By Antonis Stroggylakis/ info@eurohoops.net
ANTWERP– Basketball Champions League Patrick Comninos met media representatives for a roundtable talk that took place Saturday (4/5) during the competition’s Final Four that is held in Antwerp, Belgium.
Here are some of the most important topics that were discussed.
On the Antwerp Final Four and the 17289 people who attended the second semifinal game:
“Not many people expected it or thought it was achievable. I said it on the draw three weeks ago that this is a big bet for us as an organization. We are still a very young organization. It’s only our third Final Four. Bringing it to a territory that admittedly is not a basketball-crazy country like perhaps Greece or Spain and opting to use one of the biggest sport indoors arena in Europe was itself a big bet. When I walked around the office and I told the guys we believe we should go to Antwerp, they looked at me. They told me there are arena challenges and that in the end it only has 5.500 seats. I said that we go to the big one. And this is a bit of our mentality. We want to test the barriers and try new things. Push the bucket a little bit”.
“Coming to Antwerp was a big opportunity for us to test if the competition has the legs to stand on. Last year in Athens we benefited from a unique atmosphere, a football atmosphere brought by the fans in the arena It created amazing imagery and stories but we were aware of the fan composition and this is how it is in territories like that. Coming to Belgium to a more neutral crowd and convincing them to come and watch four teams play basketball when they knew only one of them? That was a challenge”.
“So first and foremost I need to publicly thank the club, thank the city authorities, the port, the mayor’s office who they contributed in making history last night with more than 17.000 fans attending a game that doesn’t involve their national team. It has never been done before. It’s a record that will stay in history books. Bringing this event in such an audience and providing them with the opportunity to witness what we prepared was a great reward. Our sentiment and feelings we received were very positive last night. Our biggest challenge is that we want to replicate this. It’s not easy to do that in two out of three days in a row. We are very optimistic of the fact that the fans will want to witness again what they witnessed in the semifinals. We have a more impressive show coming on Sunday. In the end, for the first time in our short history, we are facing a Final without a host playing. When Tenerife played it was easy to fill the arena and the same thing was the case with AEK. It was actually difficult to keep people away from the arena. Now for the first time in history, there’s a final without a host. And that’s another challenge for us”.
“We feel extremely confident that after the audience saw what they saw on Friday and the fact that they have the opportunity to see their team fight for the third place and congratulate them for their run, is reason enough to fill the arena”.
On the possibility of hosting the next Final Four in a neutral arena:
“My personal experience has demonstrated that there are very very few team sport events in the world that can fill up an arena in a neutral venue. Probably the Superbowl, the UEFA Champions League Final, maybe some NCAA events. Just a handful. It’s very difficult to do this. To say that next year we will be in X city and not have the guaranteed presence of the host”.
“It’s something we have discussed a lot and something we have examined. I believe that some time perhaps in the future we will examine it more closely. But for the time being it’s still a competition that benefits tremendously for having local support. For us, from a purely operational and organizational point of view, this is a huge challenge. Finding the destination a few weeks before going there was a huge challenge. If you speak to the guys in Antwerp about what has been going on these last weeks… it’s beyond normal. But that’s the way it has to happen”.
“It will offer us quality time if we take a whole year to prepare but we might not have the imagery we have now and we are blessed with when we are having the host prepare the event”.