By Aris Barkas/ barkas@eurohoops.net
ULEB’s president Tomas Van Den Spiegel and former EuroLeague champion with CSKA Moscow talked to the UK edition of the “Athletic” on a podcast about the recent football SuperLeague fiasco and there’s no doubt about his stance against the Turkish Airlines EuroLeague.
Van Den Spiegel doesn’t hide his position: “Since 2016, EuroLeague has been a real breakaway league … 11 clubs with long term licenses that are shareholders decide on everything that is happening. The domestic leagues, which I represent, have basically been denied and your sporting performance in your national league doesn’t decide which international competitions you can qualify for. It has become basically impossible to qualify for the EuroLeague. Even if you had an investor who put down a lot of money to become the next EuroLeague champion, it is almost impossible to get in because of these long-term licenses.”
Van Den Spiegel considers the EuroLeague clubs a source of friction for the domestic leagues: “Clubs still play in their national league, as well as the EuroLeague, which causes a lot of friction. These clubs are major brands and you have to take into account what they think, but in recent years their priority has been the EuroLeague. When it comes to scheduling, we really had to hold our ground on protecting weekends as the time slot for national leagues. There’s been an impact on sponsorship, on local TV deals, because broadcasters are interested in the EuroLeague. There’s no solidarity between the breakaway league and the national leagues, and for example, at the grassroots level, we have seen the impact. The EuroLeague is not as profitable as they would like it to be, but it is still impacting the finances of domestic leagues.”
ULEB, which was a founding member of the EuroLeague back in 2001, has no connection anymore with the competition and on the contrary, they filed a complaint to the European Commission against ECA. As Van Den Spiegel explained: “We have a complaint at the European Commission. Leagues are feeling the impact and we are trying to explain how the EuroLeague is impacting them. The European Commission is the body that protects the European Sports Model and takes into account certain parameters that go beyond financial gain. The European Commission route is probably not the ideal way we would like to go. We would like to sit at the table with all stakeholders and solve it ourselves, but if you want to make sure you are heard and make a statement that we’re not happy with the current situation. At some point, there will need to be a case where the Commission sets an example for all sports. If they use basketball, then we will be happy with this as we really believe in what we are saying.”
Van Den Spiegel and by extension ULEB doesn’t believe in the EuroLeague model: “We’re not against financial gain or building the sport. But we need to realize it’s not just the top clubs. There’s a pyramid underneath that could suffer, especially in Europe. In basketball, we are often compared to the US, but they have a completely different grassroots system, from the scholar system. It is also the only professional league and we are talking about one country. This makes it easier to change regulations if needed. European owners in the EuroLeague look at the NBA model and say this is what we need in Europe. This is what connects it to the Super League in football, where owners want to follow the US league model. We want to promote our best players, but we need to respect what is underneath the top-level and support grassroots basketball. The goal should be to make the (financial) cake bigger in basketball, but at the moment it’s staying the same size. All that is happening is that the big clubs are getting bigger pieces while everyone else is getting less. The goal should be to make the cake bigger and to make sure everyone gets more.”
However, Van Den Spiegel doesn’t believe that the EuroLeague clubs are going to leave the EuroLeague any time soon: “They don’t have the guts to do that. They know they couldn’t defend that to their local markets and their local fans. Some teams like Maccabi Tel Aviv, have started making two teams and two lineups. They know they can dominate their league at the end of the year in the playoffs. We have had teams ask to join the league later in the year and to just join in the playoffs.”