By Johnny Askounis/ info@eurohoops.net
Patrick Comninos, the CEO of the Basketball Champions League, opened up on several topics, including the announced plans for a new continental league in Europe.
During the annual roundtable held within the 2025 Final Four presented by Sunel in Sunel Arena, following the Awards Ceremony in the Hellenic Cosmos Cultural Center of Athens, Comninos also recapped the ninth edition of the Champions League.
“It’s been another welcoming experience. The competition still grows,” he said, “We continue in our mission to grow. You have all heard my statements about creating a pan-European competition that is inclusive but has as part of its DNA, to shape the European basketball landscape. This is something we have also been working on over the last years with our partners, both at the Euroleague and at the NBA. The aim is to deliver something to the wider audience of basketball, an audience that we acknowledge as being significant, although the commercialization of this product is not at the level that we all would like it to be. This has been going on in parallel with delivering a top-level competition. And we are very excited about what’s coming up next.”
“We are privileged to be at this table with our partners from the Euroleague and from the NBA,” he also confirmed ongoing talks about the future of European basketball, “We are at this table, we have been at this table. We initiated the discussions for this table. It was after the Tokyo Olympics, in September 2021. So, almost three and a half years ago. And we aim to develop a sports environment, an ecosystem that caters to the needs, not just to the handful of clubs. You have heard me say this one thousand times: basketball is not played by a dozen clubs in Europe, but basketball is played by hundreds of clubs in Europe. Our mission is to create an ecosystem that caters to the needs of all these clubs. For them to have the opportunity to play at the top level, to be rewarded at the top level, and to offer their fans the entertainment value that basketball should generate in Europe.”
Focusing on the Champions League, Comninos shared his projections for the competition within a possible new club continental format in Europe.
“The BCL will not disappear. This is one thing we can say for certain. The BCL will continue to develop and continue to play a pivotal role in this new ecosystem. But develop, I think, is the key word. We’ve been doing this, within our community, over the last nine years. We have been regularly developing, growing, adopting, adjusting, and we will continue to do this in what we believe will be a new ecosystem,” he stressed, “We will continue to represent the entirety of European basketball.”
“In all our discussions, whether these are with the Euroleague or the NBA, we have been very consistent in our approach,” he added, “What we have always said is that we need to protect the domestic leagues, we need to protect the national teams, and we need to safeguard open access to the all the teams. These discussions did not develop as we hoped at the time with the Euroleague. Things have ensued. Now, there are discussions that also include the NBA. But for us, the messaging has always been the same.”
“I could not suddenly advocate five or six competitions. I believe through our collective discussions through the entire community of basketball, we will reach a consensus about what the ideal structure is,” he explained, “For me, there should be two very strong competitions. Let’s call them a tier 1 and a tier 2. Probably around 50 teams. Let’s not count numbers, but an environment that can absorb what is today’s EuroLeague, EuroCup, BCL, and perhaps new teams that will emerge in this environment.”
Moving to the tenth season of the Champions League, he set the season draw in early July.
“We are turning ten years old. On the 2nd of July, we have our draw at the Olympic Museum in Lausanne, as part of our celebratory tenth season,” announced Comninos.
“This year was especially tough, because we had moved the date relatively early to cater to what we had been trying for a long time, to have the event in Paris and the Adidas Arena. But unfortunately, the political situation in France did not make that possible. In the end, we had to navigate to the winner of the Nanterre versus AEK. The series went to a third game. So, paradoxically, we knew the other three participants to the Final Four, but we only learned our host at the very last minute,” he also talked about the hosting rights of the Final Four landing in Athens.
“Once again, my wish will be that next year, in our tenth anniversary of the Basketball Champions League, we are in a position to announce the host much, much earlier,” he expressed his desire for the next season-ending tournament of the BCL.
The press conference kicked off with Konstantinos Zygouras, the CEO of Sunel Group, presenting a vision for the future of Sunel Arena and more venues.