Aurélien Fleurot 7:30 p.m., January 18, 2023
Three years after the very first official NBA game in Paris, the American basketball championship is back on Thursday evening in France with the confrontation between the Chicago Bulls and the Detroit Pistons.
Many tourists will be added to the French contingent in the spans of the Accor Arena which will be sold out.
In 2020, the craze had been gigantic.
The match between the Milwaukee Bucks and the Charlotte Hornets was the first official NBA meeting played in France and attracted 14 partners, associated with the meeting, which was a record for a match outside the American borders.
Paris had then succeeded London as the host city of the North American basketball championship in Europe.
140,000 people had tried to buy one of the 16,000 tickets, sold between 65 and 650 euros, and sold out in barely 10 minutes.
This Thursday, the meeting between the Chicago Bulls and the Detroit Pistons will take place in an Arena de Bercy full to bursting and filled with a very cosmopolitan audience.
The NBA and tourism
If this Chicago / Detroit will allow tricolor fans to see Killian Hayes, the French playmaker, who is gradually becoming one of the leaders of the Pistons, he should also bring many basketball fans from all over the world to Paris.
According to Hotels.com, official partner of the North American league, 80% of fans have already traveled to watch a basketball game.
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The booking platform has even observed, since the announcement of the official date of the match, a 55% increase in searches for Parisian hotels on January 19, 2023. Requests came in particular from Koreans and... Americans!
France, a lucrative market for the NBA
Still according to data from Hôtels.com, basketball fans would travel up to more than 700 km to see their team play and would be willing to spend 600 euros on average.
France and Paris appear to be a logical choice for the NBA, since France is the number 1 market in Europe for the sale of derivative products and online sales from the NBA Store.
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And the players themselves contribute to it.
Since their arrival at the beginning of the week in Paris, between two training sessions, they have been chaining moments of shopping and discovering the great Parisian restaurants.
The success is such that basketball fans could benefit from two NBA games in Paris in 2024. However, no official announcement has been made on the subject.