7 EL clubs met privately, concerned with financial affairs managed by Bertomeu & EL

[Toruko]

Cool, but we're talking here why Euroleague has problems with marketing. All the best football players are playing in Europe. All the most talented kids, who are not bigger than 2 meters are playing football. Normally that people are watching football.
Btw. players you have named are prime example of mediocrity. Do you remember when we have been watching players like Drazen, Sabonis, Bodiroga, Kukoc, Gallis, Marciulonis...Or some real Nba players like Bob McAdoo.

Times changes, Petrovic opened up a door that will never close again. Marketing problem is made partly by our mistakes e.g. FIBA EL quarrel etc. and globalization, competition from other parts of the world. The problem is not football but the position as the second sport. I can say about Turkey that BB is sport no. 2 but in Germany its even behind beach volleyball. In Italy you cant say it either. Although i must say the interesti in Germany increases

[dacolik]

There is a big gap between serious NBA player and G-League player. Fits me well, he can stay in Istanbul as much as he likes. I like European Basketball anyway. Europe just shouldnt do the mistake being a bad copy of NBA, more games less intensity. Its ok with a coaches league and team basketball. It just needs a bit more talent with players like Shengelia, Higgins, Delaney, Larkin and Vesely. Thats all.

That mistake was made 6 years ago. In next decade the level of basketball will continue to fall down in national leagues and as a consequence so should the level in Euroleague... Someone needs to stop this madness and make a league based on sporting merits.

[Terrorizer]

Well, that's a good news because any dissent and turmoil in Turkish Airlines IMG 7Days Jordileague means more chances for more just, more progressive and, yes, more profittable basketball system to prosper in Europe.

How will you market a league where Vesely is MVP? Larkin top player? Micic best Pg? Euroleague never was that poor with talent. I have League Pass for watching Nba, because not only best Americans are there,

Slave-like mentality like this is the root of the problem. I'm not a fan of Vesely (though he is a solid player) yet Larkin is a helluva player who will score 25+ per game with ease in the sloppy European club basketball of the late 90s - early 2000s and Micic is a great PG (and I said this even when he struggled mightily in Bayern). And how good would some late 90s Euroleague MVP like Rebraca fare in realities of today's European basketball? Most probably, in the case of Rebraca at the very best he would play a role simlar to someone like Tibor Pleiss (and he'll be absolutely destroyed by players like Tavares). Well, I'm not quite sure even about that since Pleiss at least has a decent shooting mechanics.

I'm not saying that 90s - early 00s basketball sucked hard, these were exciting times with many great players and some very interesting teams. For example, France NT has one of their smartest and most exciting core of players in Rigaudeau-Mous Sonko-Risacher-Digbeu. And I suspect that numerous stars of that generation would adapt to modern basketball demands just fine, were they born - and evolve - later, yet this stuff is an alternative history, so there's a little sense in it. Yet if we drop those guys - in a shape they were in their prime - onto European basketball courts of today, they'll fail resoundingly. And that's much less of an alternative history.

Basketball has changed, the demands for playing on the highest professional level have changed - and they've gone significantly up. In fact, we don't see that many European mega-stars exactly because the game has changed a lot. The sloppier the overall level, the mightier the leading guys seem. Players with Shved sort of role and mentality are thankfully a rarity these days (so Khimki was really unlucky to land exactly this sort of calamity of a player), yet they were much more common during earlier, less developed stages of Eurobball. A guy like Ibrahim Kutluay dropped 20+ seasons in Europe left and right back in the 90s. With all due respect, there is a zero chance to repeat such a feat these days for a player like Ibby. And 40 y.o. injury-plagued Sabas became a dominating center in EL (and overall regular season MVP) back in 2004. Let's see how 40 y.o. injury-plagued Pau will do in today's Euroleague.

