NBA, AEG in Shanghai deal

The NBA and the Los Angeles sports and entertainment firm AEG announced plans Tuesday to help develop a $280-million arena and recreation center for the Shanghai World Expo in 2010 -- the first of a dozen multipurpose arenas that the new joint venture hopes to build in China.

Neither AEG nor the basketball league would disclose the amount of its investment in the project, but Shanghai Oriental Pearl Group, a government-owned media enterprise, is expected to take the lead in financing and developing the 18,000-seat arena along the Huangpu River.

The three partners announced the deal in Shanghai’s glitzy Pudong financial district, with former Los Angeles Lakers star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar standing tall on a stage in front of the Oriental Pearl Tower, the rocket-shaped building owned by Shanghai Oriental Pearl that is one of the city’s signature structures. Abdul-Jabbar was there on behalf of the NBA.

Afterward, AEG and NBA officials flew south to Guangzhou, where they were expected to unveil plans today for an arena in time for the Asian Games, which that city is hosting in late 2010.

During the Beijing Olympics in August, Tim Leiweke, president of AEG, said his company planned to spend at least $100 million in China over the next five years.

AEG, part of billionaire Philip Anschutz’s conglomerate, owns Staples Center and controls or runs about 90 other facilities around the world. The company’s first major venture in China was to join with the NBA to operate the Wukesong arena in Beijing, site of the Olympic basketball games.

Leiweke said that even as economic growth in the U.S. was slowing, AEG’s plans for China remained on track. “It’s had zero impact on China,” he said of the global financial crisis.

The NBA’s head of international business, Heidi Ueberroth, said much the same thing. The Chinese arenas would help the NBA in its plans for a league here with the Chinese Basketball Assn. Ueberroth said the two sides were in “early negotiations.”

Although Shanghai and other cities in China have built countless office towers, hotels and apartments, there is a dearth of high-end sports and entertainment facilities.

The Shanghai arena, shaped like a flying saucer, would anchor a large area with a music club, cinemas, an ice rink and shops. The project still needs final approval from China’s ministries of culture and commerce.

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don.lee@latimes.com