February 07, 2012
NBA Commisioner David Stern, Speech Transcript
NBA Europe LIVENBA Europe Live presented by EA SPORTS Press Conference

Opening Statement: I’m delighted to be here and I thank you all for coming. This is our third year at O2 Arena/ It’s a beautiful structure that AEG manages so well, I’m joined here, seeing in the audience Peter Moore of EA Sports the presenting sponsor of this event, and, Peter, I want to thank you and EA for all that you do for us, for basketball and for this event, and I just want to say that we’re very excited. I’ve learned a lot about a lot of things in the past few days and one of the things that makes me happiest is that this game will be carried live on ESPN which has recently agreed to an almost 100-game schedule of NBA games. Not quite the same fanfare as the Premiership contract, but it means that there will be viewers and sign-ups and people will be focusing on the NBA on a regular carriage straight through The Finals. We have also visited with our friends at BBC and I’ve learned what’s behind the red button, and tonight it’s this game, live, behind the red button; and this game will also be carried live on Radio 5 live as well as being streamed on BBC.com and back in the states, NBA TV will be showing this and it will be carried in somewhere in the neighborhood of 150 countries, so we’re pretty excited about that.

This is part of our working with the EuroLeague to have a series of games and to work together to grow the sport. We are not only playing here tonight, but the Jazz move on to Madrid to play Real Madrid on Thursday. Actually, three EuroLeague teams are playing or have played in the United States during exhibition season, because of our collaboration with the EuroLeague. Partizan, Olympiacos, and Maccabi Tel Aviv – each of them is playing two games against NBA teams during the exhibition season, and generally, we are also playing – I leave tomorrow for Taiwan where we have the Denver Nuggets playing the Indiana Pacers, and then on to Beijing where they are playing on Sunday and we have another game in Monterrey between the 76ers and the Suns. So, we’re growing the sport – and the sport comes from not just games, but from the presence, particularly in the UK and Europe, that we have here. We have 30 people working in our headquarters, I tell Sophie Goldschmidt that it’s too many and the headquarters are too opulent, but, be that as it may, their there and we’ve conducted probably 30-some odd, no, 50-some odd … 60 almost, 60 basketball grassroots events throughout Europe, that is in edition to the individual player appearances. The media have been treating us very well, talking about our sport, and this is terrific for us because the run-up to 2012 is exciting for the growth of basketball. Team GB qualified for EuroBasket; we hope that FIBA sees it in its wisdom that they will receive a wildcard to the World Championships in Turkey in 2010, and interested to see that they may have as many as four NBA players on Team GB come the Olympics and that’s pretty exciting. And we see the interest in the game and the growth of the game and, obviously, to see Luol Deng out there tonight will be I think exciting for us as the NBA, but also exciting for fans of Team GB. So, we see this as a huge opportunity for us to grow the game, continue to grow the game, with particular relevance in this very important market where we will have television, where we have been meeting with our marketing partners, where we have been meeting with our consumer products and business partners, where we have been meting with all manner of people who are combined with us, like the EuroLeague, who we had lunch with today to continue to grow the game.

We have also had the opportunity to visit with our friends at the Premiership just to share stories. I usually say that every time I can meet with someone we always do the same thing – we complain about our owners. But that’s a joke, for anyone’s who’s watching this. What we do talk about is that we love to learn from other leagues. We have met with many of the franchises here and we also have been doing a lot of community services with the Premiership and a couple of its teams because we think that sports and social responsibility is something that is us, and is all sports, and I know that is a philosophy that is increasingly shared around the world and I think that the Premiership is a leader in that regard.

We are looking forward to a great game tonight and I’d be happy to take any questions you might have.
Wednesday, October 07, 2009
Euroleague.net
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