Oh, and let's consider "but all the best players are in NBA" mantra. Ok, so we are lead to believe that someone like OG Anunoby is good enough to have a decent role in NBA and someone like Larkin or Nigel Williams-Goss aren't good enough for that. Well, I (almost) don't watch NBA laughable and shameful circus but I've watched enough of NCAA to know that it's not true at all. It's not the matter of pure basketball quality which defines if some player will prosper in NBA or not. Guys like Larkin or Williams-Goss played a lot against future NBAers during their college days - and, one thing for sure, they didn't look like lesser players to all these anunobies flooding NBA these days.

Truth is that, even with all the randomness and ilogical factors of roster's selection taken into account, your "NBA basketball worth" is something different from your "European basketball worth" or "NCAA basketball worth" (the latter two are much closer to each other, by the way). They are not linearly convertible into one another. So right now we have Beubouis as "just a good role player" for Efes and Fournier as a mid-level NBA "star", but I can definitely see the situation turning out vice versa with some slight changes taking place during the first three-four years of these players' NBA careers (like injuries, playing time, coaching, general role in the team). A lot depends on luck, marketability, team strategy and many other random or quasi-random factors. And, for sure, under any circumstances I'll take a center like Edy Tavares or Vincent Poirier, who "failed" big time in NBA, over a bigman like Daniel Theis or Ivica Zubac (who seem to prosper in NBA as of late).

Yep, something like 20-30 of the very best (on the basis of their individual offensive skillset) American players have enough of talent in order to carve a star niche for themselves in NBA with almost certain confidence. Yet everything below this level doesn't differ that much quality-wise between NBA and the best what non-NBA can offer. So you won't meet a player of Durant or even Zion Williamson caliber anywhere ouside of NBA (or Doncic caliber for that matter) but there are dozens of Harrison Barnes/Jordan Clarkson/Joe Harris-type of players here in Europe. Some of them are very successful, some of them are moderately successful, some of them are not very much successful. It all depends on the circumstances, ther eagerness to adapt and learn, a team they play for, their designated role in that team, coach's trust, injuries and a myriad of other factors.

We've seen what this "NBA minus its 30 best players" quality really is only recently. Ok, US NT in the 2019 World Cup was composed almost exclusively (minus lumberjack Mason Plumlee and - somewhat surprisingly - Jaylen Brown) of the players, who were starting five options for their respective NBA teams durng the 2018-19 NBA season. Most of them had double digits scoring average, some of them with roughly 20ppg stats. None other team was even close to that. The only other team with more than 4 NBAers in its roster was France since they've had five, but among the French NBAers only three (Batum, Fournier and Gobert) were starters for their NBA teams. Well, that level of American quality was enough for trashing Japan damn hard and for 21 points difference win against Czech Republic. But there were no other 20+ wins for that American team, a team composed exclusively out of "upper third" NBA players. And that team finished 7th.

Well, if we are to start comparing level of talent in Europe nowadays and some 25 years ago, then I'm quite sure that if you composed the US national team similarly back in the 90s, that team would be a certain medal finisher and, most probably, a champion (bar random lucky Yugo/Russia/Lith shooting day). And, even more importantly, for sure, along the way it would collect a good deal of 25+ or even 30+ blowout wins. But international basketball changed a lot since those days. And it changed for the better.

but more importantly best players from Europe play there.

Oh, here we go again. Yep, some of the very best players from Europe do play in NBA. Some of the other very best European players do not. Yet not all European players who carve out a solid niche for themselves in NBA are among the "best players from Europe". So, yep, I would like to see players like Doncic (or Bogdan, or Gobert, or Jokic) playing for European clubs instead of wasting their talents for that retarded flying circus which is NBA. I'm not quite as enthusiastic about someone like the other Bogdanovic, or Nurkic, or the aforementioned Fournier but most probably they could transfer their skills onto European style of basketball without much of a problem (though in many cases with significantly reduced efficiency). But that's not what your typical "moderately successful European NBA player" looks like. Your typical moderately successful NBA player from Europe is someone like Davis Bertans/Maxi Kleber/Ivica Zubac/Svi Mikhailyuk/Jakub Poeltl. Are these really "the best players from Europe"? Dunno 'bout what NBA fanatics would proclaim, but for me they are not even close.

