German and American sport: a comparison. Basketball in America and Germany

Topic and Summary:

My topic is Basketball in America and Germany and there I had to write about history, structure and differences in the two countries. As people may know, the American Basketball-team won the Gold medal at the Olympic Games only a few weeks ago while the Ger- man team was not even there. The following text will show some interesting information about the development of the game itself and all the facts that are interesting to know about Basketball. As I enroll the economic branch at my school, I also write about “Basketball as entertainment” where I will talk about the money-making side of Basketball and also the importance of media. I really tried to get as much information as possible but for some reason, the people I asked for help were not really interested in helping a pupil with their work and so it was really hard to get the information I needed , I managed to do so nevertheless. For me it was really interesting to do something of that kind and I hope that people will recognize that while reading the following text. Something that is important for me is that the people shouldn’t forget about the sport itself. It’s really nice that the NBA jumped into the Food Business in November 1999 but the sport itself shouldn’t be forgotten because that’s the reason why they all are able to make the money they make. And a sport shouldn’t only be a moneymaker at all.

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Inhaltsverzeichnis

  TOPIC AND SUMMARY:  2

  INHALTSVERZEICHNIS  3

  HISTORY  5

  History in general  5

  History of Basketball in Germany  6

  History of Basketball in America  7

  STRUCTURE  8

  Common grounds  8

  Popularity  8

  Basketball as entertainment  9

  All-Star games  10

  Some rules  10

  Current topics  11

  DIFFERENCES  12

  Teams League  12

   12

  Germany  12

  Money  13

  NBA:  13

  BBL:  14

  Public interest  14

   15

  3  

  Germany  16

  Basketball and Media  16

  Germany  16

  USA  17

  Rules  18

  LITERATURVERZEICHNIS  20

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History

At first I would like to give you an overview on the history of Basket- ball. To structure it I split the history up in “History in general”, “His- tory of Basketball in Germany”, and “History of Basketball in Amer- ica”. I shall first turn to the topic “History in general”.

History in general

It all started in 1891 when Luther Gulick,

He did so and introduced his class of 18

season.” 1 J. Naismith dispatched the jani-

tor to find two boxes to be fastened to the balcony railing where they would serve as goals but the janitor only found two half-bushel peach baskets and they used these instead. In the early days, they played with an ordinary soccer ball. “But the soccer ball and the peach baskets soon gave way to specialized equipment. For exam- ple, in the early days the peach baskets were closed at the bottom, meaning that someone had too climb onto a ladder to retrieve the ball after a made basket.” 2 James Naismith also outlined 13 original rules according to which the teams of today still are playing. The next important step was in 1934 as Basketball became a part of the Olympic Games. “The first official Olympic Basketball tournament was held at the 1936 Games in Berlin. The 1936 contests were held outdoors in a tennis stadium on courts of clay and sand.” 3

History of Basketball in Germany

However, it took much longer for Basketball to become a popular sport in Germany. Therefore, in 1896 Ernst Hermann told his father about Basketball because he knew about it from his school in Bos- ton, USA. Ernst Hermann was the sports director of a college and his father, August Hermann, was the leader of a gymnastic club in Braunschweig. The first game was played in Braunschweig, but the game could not assert itself. Hermann Niebuhr, who is called the “Father of German Basketball” today, became familiar with Basket- ball in 1930 at a U.S.-College in Istanbul. 1 As he returned to Ger- many in 1933 he introduced Basketball at several universities and sports clubs. And, because of this foreign students started playing Basketball at universities in Munich, Breslau, Gera, Wünsdorf, and Bad Kreuznach. Hermann Niebhur took further action to introduce Basketball in Germany and in 1935 Basketball became an organ- ized game. 2 Unfortunately, due o the Second World War, Basketball disappeared because of the destruction of the country. However, after the war, French and American occupation troops helped to rebuild the game again and brought new life to the game. Because of that great development of German Basketball, the "Deutsche Basketball Bund – DBB“ was founded in Düsseldorf on October the 1st in 1949. 3 Therefore, in 1951 the first German team took part at the European Championship. The "1. Bundesliga“ and „2. Bundesliga“ started in 1975. 4 The next thing which was very impor- tant for the development of popularity of Basketball in Germany was the European Championship in 1993. This Championship took place in Germany and the German team won. After this success, Basket- ball had become the most famous sport among 12 – 19 year olds in 1997 and 1998. 5 The next and simultaneous athletic successes for Germany were the 3rd place at the World-Championship in 2002

