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Andreas Zagklis traveled to the US for the NBA Finals and also for meetings with the NBA’s top brass due to upcoming joint plans of the two organizations.
The FIBA secretary general talked about those plans with the international press in San Antonio, and one of the main topics of discussion was NBA Europe.
Zagklis said that he is “very excited about the progress of the project of a new league in Europe. We are talking about the biggest ever investment in our sport in Europe”.
Zagklis explained that the new league will give equal revenue and revenue opportunities to all the clubs, no matter if they are permanent franchises or not: “Our role, as FIBA, is to take care of the stakeholders at all levels of the FIBA pyramid. One of the key and new elements of the project that is a clear and fundamental piece of the plan, and it didn’t exist when we made the announcement last year, is that the teams that qualify for the competition will have equal starting revenue and equal access to performance-related revenue with the franchises. You win your right (to play), and you can afford this right. This is fundamental to us, not only to attract the investments we are seeing now in the bidding process for the franchises, but also to attract other investors in the clubs that play in the domestic leagues and BCL every year to qualify and play in the top league. This is something that will make club basketball in Europe very attractive, not only for the ones who have a permanent spot, but also for at least another 150 clubs in Europe”.
The minimum revenues for each club, as reported by Eurohoops, are expected to be 8M euros per season.
Zagklis added that the timeline for an October 2027 tip-off is right on track: “I must say that they are very frequent, virtually weekly, meetings of the operational teams for the preparation, it’s not a theoretical project anymore. We work on a target of October 2027. The mechanism is clear. There will be qualification through the BCL and through one or more qualification tournaments at the end of the season for the best teams from the highest-ranked domestic leagues. That is clear. From BCL, we would have three teams. Depending on the year, we may have one or two qualified directly, a minimum of one, and the others, second or third, will be going to the qualification tournaments. Then we will rank the domestic leagues based on the European participation of their clubs to get the best-ranked non-qualified team to play the end-of-season tournament. With the assumption that we start in October 2027, at the end of this season, we will have the BCL Final Four and the qualification tournaments, giving us the four teams that will play in our league the following season”.
The talks with the EuroLeague
The FIBA secretary general also spoke about the possibility of having a joint project with ECA, the parent company of the EuroLeague: “To come into an agreement, you need to have people determined to do it either way. And today we have the determination to go ahead with or without agreement. While this may sound like a step toward fragmentation. I consider it a step towards agreement, because this is the only way that people can be ready for concessions and find a common ground. I do believe that in the European sport model, where we have hundreds of clubs and each of them has thousands of fans – some of them have some have millions of fans – I think the fans of every club should be respected. We, as the governing body, need to make sure that if you support Malaga, Unicaja has a chance to play in the top league. I mention Malaga because they played in the (current) top league, they were a shareholder of this top league and one day, by one decision that Unicaja was not a part of, they stopped being in that top league. Therefore, the 25% openness of the new league is the ultimate respect for all the fans of basketball on the continent, because they can see and they can dream that their club can play in the top league. Some fans are privileged now and may not be privileged tomorrow. We will not be doing anything wrong to these fans because they would still have the chance to see their team participating every year. Even without a licence, you can play every year in the top league. The qualification will not be only from the second tier, but also from your national championship and the qualification tournament. If you have a good team, even without a license, you can play every year. It is very possible and is directly related to sporting merit”.
Speaking about the format of the new league, Zagklis explained: “We are looking at a postseason that will give the teams the chance to have a number of home games. The teams are working for what will be a very inclusive calendar that respects the national championships, which have a very important role, that gives enough room to the new league to grow and commercialize its assets, and to the national teams to have their best players available. The principle of the calendar is that the team that plays has the best available players at its disposal, whether that is in a domestic league game over the weekend, whether it is during the week with the BCL or the new league, or whether it is during the Window with the national team”.
Zagklis also tackled the NIL issue, which is draining Europe of young talent, and announced a summit on the matter where EuroLeague clubs will also be present: “We have managed to convince some teams that we are there for all of them. Not only to help the teams in BCL or domestic leagues. FIBA Europe President J. Garbajosa announced that in the fall, at the FIBA HQ, we will organize a summit with all the stakeholders, including the top clubs”.
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