David Stern: NBA booming with 20 percent revenue increase

NBA Commissioner David Stern announced on Tuesday that at the closing of the current season, the league would have generated generate an estimated $5 billion I revenue, which is around 20 percent more than last season.

David Stern was addressing a meeting of global team, league as well as industry executives on social responsibility at the Yankees Stadium on Tuesday. David Stern also discussed the foreseeable expansion of NBA into Europe. However, David Stern expressed that NBA’s expansion into the European market wouldn’t occur for another decade, and subsequently it was favorable to simultaneously introduce several clubs in the region, instead of taking a lone wolf stance.

"I think for us the thing that would make the most sense would be a division in Europe at the time that it comes," stated David Stern. "I don't see that for another decade at least. Not one team."

Last month, David Stern announced his intentions to retire by February 2014, after leading the NBA for 30 glorious decades, which followed radical changes in the workings and fan appeal for the league. Hence, the execution of NBA’s European expansion plans will come into the share of David Stern’s successor Adam Silver, who has been the league’s deputy commissioner since 2006.

"We obviously keep pretty close tabs on how our attendance is in our overseas games, what the pricing structure is, what the fan affinity is,” said David Stern, “what the television arrangements are, what the ratings are, all of the metrics of the business in a place or places. It's a pretty sophisticated enterprise."

"It's not something we've done a lot of looking at, but it's something that we've had people approach us with," David Stern added on the NBA’s current activeness on European expansion plans.

David Stern offered optimistic statistics from the NBA’s success in established markets, stating that the NBA’s revenue estimate for the current year ending by 30th September 2013 was expected to reach $5 million. That puts the NBA right in the middle of the major North American leagues, with NFL ranking No.1 at $9 billion, MLB raking-in $7.5 billion by the end of this financial cycle and well ahead of NHL which estimated revenue at $3.3 billion.

"I would say that China, which is the largest segment outside the U.S., is doing very well,” David Stern said about foreign markets which have seen similar NBA expansions. “I would say we'll see that to some degree as well in Turkey, in Africa, in Brazil.”

"The components are broadcast, digital, merchandise, marketing partnerships and events, which can be games,” Stern continued regarding the tools that NBA relied on during its expansion schemes, “and the 3-on-3 tournaments and clinics, any variety of events that draw people."

NBA is currently broadcasting in 46 languages to 216 countries/territories.