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„Das Phänomen „Basketball“ – Erfindung - Begeisterung – Verbreitung“ Informatio- nen des Deutschen Basketball Bundes, Berlin, o. J.; S. 4 2 ebd. S. 4f.

3 vgl. ebd. S. 7 4 vgl. ebd. S. 15 5 vgl. ebd. S 23 ff

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and Dirk Nowitzky election as most valuable player of the tourna-

ment. 1 History of Basketball in America

“Professional Basketball in America began in 1896 at a YMCA in Trenton, New Jersey. A dispute between members of the YMCA team and a YMCA official led to the players forming a professional team and playing for money. In 1898 a group of New Jersey news- paper sport editors founded the National Basketball League (NBL) – the first professional league.“ 2 In May 1901 several schools and colleges formed the "New England Intercollegiate Basketball League“. To standardize rules and form regional conferences a committee was formed in 1915. However, an official championship tournament was too difficult to realize because of the tremendous size of the country and various other problems. The first successful national professional league was the American Basketball League (ABL). This league lasted from 1925 to 1931. In 1946 another new professional Basketball league was formed and called the Basket- ball Association of America (BAA). A further new professional League was founded, taking the same name as the earlier NBL. This league is important because of the additional development. In 1937 the first national collegiate tournament was held in Kansans City. 3 In 1939 a group of coaches organized and sponsored the first “National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA)” 4 tournament. In 1946 another new professional Basketball league was formed and called the Basketball Association of America (BAA). Between 1948 and 1950 the NBL-teams joined the BAA and a new three-division league was formed – the National Basketball Association (NBA). In 1950 the NBA reduced its size and established two divisions. In 1967 the American Basketball Association (ABA) was formed and disbanded in 1976 as several teams joined the NBA. In 1970 the Eastern and Western conferences were established. In the late 1970s the NBA experienced difficulties when the game was per- ceived as dull, the ticket sales decreased, the revenue declined, and television ratings were as low as they had ever been. In March 1979 two players (Larry Bird and Magic Johnson) helped to revive public

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vgl. „Das Phänomen „Basketball“ – Erfindung - Begeisterung – Verbreitung“ Informa- tionen des Deutschen Basketball Bundes, Berlin, o. J.; S. 26f 2 vgl. http://www.history-of-Basketball.com/history.htm vom 01.07.2004

3 vgl. ebd.

4 http://www.history-of-Basketball.com/amateur.htm vom 01.07.2004

interest in Basketball again. In the late 1980s more and more male collegiate players left college before graduation to enter the NBA and, due to that, the rookie salary cap was transitive in 1995. In the 1997-98 season NBA owners and players could not agree on rules regarding a salary cap and the NBA owners instituted a player lock- out. 1

Structure

Common grounds

Although the game developed significantly different in both coun- tries, nevertheless some things are quite similar. Popularity is in- creasing in both countries. Another issue is that Basketball becomes more and more entertainment oriented and the sport itself shifts more and more to the background. There are also a few rules that are the same in Germany and the USA but in both countries the league has its “All-Star-games”. I want start talking about popularity and then write about the entertainment contains Basketball. For the topic “Rules”, I have a table and finally some information about the “All-Star games”.

