Basketball in Japan

Last week, I read an article on an online Japanese newspaper that titled “6 Works Teams Will Not Join the New Basketball League”. This article disappointed me because I had strongly believed that we would have a new basketball league in order to encourage the basketball industry in Japan.

As discussed on the previous blog post, two professional basketball leagues exist in Japan. One league is named Japan Basketball League (JBL) that is formed by 8 works teams. Another league is Basketball Japan League (bj League) that includes 19 teams. Usually, each country has one top league, but Japan has two top leagues. As the result, there are a lot of arguments that this strange situation in Japan has made obstacles to develop basketball in Japan.

Economic Impacts of 2012 London Olympics

Image from Wikipedia

Forbes.com listed the 2012 London Olympics as one of the 10 sports business stories to watch in 2012.

The cost projection of the London Olympics had been grown from $3.6 billion in 2005 to $14.4 billion in 2007. Forbes.com expects the total cost of the London Olympics would be between $15 to 18 billion. This number is the second most expensive Olympics below the 2010 Beijing Olympics with the cost of $40 billion.

As discussed before, hosting the Olympics can bring positive economic impacts to the hosting country and the city even it costs a great amount of money.