To drive the point closer to home, the fact that Beno Udrih, a lousy mediocrity with zero basketball IQ, had some numerous 10+ ppg NBA seasons doesn't make him one of the best players in Slovenian basketball history. Or, on a similar note, a mediocrity like Calderon prospered in NBA for a long time while Navarro played there for one season and Llull never even tried that flying circus. Yet even in his prime, Calderon was many levels below Navaro or Llull in their optimal form.

There are a lot of other examples like this. Even among American returnees. PJ Tucker successfuly made his way back to NBA. I remeber him very well, playing in Greece and Germany. A run-of-the-mill type of player, not bad, not really great, solid rebounder though, overall nothing to write home about. And Larkin failed to get back on track in his second NBA coming. Does it mean that Larkin is a worse player than PJ Tucker? Not at all.

And the fact that you are bragging about your NBA League Pass says a terrible lot about exquisite charcater of your basketball tastes and preferences. Even for unassuming US folks, generally not known for their refine aesthetics, this level of lowbrow dumbtainment seems to be too much. NBA TV ratings are constantly declining for quite a some time and right now stand somewhere between a third and a half of their 90s numbers. Despite the mass-media trying to create artificial craze about some LeBron or Giannis or whoever is in vogue at the moment. Even all those "NBA ueber alles" retards (nowadays these are often Chinese "basketball afficionados" or Europeans with the lowest levels of (basketball) self-esteem) can't save the day for this market in distress. Reality is clear: as years go by, NBA commercial show becomes more and more stale and generates less and less public interest.

And that's undestandable. For quite a some time only very rarely I could push myself to watch a full NBA regular season game. Lazy, subpar, half-assed defense, no team effort, primitive offensive plays whose main - and oftentimes exclusive - rationale is to fill stars' statsheets. No nerve, no tension, no intrigue, no excitement. Any given team can win against any other team on any given evening - and no one really gives a shit about the game's outcome. Players and anemic "fans" included. "Exciting" league you have there, no doubt about that.

P.S. I watch a lot of Bundesliga and LNB (used to watch much more before some personal tragedies hit me extremely hard). And in my eyes that's much more often than not a high quality basketball. A lot of interesting teams with different playing styles and characters (and the best teams aren't always those with the biggest budget for players' salaries), various coaching approaches being tested, a lot of tension, generally good yet not extremely wild atmosphere and vibe, a lot of excellent players (and not only American ones) who fight hard for the win. Generally I like what I see very much. It's a good basketball in my humble opinion, and I'm watching this game since early 90s. And these are the national championships which are not even in Top 3 of European club leagues. Nevertheless, you hear left and right that Europe is terribly poor in talent and all the best are in NBA. Yeah, yeah, someone like Theis was never a starting center for Bamberg, a team which plays in this very German Bundesliga, and never had a 10+ ppg season in Euroleague, but somehow these "experts" want us to believe this idiotic mantra about "all the best gone to NBA". Sad reality is that many people do believe it rather uncritically, just on the strength of herd mentality contagiousness.

[Terrorizer]

And also a couple of words about this "but basketball is not popular in Europe, it's a meagre market with marginal public interest". That's bullshit. I dunno if and when basketball could be profitable in Europe (as far as I know, (association) football is generally also not profitable in Europe, even on its highest level), I'm not a financial expert. But basketball is a sports number two in Europe. Yes, it lags behind football popularity-wise and this distance is terrific. But that doesn't mean that it's a sport no one is following. By the way, I like Italian way of fixing this "football above all" problem. Many main basketball centers in Italy are medium-sized cities without a calcio tradition of note. And in most cases the locals turn out to be very passionate about their "pallacanestro" teams. In football they also have no closed IMG Jordileagues, American pawnmasters making behind-closed-doors deals and bullshit like that.