Popularity

NBA:

In the USA, Basketball is the most popular sport after football. Al- most every school and college has its Basketball-court and team. In addition, inside the towns you see courts where people play with one another. Nevertheless, not every American plays Basketball. There are also a lot of people that are interested in watching the games of the NBA-teams, so that the huge arenas of the teams are always crowded with people. As an American friend of mine told me the people are not only interested in NBA-Basketball, they also watch college-games on TV and people take an interest in watching them live as well. The teams know how to make money with their

vgl. http://www.history-of-Basketball.com/history.htm vom 01.07.2004

popularity and so all the merchandising products bring them a lot of money because every fan wants to have a shirt, cap, tie, toothbrush, key-ring, scarf or something else from “His” or “Her” team. For ex- ample, “NBA officials project that some $ 3,3 billion worth of li- censed products will be sold by the time of the 2003-2004 season concludes.”1 That shows how many people are interested in Bas- ketball and in buying Basketball related products..

BBL:

Basketball is very popular in Germany too. However, it is not possi- ble to compare these two countries. However, the popularity is in- creasing. There were 16, 7 % 2 spectators watching the BBL games more this season than in the year before. Altogether 902,943 spec- tators watched the games in the 2003/2004 season, that’s an aver- age about 3,583 spectators per game. 3 According to a study of IFM on the year 2003, Basketball is the most popular sport among the 14 – 19 and 20 – 29 year olds and among the 30 – 39 year olds. Bas- ketball is the second most popular sport after motorcycle-sports. 4 That is something rather surprising because everybody might think that soccer is the most famous sport in Germany, especially among the young population, but polls show that this isn’t true. Because of this increasing popularity, more and more companies firms are in- terested in sponsoring Basketball. Like this the BBL was able to gain new sponsors like McDonald’s, OBI, LEGO, Nestlé and CineStar. 5

Basketball as entertainment

The next thing German and American Basketball have in common is that Basketball becomes more and more entertainment. In the USA this exist a lot more than in Germany. Nevertheless, it is also pre- sent in Germany. For example in Germany and America there are

professional cheerleaders at every game. In addition, a DJ plays music at all breaks and during the warming up. Another thing is the “Coming in” for the team. As the name of every player is announced, there is a spotlight on each player. In America, there are even very popular live-acts during the breaks during important games. An- other part where you can see this development is the merchandis- ing. Every team sells merchandise and makes a lot of money with that. What is really shocking is that the NBA is planning to film the team while they are in the dressing room. That shows that the sport itself develops more and more into selling and making money.

All-Star games

A great thing for the fan is the next commonality: the so-called All-

Star games. The best players of the league meet and play against each other. In the USA and in Germany this game takes place at the midpoint of every season - usually in January or February. These games really are something special because they only take place once a year and the fans are able to see all the famous players of the league from many teams at one single game. In America, these games taking place since 1951. In Germany they do not have such a long history.

Some rules

The next Basketball in America and Germany has in common are some rules. On the figure below, you see the rules that are the same inside the NBA and the BBL. For the BBL rules, you have to have a look at the FIBA-cleft at the figure beyond.

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Tab. 1: Common Rules 1

Current topics

The current topics surrounding American Basketball are more pleas- ant than those in Germany. From the next season on, there will be a new team inside the NBA. The Charlotte Bobcats will join the Atlan- tic Division in the Eastern Conference and play beginning in the 2004/2005 season. In Germany on the other side, the teams have problems with their licenses and one team even lost its license for the “1. Bundesliga” and had to leave and go to a lower league. The “Mitteldeutsche Basketball Club (MBC)“ also did not get a license for the “2. Bundesliga” and so the are not even allowed to play there, so rd highest league from the next season on.

they have to play in the 3

Differences

Teams/League

The league-structure is completely different in both countries. The reason therefore is easy to find: The USA is a lot bigger than Ger- many.

