By Aris Barkas/ barkas@eurohoops.net
Everyone is currently focused on the upcoming Eurobasket 2025; however, while speaking to the Serbian podcast “Jao Mile”, the executive director of Belgrade Arena and former Partizan player Goran Grbovic also addressed the issue of the decision for the 2026 EuroLeague Final Four, starting from the fact that Belgrade didn’t get the 2025 Final Four, which was held in Abu Dhabi.
Grbovic, who is also the head of the Belgrade bid, openly accused the EuroLeague of flawed decision-making in which nobody knows who has the final say.
As he said: “Тhe EuroLeague is run by 3-4 entities, I don’t know anymore. ECA, which is the founder, IMG, which runs these commercial businesses and has a contract with them, the owners, who are the most important, meaning the clubs, and the administration, Paulius Motiejunas, and the others. I have been told this by a man from the NBA who is from Israel, that he didn’t know who to talk to, and he didn’t know who to ask what. You understand?”.
Speaking about the 2026 Final Four, he used last season’s process as an example: “We are now, for example, left alone with Athens for let’s say a duel for the 2026 Final Four. We were the only ones to apply last year, for all three years of Final Four for 2025, 2026, and 2027. No one else applied. Two days before the EuroLeague board voting, Abu Dhabi appeared. This is not allowed by the Euroleague rules. They ask you from blood type to eye color to be filled out, filled out, filled out. Six of us fill out a lot of documents. And they said they picked Abu Dhabi, because they gave us the money, so let’s go there. IMG takes half the money, since they made the deal, some percent goes to ECA, and the clubs get the little leftovers”.
Grbovic also mentioned the owner of Panathinaikos as an obstacle for the Final Four, even if he practically admits that Athens is the favorite: “Especially bigger clubs won’t go to Athens because of Giannakopoulos, because he insults the Euroleague and everything and everyone. However, this EuroLeague management says it doesn’t matter that he offends us. Imagine what he did to Florentino Perez. Never mind, we are going to OAKA, they say. And normally, we always have Serbian domestic traitors who do everything so that we do not get it, and Athens gets it. And they won’t think of Real Madrid, and they will reward him for calling them mafia, idiots, and bastards. But the Euroleague management says it doesn’t matter. ECA is neutral. IMG just wants money”.
Grbovic also commented on the ticketing policy of the EuroLeague in the Final Four, hugely downplaying the OAKA, which is now named Telekom Arena, capacity from 19.000 seats to “11.000 or 12.000 for the Final Four configuration”.
On top of that, Grbovic compared the EuroLeague demands to Belgrade to “slavery” and “blackmailing”, omitting, of course, the security concerns due to the current unstable situation in the city, and even predicted that the NBA coming to Europe will create a different landscape: “When the NBA presents an adaptable general plan, ECA will have a system breakdown. One hundred percent. I’m telling you! In the future, two teams from EuroLeague might join the NBA Eastern Conference”.