But, as far as I know, popularity-wise basketball is only behind football in most European countries. And these includes most of the best European countries if the level of basketball is concerned. Even in Russia it is sharing a second place alongside with ice hockey. So how do all these volleyball/handball/water polo/etc. survive and have ther own European club competitions (generally successfully mimicking UEFA scheme with European branch of international federation in this sports handling two international club tournaments)? Basketball is much, much more popular than those and somehow we can only survive with the closed league, American masters pulling the strings and terrible hardships forthcoming, permanently hanging by a thread from sliding into obscurity.

Before my father's untimely passing, I travelled a lot across Russia. Aside from beach mixed-gender feel-good companies I've almost never seen regular guys playing the sports of volleyball on the streets (arguably "number four" team sports here in Russia), even when there was an open-air court for it. Yet guys playing streetball is a regular sighting in many cities (most of those sadly are imbued with the NBA-worshipping inferiority complex vigorously perpetuated and disseminated by the Russian "basketball media"). I've played a lot of pick-up games during my travels just by pure chance. Not as much as when I've stayed in Novi Beograd for a week and a half, but nevertheless this was a regular occurence, at least in the regional centers (district centers are generally much worse in this aspect).

And while there are many who play the sport but only follow NBA, it seems that top European leagues have good attendances and TV representation. ACB has attendances of more than 6,000 per average for quite a some years in a row and German Bundesliga gets 4,000+ attendance averages as of recently (it's interesting to see numbers for countries like Italy and France also but these are harder to find). It's not a sign that no one cares about basketball here in Europe. These are (very) good numbers for indoor sports.

I think that basketball has a splendid tradition here in Europe and it has a terrific potential to bloom and blossom locally. There are some steps in this direction but these are done mostly on the local level. And things should be run completely differently at the very top where frankly situation is abysmal. Crooks like Jordi are trying to destroy our unique tradition and sell out European basketball. That's a root cause for many of our bitter problems. And on the traditionally feeble and corrupt FIBA side we see a lot of passivity and incompetence, they utter some right words as of lately but they are not pushing for the right solution hard enough.

[Katastroika]

Waterpolo is eycellent example. Besides Italian league all others are not peofessional and survive just because of states financial injections. Serbia is best waterpolo country in the world, you have goals on every lake and swimming pool in every city, same goes for Montenegro and Hungary and Croatia but in 95 percent of the cases players earn less than average office salary and games are except Olympics and World Cup uninteresting to the public.

It's not a mantra but a fact that no sponsor in Europe will pay sustainable money for basket. Just example: in Germany BBL isn't even covered on TV but in online media. When I was at Eurobasket 2015 you couldn't find 1 banner in all Berlin. People didn't know that it is even played. I would love it to be different but it's simply lacking interest.

[Killer Bob]

You have written a roman, I will be a lot shorter.

It's not the problem of Larkin, Micic, Veseli...playing in Euroleague, but them being face of the league is. And yes mostly everyone worth something and not being old is playing or will play in Nba very soon. And things are going down rapidly with kids going there. Look at guards in Europe, Nando, Chacho, Llull, Shved, Delaney, Teo, Belinelli, Spanoulis...What's common for all of them?

About Nba, would I been watching Nba without Jokic, Doncic, Bogdanovic...No. I would have watched only playoffs like in MJ times. And btw. Nba playoffs are great basketball.

About Acb and other leagues. Real is playing 50 games there and is still losing a lot of money. So apparently there's a problem with European basketball that goes beyond Jordi. Bottom line is, you have to have a product people are interested in. And all start with players.

I'm sure you can produce another angry reply, but I'm for sure not a problem. I'm watching Euroleague, Acb, Nba and still enjoy playing recreational basketball.

[Joško Poljak Fan]

Well, not some big news as everything has been said before...