USA

The big country “USA” is split up into two Conferences: the Eastern and the Western Conference. These two Conferences are further split again. The Atlantic and the Central Division belong to the East- ern Conference and the Mid-West and the Pacific Division belong to the Western Conference. 1 This is necessary because of the huge size of the country. Otherwise, it would not be possible to play a national championship because of the huge distances. Something else that is different in American Basketball is the structure of the leagues and teams. In America, every team plays at any time inside the NBA. They do not have to leave the league when they have reached last place. If a team has joined the NBA once it is allowed to stay there as long as the team wants to. On the other hand, there are no local clubs like in Germany. In America, the players play for their college or high school and if they play good enough they pos- sibly will be picked up at a NBA-Draft, but there are no teams that are bound to a particular city. On the contrary: if the team-managers decide to leave the current city to move to another city – with a big- ger Basketball-Centre for example– they can leave just as they want to.

Germany

In Germany, everything is a little bit different. Everything is struc- tured and starts at small village clubs. You can play Basketball at different levels. It starts with lower regional leagues and ends with the “1. Bundesliga” and if somebody is good enough he or she is, probably allowed to play for his or her country. Every little club has

1 vgl. http://www.Basketball.com/teams.shtml vom 29.06.2004

the possibility to play inside the “1. Bundesliga” someday. On the other side every team that plays currently inside the “1. Bundesliga” could have to leave it. Reasons therefore could be that the team only reached a low standing or the club has too little money so that they lose the license and have to leave the “1. Bundesliga”.

Money

The opinion “Sport is sport and money is money” simply is not true when we talk about Basketball. The conviction that Basketball and Money do not have anything to do with one another is nothing but false. The NBA is business at its best and a marketing dream. In Germany it is the same, however it is not so much about making money in Germany yet.

NBA:

It all starts with the so called "salary caps“. These caps tell every team how much money they are allowed to spend on the salary of their players. 1 Despite these salary caps the top NBA players today earn between 13,000,000 and 28,000,000 dollar per year. 2 A player in his first year inside the NBA is called a rookie and earns between 669 and 3,349 dollar in the first season. 3 These rookies are the origi- nal reason why the salary caps exist. In the late 1980s more and more male collegiate players left college before graduation to enter the NBA and because of that the rookie salary cap was transitive in 1995. 4 Besides the salary caps that tell how much the teams are allowed to spend on the whole there are also minimum wages that tell how much a player has to earn. These salary lies between 370.000 and 1.100.000 dollars per year dependent on the years of service. 5 There is another figure that tells something about the money. This figure is the total team salary. These salaries are be-

tween 36,5 and 94,5 million dollar per year. 1 These earnings come for example from cable-contracts, tickets, and all the merchandise. Some people might think that the teams can’t make a lot of money with the selling of tickets but just think of the Single-Game-Prices. They lie between 10 – 240 dollars. Now, combine these prices with the amount of people watching one game and you have only one of many different incomes of a NBA team. Not only the teams make their money with the sport. In addition, the NBA itself knows how to work economically. For example, there is an own NBA-TV – chan- nel, an NBA restaurant and an own Sport-label that is, by the way, very successful.

BBL:

Just like I already mentioned it is all a little bit different in Germany. Everything transpires at a lower level. For example, a Basketball- player earns about as much as a 3rd class soccer-player in Ger- many. That means about 2,000 – 5,000 Euros per month. To get concrete figures was not really easy for me. I wrote to every single team in Germany and asked whether they could send me some material but from most of them, I didn’t even get an answer. There- fore, I have to trust the statement of one single team and a friend of mine that played Basketball for an Nuremberg team. Moreover, they told me, that the players have contracts about how much they earn and what they get extra. Most of them also get apartments, cars, and things like that. The income from the teams comes mainly from sponsors, games, and merchandising. Some sponsors are for ex- ample the “Deutsche Bahn”, “McDonald’s”, “OBI”, “LEGO”, “Nestlé” and the “CineStar” Group. The BBL got about 450.000.000,00 Euros from them. 2 The Single-Game-Prices lie between 6 and 32 euro.

Public interest

In both countries, the sport itself is very popular. The teams are building up new arenas and more and more people are watching the

games inside the BBL. But of course, in Germany all is a little bit new and not that grand like inside the NBA.

