To the Germans (or those living in Germany): Is there much publicity in Germany for the World Basketball Championships currently taking place? Are people excited that Germany have made it to the semi-finals? (I realize this belongs in "other sports", but I am afraid the Germans won't see it there)
The games are at night, this is causing some loss of attention (and the TV station covering is doing its part as well). Basketball is kind of booming with Dirk Nowitzki and that way it reaches those who were interested in the sports already before, but they don't win new supporters because of the mentioned reasons.
I just got the TV time for the next games, which excellently proves the horrible coverage of the WC: tomorrow there is the EC qualifier of Germany in Lithuania at 7.30 (all times pm). Consequently the game is over at about 9.15, but first they do the after game coverage before switching to Indianapolis at 9.45 to cover probably a bit more than one quarter of the semifinal. In case that Germany reaches the WC final they'll cover live the second half from 11 to 12 and in case they are playing for rank 3 they'll just sum it up from 11.30 till 0.15. Even though it's "only" basketball, this coverage is a mere catastrophe, I don't know why they bought the rights if they don't want to cover it.
Wow. That's terrible. They must not have paid much for the TV rights. It's good to hear that Nowitzki is popular, though. He is one of my favorite players, and I hope that Germany will produce a few more like him. How popular is he? Is he at all close to German football superstars, such as Kahn or Ballack?
Actually the worst thing is that they got the rights short before the tournament - otherwise the WC would have been in a smaller nationwide sports channel, with lots of commercials, but at least full coverage. I mean, for tomorrow I fully understand them as soccer cares for better ratings, but all games so far were at 12.30 where they have bad ratings no matter what they show - and they prefered to have old TV shows or news (which usually are at halftime) before and didn't cover before 12.55. Nowitzki is a hard worker, the Mavericks wanted to send him home after the first training camp to play a further season in Germany, but he insisted on staying and did extra hours in the gym together with Steve Nash. The one, two years of torture paid out quite well with his 90 M six year contract. I wonder what Donovan could achieve in soccer with Nowitzki's will to make it - I think their situations are very well comparable. Nowitzki is less known than Kahn or Ballack. Basketball is quite a modern sport over here, mainly the youth is interested. You'll hardly find older people being interested or knowing a lot about this sports - and therefore they don't know Nowitzki. For the youth he's a big idol though.