The supposed "financial stability provided by licences" is an illusion, as it overal decreases the sum of investment in european basketball overall, while increasing that investment to limited ammount of clubs. The actual question here should be if the multipying effects of overall decreased investment surpass the benefits of the EL's financial stability.
Feel free to disagree however you like it or dig deeper into economics chapters, that have that part covered.

There are clubs that make money out of basketball and are financialy sound, long term. However, the thing is that those team are not succesfull qualifying for the euroleague, which supports overspenders. If euroleague opens up, to a champions-league model, overspending would eventualy decrease in % of the budgets and lead to increased € generation of others, due to attractiveness of competing for euroleague. Bertomeu is acting as if it's a zero-sum game, that 1million € more for Burgos means 1million € less for Real Madrid, while in fact making whole ACB earn more is the surest way to bolster Real's income as well as interest in their games, as well as euroleagues games.

Protecting the few and than arguing that the european basketball as a whole is nowhere near closing the gap by even a small margin is a heavy oxymoron by itself. Yes, NBA clone needs superstars, since the games itself aren't interesting enough otherwise. We can agree on this one, but that might not be the only possible path.


Could it be closer to the truth, to say that generaly euroleague is the one un-popular in europe, while basketball on it's own gets a decent share of attention, of course after football? At least that's the feeling I got, years ago, when I dug somewhere into TV ratings of eurobasket games in various countries.
Euroleague not being able to earn € in Finland? Go wonder... that ugly, ugly ice hockey that takes all the attention is to be blamed! F*ck you Teemu Selanne! (And Ilya Kovalchuk; take that Terrorizer! :P)
... only if you believe that to be a zero-sum situation, of course...

[Killer Bob]

Well, not some big news as everything has been said before...

The supposed "financial stability provided by licences" is an illusion, as it overal decreases the sum of investment in european basketball overall, while increasing that investment to limited ammount of clubs. The actual question here should be if the multipying effects of overall decreased investment surpass the benefits of the EL's financial stability.
Feel free to disagree however you like it or dig deeper into economics chapters, that have that part covered.

There are clubs that make money out of basketball and are financialy sound, long term. However, the thing is that those team are not succesfull qualifying for the euroleague, which supports overspenders. If euroleague opens up, to a champions-league model, overspending would eventualy decrease in % of the budgets and lead to increased € generation of others, due to attractiveness of competing for euroleague. Bertomeu is acting as if it's a zero-sum game, that 1million € more for Burgos means 1million € less for Real Madrid, while in fact making whole ACB earn more is the surest way to bolster Real's income as well as interest in their games, as well as euroleagues games.

Protecting the few and than arguing that the european basketball as a whole is nowhere near closing the gap by even a small margin is a heavy oxymoron by itself. Yes, NBA clone needs superstars, since the games itself aren't interesting enough otherwise. We can agree on this one, but that might not be the only possible path.


Could it be closer to the truth, to say that generaly euroleague is the one un-popular in europe, while basketball on it's own gets a decent share of attention, of course after football? At least that's the feeling I got, years ago, when I dug somewhere into TV ratings of eurobasket games in various countries.
Euroleague not being able to earn € in Finland? Go wonder... that ugly, ugly ice hockey that takes all the attention is to be blamed! F*ck you Teemu Selanne! (And Ilya Kovalchuk; take that Terrorizer! :P)
... only if you believe that to be a zero-sum situation, of course...

I have only one question, why Premier league is generating that much money? Would it had generated the same amount of money, if there were playing dropouts from better leagues?

I even agree in some way, there's no point of having Euroleague, if we're having average players there. Just play domestic leagues and some short tournament like Champions league in football.

[Levenspiel]

About Nba, would I been watching Nba without Jokic, Doncic, Bogdanovic...No. I would have watched only playoffs like in MJ times. And btw. Nba playoffs are great basketball.

the thing with NBA is that it was not always this popular. it's Stern's massive success story. Before him, some NBA final games were televised from tape! There are some historical legendary games, even game 7s, that were not televised at all*. Consequently, the players were paid much lower, too, possibly to a level that did not attract the best Euro talents.

