How online betting brought Rodman and Kim together Former basketball star Dennis Rodman greets officials at Pyongyang airport on Thursday. The growing basketball collaboration between Dennis Rodman and Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, can be traced back to an Irish online betting company and the pope. Rodman, the former NBA star who arrived in Pyongyang on Thursday to tutor North Korea's best basketball players at Mr Kim's behest, is doing so under the sponsorship of Paddy Power, Europe's leading internet gambling business. The four-day trip comes after a deadly purge by Mr Kim that has raised worries of a dangerous power struggle in the nuclear-armed and often unpredictable country. How Rodman and Paddy Power came to know each other is rooted in what gambling industry experts call the company's culture of shrewd stunt marketing, offensive ads and the acceptance of wagers on almost anything, ranging from the final episode of The Simpsons to a president's longevity in office. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and Dennis Rodman in Pyongyang in February. The relationship began in February, when the company took note of Rodman's highly publicised first visit to North Korea and his declaration of friendship with Mr Kim - just as company officials were strategising to maximise betting profits on the successor to Pope Benedict XVI. They recruited Rodman to encourage betting on a black pope, riding him around Rome in an ersatz popemobile, as speculation intensified that the cardinals closeted in the Sistine Chapel might pick Peter Turkson of Ghana to be the Roman Catholic Church's first African pope. "We had a money-back special: your money back if the pope's black," Paddy Power spokesman Rory Scott said. So when Argentina's Jorge Mario Bergoglio, now known as Pope Francis, was chosen, Mr Scott said jokingly, "our prayers were answered." During their pope collaboration, Mr Scott said, Rodman and company executives devised the idea of setting up an international basketball tournament involving North Korea's national team. Months later, when Rodman visited Mr Kim a second time, the North Korean leader, an avowed basketball enthusiast, embraced the idea. He said they should hold the tournament in Pyongyang on his 31st birthday, January 8. Rodman's publicist, Darren Prince, did not respond to requests for comment on the trip, which comes as Mr Kim, who leads one of the world's most isolated and repressive governments, appears to be engaged in crushing political challenges to his supremacy. Mr Kim's uncle and one-time mentor, Jang Song-thaek, was executed last week after an abruptly announced trial and conviction for sedition. Rodman told the Associated Press on Thursday that his plans had not changed and that the trip could ease the long-standing estrangement between the US and North Korea. He said the trip was an opportunity for others to see "that this country is actually not as bad as people project it to be in the media." Rodman had said previously that after he conducted the training he would return in January with an unspecified number of former NBA players for the Kim Jong-un birthday tournament. During Rodman's first trip to North Korea, photos that quickly spread online showed him and Mr Kim laughing together as they took in a basketball game. Rodman has proclaimed Mr Kim "a friend for life" and "a very good guy." US State Department officials have repeatedly said that Rodman does not represent the US government and is carrying no messages on its behalf. But privately, diplomats and North Korea specialists say, there is considerable interest in Washington in Rodman's trip, partly because so little is known about Mr Kim, the grandson of Kim Il-sung, North Korea's revolutionary founder.