'll see a minimum of one regular season game in the UK before 2012," said Stern. He will have to hope the sections of the crowd who left early and a little disappointed last night are willing to be patient.

Other American sports spreading the gospel

NFL

The game at Wembley between San Diego Chargers and New Orleans Saints on October 26 will be only the second regular-season National Football League game ever to be played abroad. "It's another positive step in the effort to globalise our great sport," said the Chargers president, Dean Spanos. "It's also a chance for the Chargers to expand our international fan base." Last year's game between New York Giants and Miami Dolphins, right, sold out quickly with reports of 500,000 ticket requests within 72 hours. It was also a learning experience for Miami Dolphins' Channing Crowder, who was pleased to find out that people spoke English in London.MLB

Biennial All Star games between Major League Baseball and Nippon Professional Baseball started in Japan in 1986. The MLB has staged three season-openings in Japan, where it has a huge following, although some Americans are unhappy about games being played abroad and some Japanese players and coaches upset because it undermines the domestic league. "It's ludicrous," the Chiba Lotte Marines coach, Bobby Valentine, said as his team had to play at the same time as Boston Red Sox faced Oakland Athletics.NHL

The National Hockey League has started its past two seasons in Europe and there has even been talk of the league expanding to include European teams. "On behalf of the players, I would say that door is very much open," Paul Kelly of the NHL Players' Association said. "We need to look forward and recognize that this, of all the major sports, is the one sport that probably could expand into Europe." Last year's two games in London between Anaheim Ducks and LA Kings were sell-outs, as were this month's regular-season contests in Stockholm (at the 13,500-capacity Globen Arena) and Prague (at the 17,000-seater O2 Arena).