Lotsa no shows at Worlds

I'd be willing to bet the Yao games were the best attended.


Staying home in droves

By Malcolm Moran, USA TODAY

INDIANAPOLIS — To the prideful Indiana basketball fan, the thought would once have been as unimaginable as the Aleksander Belov basket that ended America's perfect Olympic record. But the first world championships held in the country where the game was invented might not end with the local organizing committee turning a profit.

C.M. Newton, the chief executive officer of the championships, said the financial success of the event was uncertain because ticket sales are the primary source of revenue for the local committee.

"It's possible that we could get there," Newton said Tuesday night. "If we sell out the medal rounds, we'll be OK. If we don't, we may have some shortfall."

In the 18 sessions through Tuesday afternoon, the tournament has averaged 6,373 fans. At the 18,345-seat Conseco Fieldhouse and the RCA Dome configured to seat 35,669, the average crowds were less than one-fourth of capacity.

Three decades after the controversial finish of the gold medal game at Munich, and Belov's last-second basket in the unforgettable Soviet Union victory against the Americans, the USA-Russia game was played before 5,379 fans at the Fieldhouse.

"The cold war is gone," said Dennis Allensworth, a 42-year-old fan from Indianapolis. "It's a new war out there."

With local schoolchildren already in classrooms, a careful — if unofficial — count revealed a crowd of 56 non-credentialed spectators for the start of the 15th-place game, which grew to 117 by the end of Algeria's victory against winless Lebanon.

First-round ticket prices ranged from $10-$58, second round from $12-$66, the quarterfinals from $24-$110, the semifinals from $65-$135 and the final from $95-$190.

A first-round package of three U.S. games was sold for a 15% discount.

Newton said that when he became the CEO in November, he promised the international federation the finest tournament in history, in terms of operations, logistics and hospitality. "The one thing I said to FIBA at that time," he added, "is there's no way to predict attendance."

American provincialism, Newton said, made the reception so unpredictable.

"If you're an NBA fan, you think of the playoffs as the world championship," he said. "If you're an NCAA fan, you think of the tournament. And if you're an international fan, you think of the Olympics. To the rest of the world, they all pale in comparison to this."

The backdrop has formed in a place where connoisseurs of the sport have greeted the placement of baskets 94 feet apart with intense interest, regardless of the age, experience level or gender of the players in between.

"That's what I thought," said Antonio Davis of the USA, a former Indiana Pacer now with the Toronto Raptors. "I don't think people recognize the magnitude of the games. This is a big deal to us. It should be a big deal to them. I don't think they feel some of these teams are as good as they are."

Upstairs in section 208, as Americans and Russians competed Monday night, Allensworth had an entire section to himself. Several other people with tickets in his section walked downstairs, but Allensworth just moved several rows down.

"I wish everybody here would support it, but it's hard," he said. "When you put this on during the holidays, people want to be with their families.

"If they put this in the middle of August, you probably would have had some more people."

On Tuesday afternoon, two tickets 19 rows above the floor in a corner section were available for Sunday's gold medal game — for $190 each.