NBA deputy commissioner Mark Tatum has ensured British basketball fans that the league has not given up on London.

The Association used to send two teams for an annual regular-season matchup at the fabled O2 Arena during the 2010s. But an NBA London Game hasn’t been played since 2018-19 with Paris, France, replacing the British capital as the host of the European showdown.

Tatum spoke about basketball’s reach and influence in London with Mayor Sadiq Khan during the latter’s trip to New York City last month. And both committed to bringing NBA basketball back to the UK.

“We had a great meeting here in New York,” Tatum told reporters in a press conference with international media ahead of Tuesday’s 2024-25 NBA season tip-off. “And what he reaffirmed to me is his commitment to investing in and growing the game of basketball in the UK.

“We’re seeing that excitement grow. We’re seeing the interest in the level of the game grow. What he and I talked about was finding ways to bring the NBA back to the UK at some point in the not-too-distant future, and I’m hopeful that we will be able to do that.

“It’s been a few years since we’ve played NBA regular season games in the UK, but he expressed a commitment to bringing the NBA back – and I expressed an interest in finding ways to do that.”

The NBA has become a truly international game over the past decade with six of the last MVP awards ending up in the hands of a foreign-born player. Each of the 30 teams has at least one non-American player at the start of the 2024-25 campaign.

NBA Deputy Commissioner and Chief Operating Officer Mark Tatum during panel discussion at SXSW on March 9, 2018 in Austin, Texas

Tatum said he discussed the NBA’s return to London with the city’s Mayor Sadiq Khan last month ( 

Image:

Jesse Grant/Getty Images for Cisco Systems, Inc.)

Also, a record-tying 125 international hoopers from a record-tying 43 countries across six continents featured on Opening Night rosters. Two of those players are Brits, San Antonio Spurs forward Jeremy Sochan – who represents Poland at the international level, though – and New York Knicks star OG Anunoby with both set to start for their respective teams.

Helping London’s case in talks with the NBA, basketball’s popularity in the UK is on the rise – and the trend has not escaped the league’s attention. “Basketball is one of the fastest-growing sports in the UK right now, and we’re really seeing that growth,” Tatum said.

“We’re seeing it grow very, very quickly at the grassroots level, and we’re seeing interest in the game grow as well in the UK very rapidly.

Basketball participation in the UK has increased by 30 percent since 2022, according to YouGov numbers provided by the NBA, with Sport England’s Active Lives survey stating that 1.5 million people play it on a weekly basis, making it the country’s second most popular team sport.

Meanwhile, NBA fandom among adults is up by 24 percent since 2022, per YouGov. The Association is also the top U.S. sports league among the Gen Z population with 2.2 million fans in the UK.