When Suns President and Chief Operating Officer Rick Welts was running the NBA's international business activities, he likened his work to the music business.
"You make your money selling CDs, but once in a while you have to show your product live in concert," Welts said.
That's why you will find the Suns in Italy, the Spurs in France, the 76ers in Spain and the Clippers in Russia this week. The NBA rocks internationally and has done so since 1988 when Atlanta played in the Soviet Union. In every year except the 1998 lockout year, the league staged preseason or regular-season games abroad.
The NBA took a game America cultivated and fed the world. The league featured roster players from 38 nations last season. Half of the 2006 West All-Stars are foreign born, and six of this season's Suns are, too.
The NBA has held games in 13 nations and territories since 1988 for more than basketball goodwill. It's good business.
NBA Commissioner David Stern made it clear that the league is not headed toward European expansion. European enterprise is another thing, as the aforementioned teams participate in NBA Europe Live, a two-week trip of camps and games capped by a tourney in Germany with the Suns, Sixers and the Euroleague finalists.
"For our popularity, awareness of the NBA, our international business and our TV overseas, the most important thing we can do is to play games live," NBA Vice President of International Communications Terry Lyons said. "From fans who see the games to business partners, everybody comes away energized. It's an absolute boost. But we've never done it to such scope."
The league largely thrives on ticket sales and domestic television but has room for economic growth in international broadcasts and sponsors. EA Sports is the title company for this summer's event.
"This effort, combined with the world championship, is a wonderful (world) focus on basketball," Lyons said.
Philadelphia's exhibition against Winterthur FC Barcelona sold out. Tickets sales for the other games in Europe are strong, Lyons said. Yet, the NBA is still at a point at which only Japan has proved it can support the economics of a regular-season game.
The league offsets each NBA Europe Live club's costs so that each team comes away nearly the same financially as if it had stayed home for camp and had its four allotted home preseason games. Every NBA team takes its turn internationally.
A team such as the Suns can't cash in - directly - from the exposure, since international revenue is split evenly among 30 teams. But Phoenix does see a benefit from frequent league-leading traffic on suns.com, through sponsors at the site.
"It's more a source of pride that people across the world would be more anxious to watch us on Chinese or German television," Welts said.
There is the thought that showing the world's best hoop product bolsters the talent pool by engaging young foreigners. Zydrunas Ilgauskas' 7-foot-3 frame may have led him to the NBA anyway, but his seed was planted when his father took him to the Hawks-Soviet Union game in Lithuania in 1988, the NBA's first year abroad.
"Sometimes, it's about getting a kid in Treviso (Italy) to start bouncing a basketball," Lyons said. "You just never know where the next guy is going to come from."
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