FIBA vs ULEB

[Platonic]

The absolute disaster for European basketball and national leagues is that Euroleague and Mr President, Bertomeu.Of course Bertomeu will not punish Olympiacos if will compete in second Greek division,even in third or fourth division is a no problem at all for him.In reality he is very happy with what is happening to the national leagues and he will support with every cost the rebels,now and in the future.

https://www.eurohoops.net/en/euroleague/880078/jordi-bertomeu-what-happens-in-greece-will-not-affect-euroleague-at-all/

[Terrorizer]

Definately. However you can remember the days when NBA teams had something like 30 M $ budget, with top european ones 5 M $ in the 90ies those differences grew and while NBA's revenues consist of probably 95% revenue earned through market, I'd be surprised, with 2-3 exceptions and euro top club gets to 50%.
It's all about creating the revenue, not overall budgets. And that's something european basketball managed to screw up by themselves.

Everybody are saying that european basketball can't be compared to football, however the differences were notably smaller 3 decades ago. Football grew, basketball stubournly does it all to stay the same. As UEFA's president said (something in the lines of): "if we could buy european basketball as some sort of entity, that would be a great deal, considering all the potential that this sport isn't using..."

I am at awe how all of you are so pessimistic. I'm somewhat pessimistic right now, with recent IMG takeover and the way Jordi&Co's traditional swindle, corruption and fraud got totally out of hand as of lately. But still I do remember European basketball in the 90s. And, for me, it was a far, far cry from what we have now. I'm slightly nostalgic about it because there was something naive and fresh back then. And also that was a time when I fell in love with this game. But still back then random Murcans come to Europe and score 20+ for top clubs, a mediocre team with four guys playing 35+ minutes per game could won it all and as a whole basketball was much more amateurish, much less tactical, much less nuanced, much more sluggish, much more random and, to tell you the whole truth, much more plain and even stupid. Generally, what is needed from a player to prosper on the level of the best European national leagues in terms of his abilities changed dramatically. And this change was a steep upwards one. European basketball progressed an awful lot since 90s, even since early 2000s.

And, hell no, NBA doesn't steal "all the European quality". There is a great degree of randomness about who will prosper in NBA and who won't but NBA generally steals individually gifted players who don't feel themselves as comfortable in tactically-minded European basketball. I mean, someone like Fournier or Schroeder are great examples to that. Well, both would be successful in Europe on a sheer offensive firepower factor but, most probably, not as much as their NBA stats should suggest. And the whole "those who play in NBA are the best Euro players" bullshit needs a serious reality check. Yes, some of the best European players, whose style is suitable towards typical continental style, are playing in NBA right now with no realistic prospects about getting back in a near future (for instance, guys like Marc Gasol, Nikola Jokic or Bogdan Bogdanovic) but there are countless examples of players whose style ain't fit for our standards (the "other" Bogdanovic, for example, or laughable clown Bricky, or someone like Gortat, or M-me Ilyasova or the ultimate retard Bellinelli) or, even worse, of those who are just mediocre (for example, aside from Shroeder, German "legion" in NBA consist of lumberjack Dani Theis and totally lacklustre "jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none" Maxi Kleber - there are many, many dozens of better players in Europe, even including some German ones). Continuing to talk about Germans, only recently Paul Zipser (a poor man's Kleber) also played in NBA and a couple of years ago it seemed that his future there is bright. Now he's back in Europe. Did you all even noticed that?

On the contrary, often it is the best international players who either fail in NBA (Spanoulis, de Colo, Tavares, Nedovic, the list goes on and on) or even never go there (like Llull, Tomic, Printezis and many other drafted but less revered quality players, I mean, all those Koponens and Dubljevics). This deification of NBA and anyone who play there is an indication of some slave-like mentality when bowing to the master is a constant paradigm which should not be questioned.

