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After more than three years of building work, London's Olympic Park has opened for business with the first paying spectators watching an international basketball tournament.

The London International Basketball Invitational forms part of a testing programme ahead of the Games.

And it provides Great Britain's team with an early taste of the facilities they can expect next year when they try and upset the odds and win a medal.

The arena has been dubbed the "wedding cake" due to its all-white exterior, clad in 20,000m of wavy white fabric, which will be lit in different colours during the Olympics.

One fan told Sky News: "It's beautiful. I see it most days when I'm coming home on the bus but to be so close - I never realised how much more there was to it."

Inside, there are 12,000 seats in black and red, while all doors are an above-average 2.4 metres high to accommodate some of the tallest athletes in sport.

After the Games, the arena will be dismantled and recycled, with speculation organisers of the 2016 Games in Rio, Brazil, are interested in striking a deal.

London 2012 basketball manager Joanna Sutherland expects the venue to be one of the key Olympic focal points.

"Olympic basketball is one of the big sports at the Olympic Games," she said.

"It's still relatively small in this country but at the Olympic Games it is absolutely massive."

2012 will be Team GB's first appearance in Olympic basketball since the 1948 Games in London, when they lost every match they played.