Northern European Basketball League?

[Hepcat]

Why did Sarunas Marciulionis mothball the Northern European Basketball League? The league appeared to be thriving until Sarunas suddenly opted to cease operations. Was he paid off by FIBA to cashier his league thus eliminating a threat to FIBA's hegemony? What's the real story here?

[rusher]

Why did Sarunas Marciulionis mothball the Northern European Basketball League? The league appeared to be thriving until Sarunas suddenly opted to cease operations. Was he paid off by FIBA to cashier his league thus eliminating a threat to FIBA's hegemony? What's the real story here?

Things were quite well until there started to appear clubs not from North Europe. The competition expanded rapidly, teams from other regions came in, for smaller clubs it was difficult and financially hard to travel and stay in locations that could only very loosely be named North of Europe (FYROM, Greece and others). At least i think that there were finance problems for smaller clubs then.

[alermac]

Things were quite well until there started to appear clubs not from North Europe. The competition expanded rapidly, teams from other regions came in, for smaller clubs it was difficult and financially hard to travel and stay in locations that could only very loosely be named North of Europe (FYROM, Greece and others). At least i think that there were finance problems for smaller clubs then.

So, they tried to became a Eastern Europe league and it killed them?

[Nimonas]

IMHO it's not that. there was crisis in European club basketball. NEBL integrated FIBA Champions Cup (now EuroCup) as northern division. at this point it was step forward. well, it's how it looked at that day. but later it was just a reason, why NEBL lost name and face.

another problem was, that NEBL wanted to create perfect financial situation to clubs, so it wasn't profitable.

[Hepcat]

Any more insights? Anybody mourn the NEBL's passing?