JPF,
Man, that was quite a post.
Attendance should correlate with clubs revenues , given the revenues exclude money gifted to club by sponsors/owners. Clubs revenues comes mainly from 1) tickets 2) TV-rights 3) ads
Tickets have a direct link with attendance, TV-rights and ads related to interest of general public ( could be seen as a base of a pyramid with top of it being attendance )
EL revenues comes as a percents of clubs TV rights - clubs sells EL games TV rights to local channels , EL takes some percents of it.
Now check MTA TV rights figures : 2.8M with the Russian numbers for the last year : 375k ( CSKA ), 100k ( Khimki ) . Keep in mind that Russian numbers include also broadcasting VTB league games.
So we're talking about weak Israeli league giving EL nearly 10 times profit then the strong Russian league.
Surely pure clubs budgets numbers over the last decade shifted from Italy, France, Greece, Slovenia, Serbia, Croatia to richer regions like Spain, Russia, Turkey, but it doesn't mean EL profits increased as a result.
I guess it's exactly the opposite. IIRC Russian EL games are broadcast by NTV Plus : prepaid satellite channel with tiny 500k of subscribers for 140M country.
Actually, for almost all big clubs in all big sports leagues, the sponsors are the vast majority of the income and not ticket sales. In the NBA it sure is that way for every team. And for the biggest teams (only a small group of them) the TV deals.
The ticket sales might be huge for Maccabi, but that's nothing for most clubs. The whole attendance thing is just a ruse. The real issue with that is this,
1. Having big new arenas generates revenues, not through the ticket sales mainly, but through the marketing, sponsors and the sales and fees.
2. Having the big new arena looks pretty on TV and having it filled looks pretty on TV. Giving the illusion that it is a super good and important league. Like MLS in USA, with all its big shiny new arenas, that are usually packed with fans. It gives the illusion on TV that the league is really good and really important.
And in that example too, almost the whole league revenue stream comes from sponsors.
3. The arenas are the way to get fans in there and to buy the merchandise and pay for parking, etc.
The ticket sales revenue is a drop in the bucket for most big clubs in most big leagues.
It's the sponsor money that always dominates, and after that, for a small group of clubs it is the TV deals. Attendance is very minor thing in importance in terms of revenue.
Just realize that NBA fans all over the world have this idea and perception that if they watch a pro game it must be played in a big, full arena, otherwise they call it "minor league". That's why Euroleague is concerned about arenas and attendance. It's for image and perception, and not for actual revenue.
That's why the NBA counts tickets sold as in-game attendance. To give the perception and impression around the world that the N BA is super popular. To give European basketball fans the perception that the NBA has huge attendance numbers.
When you see game after game on NBA league pass where there will be no more than 5,000 fans in an NBA arena. But the "official attendance figure" will be listed at 18,000. That way, whenever someone looks up the attendance figures, they say, oh wow look how popular the NBA is.
The Euroleague just hasn't figured out that same trick yet, but I am sure that they will eventually.
Regardless, the CSKA model, of the vast amount of revenue coming from sponsors, is the exact same model that almost every major sports club in the world operates by. It's not by attendance.
I'm sportsman and to all off us only thing that should mather is sport results. If Croatia don't deserve spot because sport results I can get over it. Point is if Germany deserves 2 spots (still don't know where that come from) then 1st and 2nd German team should play EL, not 5th. If Spain deserves 4spots, then it's first 4 teams that should play EL not 9th.
I can't help my self then use dirty language about it, neither for last year Bayern Euorcup WC or this year Zvezda, or last year Cibona EL WC....it's all undeserved. For evrey real sportsman only prise he wannts to get is on court. Evrything else is bullshit. EL is just not fair competition and has nothing to do with SPORT
I am with you on this. It's not even a debate. Giving ALBA a direct wildcard place in the regular season is ridiculous. I don't care what their attendance is, what arena they play in, what market they play in, that they are the most historic club probably of Germany, that they play the Mavs and Dirk in preseason, that they have some results counting Eurocup points system...whatever.
The fact is they finished 5th in the German League, which is nothing more than a mediocre European league. So the 2nd placed German team has to go through the qualification stage. Plus, this means Germany has 2 places in the regular season, and a third in the qualification stage.
How does this make sense when they ranked the German League in the #7 place in the league rankings?
So how does the #3 ranked Greek League get less places than the #7 ranked league?
How does ALBA deserve a direct wildcard more than Galatasaray, Cantu, UNICS?
How does ALBA deserve this place more than the 2, 3, 4 German clubs?
The bottom line is some of this stuff from Euroleague is totally ridiculous, and this is just the most absurd example. There is no legit reason for ALBA to get that regular season place. NONE. And the attendance things is totally irrelevant. Because Galatasary would have even better attendance probably and they didn't get the place.
The points system argument does not hold water either. If they were really concerned about the performance of teams, then surely Valencia or Bilbao or UNICS, some club like that would have gotten the place.
Let's just say, using this arena and attendance and results excuse argument, Bilbao has a new 10,000 seat arena, they just made the top 8 of Euroleague, they have a substantially larger budget than ALBA does, they made the finals of ACB in the previous year, and before that the finals of Eurocup.
They have terrific fan support and attendance. They have a much better team than ALBA. They play in a much tougher league than ALBA. They finished in 6th place in the ACB, which is obviously a much better result than 5th place in the BBL..........
By any way you compare it or look at it, Bilbao is way more deserving of a place than ALBA, even if you use all these excuses like attendance, new arena, etc.
You may say the clubs are not paying to get their places, but I think they are.
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