There might be a few tips to learn from this, but the gap in financial situation is simply too wide to overcome, at least in the short term.

*my source on this is Bill Simmons' massive book, but a shorter summary is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NBA_on...n_in_the_1980s

[Killer Bob]

the thing with NBA is that it was not always this popular. it's Stern's massive success story. Before him, some NBA final games were televised from tape! There are some historical legendary games, even game 7s, that were not televised at all*. Consequently, the players were paid much lower, too, possibly to a level that did not attract the best Euro talents.

There might be a few tips to learn from this, but the gap in financial situation is simply too wide to overcome, at least in the short term.

*my source on this is Bill Simmons' massive book, but a shorter summary is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NBA_on...n_in_the_1980s

Yes, we can like it or not but they did amazing job. People might put blinders on, but all sports is about superstars, you need them to have successful product. I have grown up by watching Drazen. I have watched Sibenka, Cibona, Real...only because of him. I kinda doubt kids all over Europe are doing that because of Vesely, Micic...You will still have fans going on local teams games, but you won't sell that product to others. Acb is very good league and how many revenues it makes outside Spain? My guess is not much. Even people here, who are basketball superfans mostly don't know anything about it. And that goes for every domestic league. I'm sure much more people in Slovenia are watching Nba than Euroleague or Aba league.

[Joško Poljak Fan]

I have only one question, why Premier league is generating that much money? Would it had generated the same amount of money, if there were playing dropouts from better leagues?

I even agree in some way, there's no point of having Euroleague, if we're having average players there. Just play domestic leagues and some short tournament like Champions league in football.

It's benchmarking the products of (to some degree) comparable worth.

If the dropouts from other leagues only, would play in premier league, it would surely earn less than they do now from the TV deals. But it would be even worse if Champions league and european / world championship TV rights would be out there available for free. Try earning 100 M € for champions league tv rights, while Premier league rights gets sold for 10 M € only and they share simmilar attention/marketability? Of course all the networks would bid for Premier league rights and no matter the popularity, they would never bid to the ammount they are paying right now (is it over a billion per season?), if there was comparable product either champions league or euro championship available for piece of change in comparison.
Of course all this is hypothetical and none of that is going to happen, since they are all very interconnected and as I mentioned before, it is not a zero-sum game. If a Premier league earns a better TV deal, that is a great news for Champions league. It's impossible for premier league to be hugely popular, while euro championship and champions league being completely ignored, it's the same sport, same players, different competitions.
Surely lack of stars would affect marketability, but the core, big spenders are to a large degree also team fans and they might still support their team no matter what. It's their enthusiasm that makes things moving, not some David Beckham groupies.

Premier league is a good product, that through benchmark increases the ammount of money TV networks are willing to pay for either champions league or european / world championship. Eventually it also goes the other way around. With that increased investment, the media has to take precautions to protect their (big) investment, therefor producing so much material, publicity, exposure. That's one of the factors why football seems so far ahead from everyone else, even in countries where it is actually not, because Media are paying big bucks and need football to be there at no.1 to make it worth while. Fans eventually follow.
And that is also why, while various sports might be benchmarked against each other, they hardly earn same € "per viewership" compared to football.

The goal of euroleague should be, to achieve big enough investments from TV networks, so that the latter start protecting their investment with additional buzz and content.
However instead of supporting the Fiba NT windows, Bertomeu acts like it is a zero sum game and those windows eating up on his piece of cake. Well, he obviously isn't some far sighted fella'.
Euroleague on it's own will likely never be able to reach the critical point, they need succesfull and big € earning eurobasket, since that is basicaly the only exposure to basketball for vast masses of europeans and they need succesfull and competitive national championships in order to mobilise fans out of their few core licenced teams. That's long term and it takes brains and guts. Short term solution: increase the number of games for more revenue.


