ANSCHUTZ Entertainment Group (AEG), the American company spending £1 billion to resurrect the Millennium Dome, has said that it may build an arena in Paris or buy a Premiership football club as it expands into Europe.

Tim Leiweke, president and chief executive, has told The Times that the company would invest heavily in Britain and continental Europe once it had completed its role in the £5 billion resurrection of the Dome.

“We don’t stand still; we’re very aggressive,” Mr Leiweke said after announcing plans for the David Beckham Academy, one of the first anchor tenants at the Dome peninsula. He said that AEG, which owns the 22,000-seat Staples Centre in Los Angeles along with the LA Kings ice hockey team and a stake in the Lakers basketball team, would look to expand into leading European cities once the Dome was complete.

“We want to be in capital markets, which is what London is — up there with New York as the most exciting city in the world,” he said.

“We would definitely be interested in Paris, but we’ll have to see what happens with the Olympics in 2012,” he added, referring to the Dome’s role as an important venue if the Olympic Games come to London. “We’re more than married to the London bid. We’re in love with it, married to it, having its kids,” he said.

Mr Leiweke is the most public lieutenant of Philip Anschutz, AEG’s secretive billionaire owner. In his early twenties Mr Leiweke developed a soccer franchise in St Louis, drawing crowds of thousands to an unfamiliar game, before moving on to similar feats in Kansas City and Baltimore. He moved into basketball, which brought him into contact with Mr Anschutz. His main task is to manage AEG’s £1.2 billion investment in the Dome.

Mr Leiweke said there was no plan to buy live entertainment companies in Europe, but did not rule out adding a Premiership football club. He said he was based “mostly in London” while AEG works on the Dome, which he described as “Mr Anschutz’s largest ever single investment”. As a part-time Londoner he has developed an affinity for Chelsea and Arsenal football clubs and has “a lot of respect for Charlton”.

AEG recently poached Rob Hallett from Mean Fiddler to run its live entertainment division in Europe, which will form the springboard for its expansion across the region.

Mr Leiweke said that the live division would start slowly, “launching a couple of festivals, a few tours. But these will be big-name tours; we want to do it well from the start”.

The main aim of the live business will be to bring major events to the Dome, which will have a 26,000-seat arena along with several other venues, such as a vast nightclub and a Las Vegas-style show for up to 4,000 people a night.

The content has been subject to speculation, including rumours that the Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs exhibition will go on show in 2007.

Mr Leiweke said only that “over the next 60 days there’s going to be more on the table here in London”.

He said: “The announcements will be mostly about content. There’s been rumours about things that we’re doing, and this (David Beckham Academy) is the first of a half-dozen cloudbuster announcements. People are going to be shocked and amazed at what we’re going to build there. Our job is to make the Dome a crown jewel, not a civic embarrassment.”