I'd appreciate NBA extension into the UK. Watching the NBA live in London would be great. Not gonna waste any time on 2nd tier organization though. I rather just pay 20 quid p/m to watch the real deal. In any case, I'm sure they will make a lot of money even if there isn't enough spectators, interests from the locals. They will figure it out.
If they develop, I would think they are going to face NBA level competition one day, maybe just wishful thinking.
I see Lebron is still trying power moves at 40. He doesn't like the Lakers prioritizing Luka over him.
first time I watched the entirety of the Eurobasket tournament. You don't need slimer/ tron basketball courts to have intrigue.
I don't know if you're old enough to remember when they did this 2nd tier **** with NFL Europe? I believe we had a London team and even a Scottish team, but it was not the NFL so it was crap and failed pretty quickly. They should've done the research, basketball just isn't big in the UK (as much as I wish it was) which is why the Manchester Giants used to play in a real arena in the 90's and now play in a tiny little sports hall like a local Sunday league football club. I'd honestly rather they just gave us some NBA games with the real teams than give us some gimmicky half assed bullshit with lesser talent/coaches/etc.
I think the tournament games for the mid-season cup in Europe would be interesting. I'm not sure if it would work, but I think it would add to the novelty of the tournament.
Maybe the other 14 clubs will be bigwigs from "continental" Europe with London and Manchester representing an attempt to grow interest in the UK.
That's exactly how NFL Europe went tbh. A couple of clubs in the UK, the rest in other big cities on the continent and it was genuinely pure trash. I'm hoping that the NBA have at least got the sense to partner with other European countries that actually do have a basketball scene and include teams with existing fanbases. If they do what they did with the NFL where they just throw out all these random brand new clubs with no history then it's going to bomb and it's going to bomb HARD tbh. In the few countries where basketball actually is anything like a relevant sport for the mainstream (there's not many in truth) then there'll already be clubs with rabid fanbases. It's not usual for fans to switch teams in any sport in Europe, so they're not going to be jumping from Real Madrid to whatever new NBA Europe team they'd create.
In case anybody wondered. This is the biggest basketball "arena" in Manchester where that report states there's going to be a team. I'd imagine that's smaller than most of the people in the US had in their high school lol. There's nothing resembling an indoor sports arena here at all. Closest would be large indoor arenas for concerts, but there's no way anybody's showing up to see lower-tier basketball at those kind of prices. After that it's HUGE soccer/football stadiums that no actual NBA team would fill, never mind the bootleg British equivalent haha.
That's what I meant, partnering with existing huge basketball clubs in Europe. When you consider what happened with NFL Europe, the NBA probably has no choice. It should be a big win for everybody.
Except FIBA/The Euroleague. For NBA Europe to work you'd basically need to just steal the top 16-30 clubs in Europe. I'm not sure even then there's enough fans to match a tenth of the number of fans of the smallest NBA fanbase. To put it in context, Real Madrid (absolute heavyweights in European basketball) average home attendance of 8,914 in Euroleague and 8,592 in domestic competition. That includes the away fans as well. "Huge basketball clubs" don't actually exist in Europe. They're little side-hustle games played by huge Football/Soccer clubs and are probably all run at a loss and absorbed into the astronomical turnover of the only sport that really does have huge support and fanbases...
Nope - didn't know about the similar attempt with NFL. I'm fairly confident that they can make money on this intiative with decent business execution. Simply not interested in the product. Even if they bring up LBJ, and / or some other high end names. You can't create history with money. I'll find my way to Houston one day for the finals.
Yeah I'm sure they can make a little bit on the first initial push, I just don't know how sustainable it is to try and pitch an inferior basketball product and just slap the NBA name on it. If they use the "big" Euroleague clubs then that's no different from what we have now and nobody here cares. The only basketball fans I know here (like myself) support NBA franchises, usually for a long time. I think they only person I know who's seen the Manchester Giants since they originally folded post 90's (Michael Jordan) "boom" is a lad who took his toddlers as a cheap day out on a Saturday afternoon lmao.
The problem with that format is for euro teams, world clubs tourney is inferior competition compared to champions league so they don’t show up there with full motivation and/or resources. Same will be case for nba teams. And it is played away from your home crowd which lacks atmosphere. Euro competitions in soccer and basketball have much better atmosphere and overall competition level than the world counterparts and are better products overall.
It's a cool idea but there's genuinely no point. I'm really not sure you guys properly understand the difference between Euro club ball and NBA ball. There are no "huge clubs" the fanbase is tiny, the funding is tiny, the level of basketball is significantly lower. Like most NBA teams could run their end of the bench guys as starters and dominate with ease all but 1 or 2 clubs if even that many could keep up. It's just not feasible. The support really isn't there either, especially not to be putting 2 teams in British cities like that one report is suggesting. The UK barely even has professional basketball, it's trash, and I doubt most of the players play basketball as their main/full time job. Any half decent prospect we have goes overseas.
I can see that work a big IF ...if the NBA is willing to share NBA International Draft Prospects....and not the trashiest ones..... And establish a satellite system where you have guys like Scola stashed not until 27 obviously but maybe until 24, loan semi stars like Risacher or Sarr out to Euro clubs. European sport attendance is dominated by Soccer so that probably would not change much, the NBA North America got to spend heavily in the beginning.