It is a long and painstaking process, of continual growth and improvement that football managed to ride through 90ies on, which basketball missed, maybee even missed for good, since in these times tv viewership is dropping and my guess is that TV networks will now likely be conservative with their bidding.

[ncjazz]

You have written a roman, I will be a lot shorter.

It's not the problem of Larkin, Micic, Veseli...playing in Euroleague, but them being face of the league is. And yes mostly everyone worth something and not being old is playing or will play in Nba very soon. And things are going down rapidly with kids going there. Look at guards in Europe, Nando, Chacho, Llull, Shved, Delaney, Teo, Belinelli, Spanoulis...What's common for all of them?

About Nba, would I been watching Nba without Jokic, Doncic, Bogdanovic...No. I would have watched only playoffs like in MJ times. And btw. Nba playoffs are great basketball.

About Acb and other leagues. Real is playing 50 games there and is still losing a lot of money. So apparently there's a problem with European basketball that goes beyond Jordi. Bottom line is, you have to have a product people are interested in. And all start with players.

I'm sure you can produce another angry reply, but I'm for sure not a problem. I'm watching Euroleague, Acb, Nba and still enjoy playing recreational basketball.

Yes, G League is really starting to take off as a developmental league so this is definitely attracting more Europeans. For instance it seemed to do Poku a lot of good. All the while he was still getting paid a NBA contract. To make matters worse if college basketball does start to allow players to make money that could attract even more young Euros.

[Killer Bob]

It's benchmarking the products of (to some degree) comparable worth.

If the dropouts from other leagues only, would play in premier league, it would surely earn less than they do now from the TV deals. But it would be even worse if Champions league and european / world championship TV rights would be out there available for free. Try earning 100 M € for champions league tv rights, while Premier league rights gets sold for 10 M € only and they share simmilar attention/marketability? Of course all the networks would bid for Premier league rights and no matter the popularity, they would never bid to the ammount they are paying right now (is it over a billion per season?), if there was comparable product either champions league or euro championship available for piece of change in comparison.
Of course all this is hypothetical and none of that is going to happen, since they are all very interconnected and as I mentioned before, it is not a zero-sum game. If a Premier league earns a better TV deal, that is a great news for Champions league. It's impossible for premier league to be hugely popular, while euro championship and champions league being completely ignored, it's the same sport, same players, different competitions.
Surely lack of stars would affect marketability, but the core, big spenders are to a large degree also team fans and they might still support their team no matter what. It's their enthusiasm that makes things moving, not some David Beckham groupies.

Premier league is a good product, that through benchmark increases the ammount of money TV networks are willing to pay for either champions league or european / world championship. Eventually it also goes the other way around. With that increased investment, the media has to take precautions to protect their (big) investment, therefor producing so much material, publicity, exposure. That's one of the factors why football seems so far ahead from everyone else, even in countries where it is actually not, because Media are paying big bucks and need football to be there at no.1 to make it worth while. Fans eventually follow.
And that is also why, while various sports might be benchmarked against each other, they hardly earn same € "per viewership" compared to football.

The goal of euroleague should be, to achieve big enough investments from TV networks, so that the latter start protecting their investment with additional buzz and content.
However instead of supporting the Fiba NT windows, Bertomeu acts like it is a zero sum game and those windows eating up on his piece of cake. Well, he obviously isn't some far sighted fella'.
Euroleague on it's own will likely never be able to reach the critical point, they need succesfull and big € earning eurobasket, since that is basicaly the only exposure to basketball for vast masses of europeans and they need succesfull and competitive national championships in order to mobilise fans out of their few core licenced teams. That's long term and it takes brains and guts. Short term solution: increase the number of games for more revenue.


It is a long and painstaking process, of continual growth and improvement that football managed to ride through 90ies on, which basketball missed, maybee even missed for good, since in these times tv viewership is dropping and my guess is that TV networks will now likely be conservative with their bidding.

