Britain could become basketball’s latest global outpost

By T.A.W.

FOR ONE night a year the O2 Arena, London’s biggest indoor stadium, belongs to basketball. On January 11th the 20,000-seat venue hosted its eighth regular-season fixture since 2011, between the Boston Celtics and the Philadelphia 76ers, the former of whom are genuine championship contenders this season in the National Basketball Association (NBA). The topsy-turvy game, which the 76ers led by 22 points in the second quarter before the Celtics secured a 114-103 comeback win, was far from the only delight for the many fans experiencing their first match. With relentless music, cheerleaders, t-shirts being launched into the crowd and NBA legends walking out to salute the crowd during time-outs, the spectacle was somewhat more vibrant than a typical night of British sporting entertainment.

The country seems ripe for a basketball invasion. Tickets for the match sold out in 52 minutes, hampered only by a struggling website. The cheapest ones available via resale on the day of the game cost £500 ($684). Away from the glamour of the NBA, the game is also a staple of grassroots sport. Some 337,000 people shoot hoops once a month, according to Sport England, a community organisation. That puts basketball within 20,000 participants of cricket and rugby union, two of Britain’s traditional pastimes, and ahead of netball. It is even more popular among youngsters. One in four English children aged 11-15 take to the court at least once a month; 175,000 people aged 14-25 do so each week, compared to 111,000 for cricket and 180,000 for rugby union. With three-pointers flying into nets at schools and community gyms around the country, basketball could soon become Britain’s second-most-played team sport.

Yet this nationwide dribbling has translated into little success at the professional level. British basketball is stymied by a lack of Olympic funding since the sport offers scant medal prospects. America’s dominance makes a coveted gold nigh-on impossible, and the other medals are usually collected by a strong pack of European sides. Serbia, Turkey, Greece, Spain, Italy and France have all reached the final in either the men’s World Cup or Olympic tournament since 2000. These countries have benefited from a competitive EuroLeague, a continental competition which has been running since 1958 and is regarded as the world’s second-best division. Spanish football behemoths Barcelona and Real Madrid are among those with Euroleague outfits. By contrast, only two of the sides in the British Basketball League play in stadiums with a capacity of over 3,000. The Leicester Riders, the reigning champions, have turned down a berth in the Champions League, Europe's second tier. Unsurprisingly, just two of the record 64 European players from 24 countries currently under contract in the NBA are British: Ogugua Anunoby and Luol Deng.

Thursday’s thriller at the O2 Arena, for all its hype, was also a reminder of the NBA’s handicaps in its battle for transatlantic supremacy against the National Football League (NFL). Though gridiron football is played by barely a tenth as many Britons as basketball, it is comfortably America’s most lucrative sporting export. The 20,000 seats filled for the Celtics-76ers match are dwarfed by the 315,000 that the NFL flogged for four performances in London during September and October 2017. Wembley and Twickenham, the country’s two biggest stadiums, each sold out twice, bringing the tally of games in London to 21 since 2007. The NFL’s first-mover advantage might soon be enhanced by establishing a permanent team in London, which could be formed by 2021. Such a venture is possible given the lighter travel demands in a 16-game regular season, but wholly impractical in the NBA’s 82-game equivalent.

Within America itself, the NBA is only the third-highest-grossing competition, trailing both the NFL and Major League Baseball (MLB). Yet officials believe that it could eventually become the world’s most popular sporting attraction. They argue that only football surpasses basketball in global interest. Reliable broadcast figures across sports are scarce, but basketball ranks second in terms of Google searches, Facebook fans and articles published online. The concentration of basketball talent within the NBA also gives it two advantages over the fragmented world of football: the best players almost invariably compete in the same tournament and the strongest teams face each other regularly. The Golden State Warriors and the Cleveland Cavaliers faced off seven times last season; Barcelona and Bayern Munich have contested just ten matches in nearly 120 years. And it is not just European imports who are giving the NBA a global profile. This season’s rosters include 44 players from a further 18 countries outside of Europe, bringing the grand total of foreigners to 108 from 42 nations (see chart).

Reaching wider audiences is imperative for all American sports, as more fans at home are abandoning their cable-television subscriptions. As well as establishing a London franchise, the NFL is considering regular-season games in Germany and China in the coming years. MLB’s new collective-bargaining agreement, which comes into force in 2019, has a longer season (with the same number of matches) that explicitly allows for regular-season games to be taken abroad. London is poised to stage games from 2019, with Japan and Mexico also expected to host.

The hassle of transatlantic travel means that NBA matches across the pond will remain an occasional affair. The broader British public is also sceptical of American games. A poll earlier this month found that just 16% of the country thinks basketball is exciting, and 13% for gridiron football—putting them in similar company to darts (17%) and snooker (16%). But more enthralling exhibitions at the country’s biggest arenas might eventually change that. Expect plenty more in the coming years, as the scramble for British and European attention intensifies.