USA

Tab. 2: Typical Seating Chart 1

Last season the NBA outperformed the NFL in merchandise sales for the first time ever. That shows how popular Basketball in the

USA really is when there are people that buy merchandise for the

amount of 3.5 billion dollars. 2 Also, the huge arenas are a proof for the popularity of Basketball. The new arena of the Charlotte Bobcats offers seats for about 18,500 people. 3 You can’t compare that with German arenas.

Germany

In Germany everything is changing at the moment. For example, at the 2003/2004 season 16 teams played inside the league and eight new arenas could be opened. These arenas are multifunctional are- nas with seats for about 3.000 and 8.000 people. 1 The high popular- ity can also be seen when one considers the number of spectators: 789,062 fans were watching the 242 games last season. This corre- sponds to an increase of 16.7 % compared with the precede sea- son. 2

Basketball and Media

As you can imagine sport is connected with media because other- wise the people that aren’t able to watch the games live inside on of the arenas couldn’t see (or hear) the game or the results of the game. Connected with media you shouldn’t only think of television. Also the World Wide Web, radio, special magazines, and last but not least, the good old newspaper complements the group of media. But, as we already know it is all a little bit more appearance in the

USA than in Germany. You can see that when you look at the two

main homepages from the NBA and the BBL. The American home- page is much bigger than the German one. I also have to mention that they are working on a new look for the German homepage. 3

Germany

In Germany, most of the games aren’t even shown on TV but with some pay-per-view channels it’s possible to watch them. Therefore, the viewers have to pay and sometimes even have to complete a contract in which you must pay a special amount of money every month. Below you can see two illustrations from the BBL how much Basketball is shown on TV. These illustrations show that only a few

01.07.2004

2 vgl. ebd. vom 01.07.2004 3 vgl. http://www.basletball-bundesliga.de/staticsite/drucken.php?menuid=8 vom

TV-stations show Basketball and not for a very long and you can see that not that many people watch Basketball on TV.

USA

In the USA it’s very expensive if you’d like to watch the NBA-games. But, if you are willing to pay the price you will be able to watch every single game. For example, you need to rent pay-per-view and there- fore you further have to pay for every “Non-regular” game like play- offs or special games. The NBA also owns its own TV-Channel – the NBA-TV and every team has cable-contracts with one of the TV- Stations. Nevertheless, the people want to watch the games and therefore they are also willing to pay the prices the stations want. That shows that also inside that branch Basketball is a good mon- eymaker.

Rules

Tab. 4: Different Rules 1

My last point about the Differences is “Rules”. As you can see, there

are a few rules that are different inside the NBA and the BBL. For

1 vgl. http://www.usaBasketball.com/rules/rules.html vom 28.06.2004

example, the various distances and sizes are interesting. Some people might say that the Basketball inside the NBA has to be better than German Basketball because the players there are able to score “3-points-goals” from a farer distance than the German ones. I think that’s the opinion of some people and everybody has to think about that for himself.

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Literaturverzeichnis

Bücher:

Cremer Leo: Faszination Basketball, Bremerhaven 1991 Carlson Mike: NBA-Basketball: Stars & Stories, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1994 La Feber Walter: Michael Jordan and the new capitalism, New York [u.a.] 1999 Freyer Walter: Handbuch des Sportmarketing, Wiesbaden 1990 Irwin Richard L.: Sport promotion and sales management, Champaign, IL [u.a.] 2002 Trosien Gerhard: Grenzen des Sportkonsums: Sportmarketing, Butzbach-Griedel

2003

Weber Wolfgang: Die wirtschaftliche Bedeutung des Sports, Schorndorf 1995

Zeitschriften:

Basket, 10. Jahrgang 26. Mai 2004, Heft 6/2004 Basket, 10. Jahrgang 07. Juli 2004, Heft 7-8/2004

Internetseiten:

http://www.keepmedia.com

„Das Phänomen „Basketball“ – Erfindung - Begeisterung – Verbreitung“ Informatio-

nen des Deutschen Basketball Bundes, Berlin

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