I understand theory of all that, but my question still stands. Premier league, LaLiga, Champions league...all have the best players in the world, and that's the main reason people are watching and consequently paying them. On the other hand all the best and the most perspective basketball players are in Nba, how should Euroleague or Fiba market those leftovers, even if we forget how less popular basketball is in comparison to football? Explain to my son, why should he watch any kind of basketball in Europe, except NT competition? Even my generation is not watching much basketball anymore, except Luka and NT, younger generations are watching near 0 and I doubt very much that will get better.

[Jazz]

It's benchmarking the products of (to some degree) comparable worth.

If the dropouts from other leagues only, would play in premier league, it would surely earn less than they do now from the TV deals. But it would be even worse if Champions league and european / world championship TV rights would be out there available for free. Try earning 100 M € for champions league tv rights, while Premier league rights gets sold for 10 M € only and they share simmilar attention/marketability? Of course all the networks would bid for Premier league rights and no matter the popularity, they would never bid to the ammount they are paying right now (is it over a billion per season?), if there was comparable product either champions league or euro championship available for piece of change in comparison.
Of course all this is hypothetical and none of that is going to happen, since they are all very interconnected and as I mentioned before, it is not a zero-sum game. If a Premier league earns a better TV deal, that is a great news for Champions league. It's impossible for premier league to be hugely popular, while euro championship and champions league being completely ignored, it's the same sport, same players, different competitions.
Surely lack of stars would affect marketability, but the core, big spenders are to a large degree also team fans and they might still support their team no matter what. It's their enthusiasm that makes things moving, not some David Beckham groupies.

Premier league is a good product, that through benchmark increases the ammount of money TV networks are willing to pay for either champions league or european / world championship. Eventually it also goes the other way around. With that increased investment, the media has to take precautions to protect their (big) investment, therefor producing so much material, publicity, exposure. That's one of the factors why football seems so far ahead from everyone else, even in countries where it is actually not, because Media are paying big bucks and need football to be there at no.1 to make it worth while. Fans eventually follow.
And that is also why, while various sports might be benchmarked against each other, they hardly earn same € "per viewership" compared to football.

The goal of euroleague should be, to achieve big enough investments from TV networks, so that the latter start protecting their investment with additional buzz and content.
However instead of supporting the Fiba NT windows, Bertomeu acts like it is a zero sum game and those windows eating up on his piece of cake. Well, he obviously isn't some far sighted fella'.
Euroleague on it's own will likely never be able to reach the critical point, they need succesfull and big € earning eurobasket, since that is basicaly the only exposure to basketball for vast masses of europeans and they need succesfull and competitive national championships in order to mobilise fans out of their few core licenced teams. That's long term and it takes brains and guts. Short term solution: increase the number of games for more revenue.


It is a long and painstaking process, of continual growth and improvement that football managed to ride through 90ies on, which basketball missed, maybee even missed for good, since in these times tv viewership is dropping and my guess is that TV networks will now likely be conservative with their bidding.

Really fantastic post, especially about the media companies protecting their investments. But the other thing about football is that it is too big to fail. It doesn't matter how many hyped games turn out to be disappointing, it just never loses its audience.

And going back to the title of this thread, is there any chance that those 7 disgruntled teams could consider FIBA as an alternative?

Also good to see Terrorizer back posting again.

[Jazz]

I understand theory of all that, but my question still stands. Premier league, LaLiga, Champions league...all have the best players in the world, and that's the main reason people are watching and consequently paying them. On the other hand all the best and the most perspective basketball players are in Nba, how should Euroleague or Fiba market those leftovers, even if we forget how less popular basketball is in comparison to football? Explain to my son, why should he watch any kind of basketball in Europe, except NT competition? Even my generation is not watching much basketball anymore, except Luka and NT, younger generations are watching near 0 and I doubt very much that will get better.

I think he'd rather know why you got him a Real shirt with Tyus' name and number on the back.