I suppose that the main problems of European basketball lie in the way it is overrun with strife, incompetent, corrupt organization (especially from IMG/Jordi unholy alliance) and totally disastrous methods of presenting itself to the world. The talent is here, the problem is not in the lack of it but in the way competitions these talented ballers play in are organized and presented, especially the international ones which should serve as cream of the crop a la football Champions League.

Talking about "profitable football", I have a great degree of doubt about financial stats which says that a team paying tens of millions each year only for transfers is really profitable. Probably there is some shadowy financial accounting involved. And on a level lower than those "grands" we generally see financially lossmaking endeavors.

P.S. I watch a lot of basketball and maybe I have a different definition of talent (maybe, it's only Curry, Durant, Harden and LBJ who are talented and all the others are not) but, from my point of view, right now only NCAA produces something like 150-200 players of remarkably high quality each year. And maybe Europe generates slightly less but still we are talking about dozens of players each year (many of these talented players don't bloom like they should but that's another question). The level of players in Bundesliga or LNB (both of which I watch a lot) is surprisingly high and even some Belgian league definitely has some quality among its ranks. Moreover, there is no big difference between someone like Jonathon Simmons who is successful in NBA and some of the American guys who shred somewhere in the Finnish league. Just look at PJ Tucker's career path and you'll see that sticking in NBA is very often just a matter of luck (the way they play in NBA, "unluck" suits more but we shouldn't forget about the salaries paid there) and good timing.

[Stevnsgade]

I don’t know why I haven’t commented on this before, but in my opinion it is a huge blow that Virtus Bologna as the reigning champion of the Champions League have decided to play in the Eurocup. I would have been able to understand (though I wouldn’t have agreed) if they had been given a wildcard to the Euroleague, but I cannot understand why they want to play in Jordi2? The money is worse and so is the attending (that crowd in Belgium for F4 was amazing!!).

Anyway, huge win in my opinion for the Euroleague organisation. Since they are able to get Virtus to switch, they must do something right.

Here is an article from Sportanso about how the Italian federation sees Virtus’ switch.

https://sportando.basketball/en/fip-president-petrucci-virtus-bologna-is-embarrassing-us-in-front-of-basketball-world/

[Mindozas]

I don't see anything surprising here. Better league, better teams, chance to qualify to EL, I'm not a Jordi fan, but his organization looks simply more professional, while FIBA tries to move forward, but basically is still stuck in 20th century and all that can offer is a bit more money. So IMO it was basically a matter of time when Italian top teams would have courage to change position and go against federation. Btw it's not only Virtus, but Venezia, which is one of the best Italian clubs lately, current finalists of Lega and 2017 champs, also plans to leave BCL and move to EC

[Jon_Koncak]

It's called Stockholm syndrome

[Cuneyt]

Pos Team Total High Low Average Change
1 Lithuania Žalgiris 221,048 15,205 13,569 14,737 +8.7%
2 Greece Panathinaikos OPAP 168,979 18,003 7,487 12,070 −7.2%
3 Spain Kirolbet Baskonia 164,266 12,657 9,743 10,951 −3.5%
4 Israel Maccabi FOX Tel Aviv 157,826 11,060 9,476 10,522 −1.9%
5 Turkey Fenerbahçe Beko 146,959 12,821 7,380 10,497 −9.2%
6 Spain Real Madrid 137,110 12,749 7,328 9,794 −2.4%
7 Italy AX Armani Exchange Olimpia 127,778 12,227 6,343 8,519 +14.0%2
8 Greece Olympiacos 118,379 11,107 5,846 8,456 −5.1%
9 Russia CSKA Moscow 103,168 12,341 4,473 7,369 −10.3%
10 Turkey Anadolu Efes 97,232 14,258 3,153 6,945 +78.1%
11 Spain FC Barcelona Lassa 79,729 7,311 4,372 5,695 +0.3%
12 Russia Khimki 82,529 7,151 3,259 5,502 −8.6%
13 Spain Herbalife Gran Canaria 72,348 7,430 3,648 4,823 +18.9%1
14 Montenegro Budućnost VOLI 71,877 5,260 4,081 4,792 +67.2%1
15 Germany Bayern Munich 61,196 5,809 3,259 4,371 −20.0%1
16 Turkey Darüşşafaka Tekfen 40,370 4,204 1,011 2,691 +3.1%1
League total 1,850,794 18,003 1,011 7,978 −9.1%

you can find it here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018%E...319_EuroLeague

