Includes NBA Europe Live Presented by EA SPORTS and Basketball Without Borders India

American Airlines and The National Basketball Association (NBA) have reached a marketing partnership that includes several of the league’s most prominent international grassroots initiatives featuring activities in nine countries.

American Airlines will serve as the official airline of 2008 NBA Europe Live presented by EA SPORTS(TM), the NBA’s European tour, which will return for its third consecutive year in October. American Airlines will also serve as a partner of the NBA’s first-ever event in India, Basketball without Borders 2008 — the league’s international basketball development and community outreach program — which will be held in New Delhi July 3-6.

American Airlines will also support several other NBA international grassroots events, including NBA 3 x 3 and NBA Madness in Japan, NBA 3 x 3 in Mexico, and additional NBA events in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Russia and the UK. American will have a prominent presence at each grassroots event and will be incorporated into various on-site activities and promotions.

The partnership is an expansion of American Airlines previous support of NBA international events, which included Basketball without Borders in Shanghai, China, in 2006, a preseason game between the Miami Heat and Detroit Pistons in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in October 2006, and NBA Europe Live 2007 in London, which featured a preseason game between the Boston Celtics and Minnesota Timberwolves.

“Our relationship with American Airlines illustrates the collaborative nature of our efforts to grow the game internationally and allows us to bring our fans an authentic NBA experience through a wide range of events and community programs,” said Emilio Collins, Vice President - International Development for the NBA.

“We are thrilled to announce our international partnership with the NBA and honored to be an integral part of their charitable programs worldwide, especially in India, which we have served since 2005,” said Billy Sanez, Director - Advertising, Promotions and Corporate Communications for American Airlines. “American’s extensive global reach makes this a particularly exciting partnership. We applaud the NBA and are pleased to help bring Basketball without Borders to the world.”

As part of 2008 NBA Europe Live presented by EA SPORTS, the Miami Heat, New Jersey Nets, New Orleans Hornets and Washington Wizards will play preseason games in Barcelona, Berlin, London and Paris in October. Following NBA Europe Live 2008, NBA teams will have played 48 games in 18 cities in Europe over the past two decades. Last year’s seven NBA Europe Live games drew more than 10.3 million viewers, 75,000 spectators, and were supported by 23 marketing partners.

Basketball without Borders 2008 will take place in New Delhi, India; Istanbul, Turkey; and Johannesburg, South Africa, this summer. The NBA and International Basketball Federation’s (FIBA) global basketball development and community outreach program unites elite young basketball players to promote the sport and encourage positive social change in the areas of education, health and wellness in local communities. To date, Basketball without Borders has featured more than 250 current and former NBA players, coaches and team personnel from 30 different teams who served as camp coaches and mentors for more than 1,200 young athletes from more than 100 countries and territories on five continents.

NBA Madness, the NBA’s interactive basketball lifestyle event consisting of basketball activities, musical performances and special appearances by NBA players, dance teams and mascots, will visit Tokyo, Japan, August 29-31. NBA 3 x 3 is focused on developing future generations of NBA fans by growing the game of basketball internationally. It consists of regional basketball tournaments where winning teams from each respective region will advance to a championship game. The event visited Mexico City on May 24 and 25, and will visit six Japanese cities including Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya, Fukuoka, Sendai, and Takamatsu in July and August.

Source: American Airlines Web site: http://www.aa.com/

LeBron is Featured Player in His Own Green-Themed Online Game: LeBron James: Worldwide Big Green Bike-a-thon!

Four-time NBA All-Star LeBron James teams up with Nickelodeon’s The Big Green Help pro-social campaign this month in a brand-new online mini-game, LeBron James: Worldwide Big Green Bike-a-thon! that features James himself. Available now on http://www.biggreenhelp.com/, players are asked to help a bike-riding LeBron avatar deliver green tips across the globe to rack up points and progress to the next level of play. In addition to the game, James will appear in a The Big Green Help public service announcement (PSA) airing throughout the summer. Designed to empower kids to take action on the environment, Nickelodeon’s The Big Green Help multiplatform campaign provides information and tools to help explain climate change to kids, and connect them to energy saving and earth-friendly activities in their everyday lives.

“Our goal is to make learning about the environment appealing to kids so they can take the lead on this issue,” said Marva Smalls, Nickelodeon’s Executive Vice President of Public Affairs. “We’ve already seen that kids are responding to the campaign on our digital platforms, and having positive role models like LeBron James participate will only help to forward The Big Green Help mission.”

“We all need to be aware of how to take care of the environment,” said James. “I’m glad that I can show kids what they can do to help.”

Encouraging kids to reduce automobile usage and curb CO2 emissions, LeBron James: Worldwide Big Green Bike-a-thon! is the second in the campaign’s series of customized mini-games leading up to the centerpiece of The Big Green Help — the first global green online multiplayer game for kids, launching in December. In the global game, players will work to “virtually” lower the Earth’s CO2 levels and will be challenged to pledge volunteer hours toward creating a healthy environment in their homes, schools or communities. The game also will incorporate The Big Green Help’s main themes: Slow the Flow, educating kids on how to curtail the waste of energy and natural resources; Recycle and Pre-Cycle, encouraging the use of items that can be recycled; Grow the Green, which teaches kids how to create a greener planet; and the current theme, Curb the Car.

