Brits In Brooklyn

Where is the money for the new Barclays Center in Brooklyn going to come from? Europe, largely.

The new home for the New Jersey Nets is expected to cost $950 million, more than twice the cost of any pro basketball or hockey arena ever built in the U.S., according to the Newark Star-Ledger. Meanwhile, the Nets expect to lose about $40 million this season at the Izod Center, with more of the same ahead.

Nets CEO Brett Yormark has already gone to Britain and brought back a doozy of a naming rights deal, with Barclays Bank paying an unprecedented $20 million a year to put its name on the Brooklyn arena. The Prudential Center gets less than a fourth of that figure annually from its namesake bank, the paper said.

Yormark has already returned to Europe, seeking more investors in London and Turin, Italy.

"What differentiates [the Barclays Center] from any other building is that you have [foreign] companies that are looking to build a brand or to launch a brand in the U.S.," Yormark told the Star-Ledger. "And when you come to the U.S., well, you have to be in New York."

Some European partners may be announced next month when the Nets open a Manhattan sales office, Yormark added.

Yormark said another reason European investors are interested in the arena is because it is designed by the architect Frank Gehry, who built the Guggenheim Museum in Spain and the "Dancing House" in the Czech Republic.

The Nets are a few years off from moving to the new arena, with plans to stay in the Izod Center in East Rutherford through at least 2010.