[Vilius]

How popular is it? How much is it covered by media?

Basketball is #1 sport in Lithuanian and for any basketball fan there's no need to tell more about it because he should know. But still I'll tell you. Everybody plays this game. It is called second religion. Basketball is our national sport {SMILIES_PATH}/smile.gif Naturally it gets a lot of attention from the media.

[Mavs]

*Considers moving to Lithuania*

Its not all that popular in England. Where i live there is a decent following. We have a team here in the second english league, and 30 minutes down the road we have a team in the top league, BBL.

But the problem is it is given no time in the media. You never hear anything about basketball. We get one live NBA game a week on the free channels, and a further 2 NBA games (one not live) on pay channels. You can also get NASN for NBA games, but that means paying even more money for chanells, im not sure how many you get on it anyway. But no English games are shown on the TV, apart from this year the BBL final was, but that was it. On our big news channel you only get the NBA scores, not English scores.

People are not going to notice the game when it is given so little attention by the media

[bostonceltics]

agree with mav no where near where basketball should be in england, i'll watch my local team Guildford Heat play but there is a clear difference to the quality of play in countries with more of a effort on basketball.

[diego.es]

It always was the second sport in Spain, but the league has gone down in attention and has fallen down the ratings behind Formula 1, Motorcycling, tennis, cycling and even indoor football. Why? The league is not as attractive because the squads change too much and there are too many foreigners. Even teams change names and colours way too often; there are only 4 clsassics (Real Madrid, Barcelona, Estudiantes and Joventut) and two of tem are football clubs. All that works in favour of the national team's attention, as we like basketball and we look forward watching our team.

Media-wise, the national side has far more attention than the league including the play offs. The regular season has little covergae in the press; they would give the scores and a paragraph about the best game of the week. But when the national side plays, they will have a couple of pages and full coverage

[ARISforever]

for many many years basketball is number 1 sport in Greece by far but now[after wonn Euro2004] basketball is together with football in first place....basketball still is the Nationall sport in Greece and the Greek NT are the biggest love in our heart....Greece=basketball

[Dave]

bostonceltics, on Jun 2 2006, 03:13 PM, said:

agree with mav no where near where basketball should be in england, i'll watch my local team Guildford Heat play but there is a clear difference to the quality of play in countries with more of a effort on basketball.

Guilford Heat were on Newsround for about 30 seconds after they mentioned their BBL Cup win!

At least they got some media attention, if only from a kids news channel!

[CalvG]

thats the problem with the BBL they get the fan attention espec. here in plymouth but it the sevre lack of the media attention its in a similar position as football is in america. not even local media are covering the sport!

[Seb12]

ARISforever, on Jan 10 2007, 10:20 PM, said:

for many many years basketball is number 1 sport in Greece by far but now[after wonn Euro2004] basketball is together with football in first place....basketball still is the Nationall sport in Greece and the Greek NT are the biggest love in our heart....Greece=basketball

I disagree with that. Greeks aren't that interested in basketball, no matter how successful we are. Football is the number 1 sport for a lot of years and it's only 2 or 3 years that basketball is earning some fans again, but it hasn't become number 1 yet.

[Black Urum]

I agree, while Greece is very successfull in sports like basketball, water polo, volleyball etc the majority blindly follows football, which is frankly SHIT in Greece, thats the only truth.

So, ok we were all happy that Greece won Euro2004, but...

Basketball is a game that fits Greeks and they are actually good at it, as the latest trophies have proved.

[Luke]

It is not that popular at all in England in all honesty, hardly gets any coverage or anything, the results will be on Sky Sports News sometimes but thats about it.

They show the games and stuff on Sky Sports but don't make any efforts to tell us more about them it appears.

[Vilius]

Luke, on Jun 15 2007, 02:22 AM, said:

It is not that popular at all in England in all honesty, hardly gets any coverage or anything, the results will be on Sky Sports News sometimes but thats about it.

They show the games and stuff on Sky Sports but don't make any efforts to tell us more about them it appears.

Just looked at the BBC website's sport page and this is the list of the sports they give on that page:

Football
Cricket
Rugby Union
Rugby League
Tennis
Golf
Motorsport
Boxing
Athletics
Snooker
Horse Racing
Cycling
Disability Sport
Olympics 2012
Other Sport...

And when you click "Other Sport..." you find basketball among these sports:

American Football
Badminton
Baseball
Basketball
Bowls
Darts
Equestrian
Gymnastics
Hockey
Ice Hockey
Netball
Rowing
Sailing
Shooting
Squash
Swimming
Table Tennis
Triathlon
Weightlifting
Winter Sports

[Luke]

Good man.

Will use that from now on to keep up next season.

Cheers!

[Vilius]

Luke, on Jun 16 2007, 02:08 AM, said:

Good man.

Will use that from now on to keep up next season.

Cheers!

With that post I wanted to show how poor the coverage is. If you go there and see you will only find a few articles about NBA finals and a couple of articles about GB national team and that's about all.

[Aspa#13]

Basketball is popular here, but not as much as football is. Football is still number one, and the medias promote it a lot more than they promote basketball.

[rikhardur]

Basketball in Portugal is barely covered, apart from the NBA which still has some attention, but very few compared to other sports and football of course. Football dominates every sport news ad nauseam really. As Portugal is playing in Eurobasket this year, I expect some more coverage, and the Jo?o Gomes phenomenon might draw some attention as well, but I'm not really sure it'll be a thing to continue.

[Black Urum]

Really? I had no idea, will be interesting to watch them play. Which group is Portugal in?

[Luke]

Vilius, on Jun 16 2007, 09:43 AM, said:

With that post I wanted to show how poor the coverage is. If you go there and see you will only find a few articles about NBA finals and a couple of articles about GB national team and that's about all.

You will probably find more information on Sky Sports' website as they show the NBA games, but I wish there was more on the BBC sport website.

[rikhardur]

Black Urum, on Jun 16 2007, 04:45 PM, said:

Really? I had no idea, will be interesting to watch them play. Which group is Portugal in?

Group B, along with Spain, Croatia and Latvia. If Portugal doesn't lose for too many it'll be a victory already lol

[stylingbasketball]

Although my country is not so popular in basketball but the national players are improving! Hoping one day i can see my country people playing in the NBA league season.

[dennis40voz]

Vilius, on 29 May 2006 - 04:00 PM, said:

How popular is it? How much is it covered by media?

Basketball is #1 sport in Lithuanian and for any basketball fan there's no need to tell more about it because he should know. But still I'll tell you. Everybody plays this game. It is called second religion. Basketball is our national sport <!-- s:) -->{SMILIES_PATH}/smile.gif<!-- s:) --> Naturally it gets a lot of attention from the media.

I'm in Finland at the moment and basketball is not very popular although there are many professional teams. Anyway in my town there are only 20 players at maximum .

And my home country Vietnam got its first professional team to play in the ASEAN last year