Reverse Angle --> If we look at the list from a crowd utilization perspective. (I dont know the full capacities, so I used average crowd as a percentage of maximum crowd)

1. Zalgiris @ 97%
2. Maccabi @ 95%
3. Buducnost @ 91%
4. Baskonia @ 87%
5. Fenerbahçe @ 82%
6. Barcelona @ 78%
7. Khimki & Real @ 77%
9. Olympiakos @ 76%
10. Bayern @ 75%
11. Armani @ 70%
12. Pao @ 67%
13. Gran Canaria @ 65%
14. Dacka @ 64%
15. Cska @ 60%
16. Efes @ 49%

[Efesdxb]

Reverse Angle --> If we look at the list from a crowd utilization perspective. (I dont know the full capacities, so I used average crowd as a percentage of maximum crowd)

1. Zalgiris @ 97%
2. Maccabi @ 95%
3. Buducnost @ 91%
4. Baskonia @ 87%
5. Fenerbahçe @ 82%
6. Barcelona @ 78%
7. Khimki & Real @ 77%
9. Olympiakos @ 76%
10. Bayern @ 75%
11. Armani @ 70%
12. Pao @ 67%
13. Gran Canaria @ 65%
14. Dacka @ 64%
15. Cska @ 60%
16. Efes @ 49%

Efes didn't sell tickets for upper tiers of the arena for most part of the season. On regular season they sold these tickets for Real Madrid, Olympiacos, CSKA and Barcelona games. Later play off it was almost sold out for every game. Therefore %49 is not a realistic number.

[Cuneyt]

Efes didn't sell tickets for upper tiers of the arena for most part of the season. On regular season they sold these tickets for Real Madrid, Olympiacos, CSKA and Barcelona games. Later play off it was almost sold out for every game. Therefore %49 is not a realistic number.

Dear Efesdxb,

I simply offered another angle. It was not an attempt to undermine Efes, Cska, Pao etc.
It is a bit unfair especially for Pao with an 18000 capacity arena, BUT they have filled it a few times and when they do fill it, it positively impacts average crowds.
So the negative must come with the positive.
In any case, kudos to Zalgiris and Maccabi for having a large arena and a high percentage to fill it.

[Picek]

Reverse Angle --> If we look at the list from a crowd utilization perspective. (I dont know the full capacities, so I used average crowd as a percentage of maximum crowd)

1. Zalgiris @ 97%
2. Maccabi @ 95%

Žalgiris and Maccabi will probably always be a 90+%.
at the end the average attendance for entire 2018/2019 season is 5.7% lower then in 2017/2018 season and 1.8% lower then in 2016/2017 season.

[Mindozas]

Žalgiris and Maccabi will probably always be a 90+%.
at the end the average attendance for entire 2018/2019 season is 5.7% lower then in 2017/2018 season and 1.8% lower then in 2016/2017 season.