Nickelodeon has teamed up with a number of key partners for The Big Green Help who are helping to extend the campaign’s reach through local grassroots activities and programs including: The LeBron James Family Foundation; the National Wildlife Federation; the Natural Resources Defense Council; NFL; The Boys & Girls Clubs of America; Girl Scouts of the USA; National 4-H Council; and ERTHNXT.

Kids are already stepping up to participate in The Big Green Help. Since its April 19 launch, more than 6.5 million game plays have been generated by SpongeBob & Patrick: Dirty Bubble Busters, the campaign’s first mini-game to be introduced. The game has remained the most popular on http://www.nick.com/ for four consecutive weeks.

Online, Nick.com’s The Big Green Help website, http://www.biggreenhelp.com/, serves as an educational, fun homebase for kids about the environment and will add new elements throughout June and July. Nicktropolis (http://www.nicktropolis.com/), Nickelodeon’s virtual community, will launch a scavenger hunt where kids will be encouraged to find recyclable items. Daily tips and a glossary of terms coinciding with the campaign’s current theme of Curb the Car will also be made available online

Nickelodeon is a global voice for kids and has a legacy of addressing important issues that affect their lives. The Big Help pro-social campaign, a CTAM Hall of Fame inductee, inspired a generation of more than 40 million kid volunteers pledging 383 volunteer hours. Its Let’s Just Play campaign motivated more than one million kids to get out and play during Nick’s annual Worldwide Day of Play and 500,000 kids to pledge to live healthier lifestyles through the Let’s Just Play Go Healthy Challenge. Nick’s health and wellness initiatives have recently launched in France and Italy, joining long time international efforts in the UK, Holland, Australia and South East Asia.

For more information, visit http://www.thebiggreenhelppress.com/.

Nickelodeon, now in its 29th year, is the number-one entertainment brand for kids. It has built a diverse, global business by putting kids first in everything it does. The company includes television programming and production in the United States and around the world, plus consumer products, online, recreation, books, magazines and feature films. Nickelodeon’s U.S. television network is seen in more than 96 million households and has been the number-one-rated basic cable network for more than 13 consecutive years. Nickelodeon and all related titles, characters and logos are trademarks of Viacom Inc. (NYSE:VIA) (NYSE:VIA.B) .

Source: Nickelodeon

Should anyone really be surprised about this year’s old-school NBA finals matchup? Not if they’ve been tracking the health of the hotel industry. According to PKF Hospitality Research (PKF-HR), the nation’s leader in hospitality research and consulting, there is a strong relationship between hotel industry data and the NBA championship.

Hotel performance measures such as occupancy, room rates, and profits historically have proved to be accurate predictors of the NBA champions. In the years when the Celtics or Lakers have been champions, the performance of the U.S. hotel industry was surprisingly similar.

The 2007-2008 NBA season marks the 11th time that the Lakers and Celtics have met in the finals. These two historic franchises have combined to win 30 of the 61 NBA championships (soon to be 31 of 62). PKF-HR has been collecting data on hotels since 1930, or 17 years before the first professional basketball championship was played. Mark Woodworth, president of PKF-HR, explains, “Being a Celtics fan, I wanted to get a better handle on the likely outcome of the series.”

Woodworth noted that the correlation between PKF’s data and the NBA playoffs has significant historical precedence. When either the Celtics or Lakers have won the NBA championship, national hotel occupancy has historically decreased. In their most recent Hotel Horizons(sm) forecast report, PKF-HR reaffirmed their prediction of a national decline in hotel occupancy for the year end 2008. The reliability of PKF-HR’s hotel data does not end there.

The average annual change in profits for the hotel industry in the 10 years that the Celtics and Lakers have met was 3.1 percent. PKF-HR forecasts that in 2008, profits will increase by 2.9 percent, leading the firm to suggest that these numbers are more than coincidence. “We really should not have been surprised to see the Celtics and Lakers back in the finals. Two plus two equals four as far as I know,” Woodworth said.

The real question on everyone’s mind is who will be this year’s champion.

“At the risk of offending our clients and colleagues in Los Angeles, all trends point towards Boston being this year’s NBA champion,” concludes Reed Woodworth, vice president of the PKF Consulting Boston office. “National hotel occupancy is expected to decline this year, and of the eight times Boston has beaten the Lakers, occupancy decreased in five of those years.

“To make Boston fans feel even more confident, we need look no further than the annual change in room rate,” Reed added. “In the years that Boston has beaten the Lakers, rates increased by 3.9 percent. When Boston has won an NBA championship against any team, the hotel industry reported a 4.0 percent increase in rates. This year PKF-HR is forecasting a 4.1 percent increase in room rates, almost an identical match. Sorry, Lakers fans.”

Bruce Baltin, senior vice president of the PKF Consulting office in Los Angeles, jokes, “I still expect the Lakers to win. But even if they lose, from a hotel owner’s perspective, I am happy to be in Los Angeles, where hotel revenue is projected to grow at twice the rate expected for Boston hotels in 2008.”

“Lest anyone think that I was able to influence how the data was interpreted, we had a Knicks fan, my colleague Robert Mandelbaum, check the numbers,” Woodworth added.

PKF Hospitality Research (PKF-HR), headquartered in Atlanta, is the research affiliate of PKF Consulting, a consulting and real estate firm specializing in the hospitality industry. PKF Consulting has offices in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Atlanta, Indianapolis, Houston, Dallas, Bozeman, Sacramento, Seattle, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.

Source: PKF Hospitality Research

Web site: http://www.nba.com/