It depends on teams which are playing, when you have Dacka, Buducnost, Gran Canaria, Bayern as newcomers instead of Valencia, Unicaja, Bamberg, Crvena Zvezda, obviously that attendance will go down. But if you'll take only 11 licensed clubs, average attendance is going up bit by bit. One season one club increases it, others goes down and vice versa, depends on results. Now with Zvezda back, with Alba, Valencia there too, with Asvel usually having close to full arena in Eurocup overall attendance should go up either and we still have one incognito club

[Joško Poljak Fan]

lol @Koncak

The neverending art of PR... 17/18 had sth. like 9% bigger overall TV audience than 16/17... with quite a bit more games played. I'm talking out of my head, forgot the source as well, so don't take it for 100%. However, if true, this goes completely in line with what I've been saying about the short vs. long term revenues in relation with the competition system.
Iirrationality or lack of insight from people in charge is sometimes quite predictable (Dan Ariely is a decent writer talking about this phenomena) - while NBA is becoming aware of the "rare = money" aspect and would decrease the number of games if that wouldn't be so hard, due to various interests - euroleague is adopting NBAish models, where individual games matter less. Completely out of line with what we, euroleague fans, were adoring a decade ago, when in comparison with NBA, almost all games mattered. That was a clear cut edge against NBA, there aren't many of those and I believe you just don't give up on such advantages over some ability to milk few tv stations for some pathetic millions short term.


Euroleague TV rights are rising, however it is normal to assume correlation between the TV rights money and audience works with some delay. While TV stations would of course welcome the increase in the number of games, just as the organisation and the clubs would, such cheap attempts to milk the product out, have their downsides.

There is a limit to how many games can be played in a season. And euroleague would benefit a lot if they realised they would eventualy profit from functional national leagues and NT competitions rising more than from 5 additional games in a season...


On why Virtus and alike switch to ECA/euroleague? It's much more simple and humane, than most people would believe.
I was wondering the same untill a friend that was employed in one of those clubs pointed out that ECA/euroleague has a young and symphatetic team, with social IQ. They come out as friends, unlike Fiba, with old guys adressing the clubs in a formal way, from a position of power. That social aspect as well as rigidity of Fiba plays some role in it.
However, that is not unchangeable if Fiba puts the right people in charge. Some people might laugh, but I bought that explanation as it's completely feasible.

[Mindozas]

On why Virtus and alike switch to ECA/euroleague? It's much more simple and humane, than most people would believe.
I was wondering the same untill a friend that was employed in one of those clubs pointed out that ECA/euroleague has a young and symphatetic team, with social IQ. They come out as friends, unlike Fiba, with old guys adressing the clubs in a formal way, from a position of power. That social aspect as well as rigidity of Fiba plays some role in it.
However, that is not unchangeable if Fiba puts the right people in charge. Some people might laugh, but I bought that explanation as it's completely feasible.

It's been known that FIBA is stubborn and stuck in 20th century, that's only one detail of that. Will they change or bring new people with innovations, new ideas? Highly unlikely. They could've done this decade ago at least, even earlier, but nothing was done. These oldies tries to keep their chairs and control everything generation by generation. When some new person in charge appears, you can expect, hope for changes, but instead you get the same old stuff all over again from these apprentices. And it's even get worse, look at NTs stuff, what they've done and they even claims that the plan worked out perfectly...

[eal]

For all the talk of FIBA being a bunch of old men the Champions League is crushing Euroleague and EuroCup in terms of social media. The BCL social media game, broadcasts, etc are all far superior. If you combined the calibre of Euroleague teams with FIBA social media and broadcasting you would have an unstoppable competition.

[Picek]

I was wondering the same untill a friend that was employed in one of those clubs pointed out that ECA/euroleague has a young and symphatetic team, with social IQ. They come out as friends, unlike Fiba, with old guys adressing the clubs in a formal way, from a position of power.

sure, Bertomeu really seems like a good pal to have a beer with.

[Mindozas]

For all the talk of FIBA being a bunch of old men the Champions League is crushing Euroleague and EuroCup in terms of social media. The BCL social media game, broadcasts, etc are all far superior. If you combined the calibre of Euroleague teams with FIBA social media and broadcasting you would have an unstoppable competition.

Yeah, yeah, heard about it - next season of BCL once again the best ever, organizing FIBA qualifying windows was the best decision ever taken and etc