How is the World Cup media coverage in your country?

[Katastroika]

As I'm new here I don't want to spam all topics but I have a question to all of you.

How is the media coverage in your country considering the upcoming World Cup? Is there even a coverage? And if yes are there a lot of quality articles in (sports) newspapers, online columns, podcasts, good analysis of opponents, teams, discussions about rosters etc.

I read a quite interesting answer from a Lithuanian fellow interbasket poster who answered that 90% would answer "Lithuania will win Gold" and 10% "Sabonis will be MVP". I laughed because the situation here is simmilar and quite ridiculous. People who mostly watch football and maybe watch EL games of their favourite teams if they are competing and World Cup/Eurobasket (and nothing else) are hyping our team to an incredible degree without even knowing who is playing for our opponents, they don't understand the system of the tournament etc. The quality in media coverage dropped rapidly in Serbia - I remember and I think fellow Serbian posters will agree - before 20 years there was a fantastic coverage in our sports daily papers ("Zurnal" and "Sport") but now the coverage is a mix of clickbyte headlines and very low quality coverage (e.g: "Bogdanovic's birthday present for himself as Serbia played much stronger in the second half.") - zero analysis of tactics and if yes they are really bad. Online media tries to cover the World Cup here in high frequentation, some media has really interesting and good columnists and also a valuable podcast coverage, forum discussions are quite interesting in some forums where people have knowledge - but in fact - it's NOT as it should be. Quality in comparison to America and NBA is a catastrophe, one more thing where the Americans are 10.0000 miles ahead of us. Would appreciate a lot if you would share the situation in your countries.

After 30 years of watching basketball I'm, like every time, just as happy and excited like the first time I watched a great tournament and so I really don't understand how anybody in the world cannot have world cup fever

[Darrell Armstrong]

Here in Spain is mostly the same. The ACB (local top league) used to give a lot of coverage to all major tournaments, but this year they didn't provide a Team Guide. Major sports journals just publish news related to Spanish NT (overhyping them, as usual), and Team USA. Most of the good basketball magazines have gone out of print in the last decade, so there's little in terms of analysis.

I use to read french and italian sports journals as well, and it's mostly the same. French journalists pay more respect to other teams, though.

[Straight forward]

I read a quite interesting answer from a Lithuanian fellow interbasket poster who answered that 90% would answer "Lithuania will win Gold" and 10% "Sabonis will be MVP"

Nope. These days surely not. It's strange, but public polls are being handled rather objectively by majority, less so if some Zalgiris' super darling are being touched, but even in these cases the objectivity is growing in most popular sites if BB in Lithuania.

I'm just lacking maybe guys more candid, who says it without underrating or overrating NT. Actually in BB community to overrate NT very bad tone. No-one wants to do that. So you jumped on some kid, or some man who lives 10 or 15 years ago. At those times, kids and other really was writing a lot of shit. Now there are those +- system in comments section. Crap collects a lot of - and the comment goes invisible. I think that really worked well. But maybe I'm on OT a little bit. Generally media remains rather neutral I would say. And we do have rather constructive podcasts. Few young journalists I like, some not so much. But most of our coaches, ex players are too politically correct and tend to underrate NT rather than overrate, IMO.

And, yeah, we are lacking more explicit say and analysis about other teams, but some podcasts again handled by young journalists are up to this. I would say new generations of journalists will surely be more quality than oldschool journalists or oldschool coaches, players...like "Yeah Serbia is strong, yeah Spain is strong, yeah..." They wouldn't be able to name half of those team's players. We are moving forward even I would say.

[Valexander]

I will start from out national sportscasters.

Two people. 15 years or so. One with a good knowledge of TRACK AND FIELD history, and another with some limited b-ball knowledge who he really overestimates it though. Unnoumerous hilarious tactical analysis. The “long rebound” issue and many others, silly repeatedly autistic comments like we are going to a Hitchcock’s ending, making up their own nicknames for the players, for which I am sure they will get sued one day, and mostly a cringe sense of humor, like the one you feel embarrassed for them...

In the beginning it was funny then somehow irritating or even frustrating.
To tell you the truth, now I can’t think a tournament without them. It’s like the cigar on the morning coffee.

[Katastroika]

If you talk about the one who also commented the Acropolis Cup - I think everyone in Europe knows his voice the last +/- 20 years. He says "mesa" after every basket

We have one of our own of that kind. Who really loves the team but gets more and more annoying the older he gets and his knowledge isn't as high as he thinks especially if we consider the fact that he used to play basketball in his youth.

On private TV Arena Sport there is a very ambitious pair of commentators which some like and some strongly dislike but generelly they understand the game and it's often a joy to listen to them.

[Valexander]

If you talk about the one who also commented the Acropolis Cup - I think everyone in Europe knows his voice the last +/- 20 years. He says "mesa" after every basket

We have one of our own of that kind. Who really loves the team but gets more and more annoying the older he gets and his knowledge isn't as high as he thinks especially if we consider the fact that he used to play basketball in his youth.

On private TV Arena Sport there is a very ambitious pair of commentators which some like and some strongly dislike but generelly they understand the game and it's often a joy to listen to them.

Lol exactly that’s them. Omg I just realized their international acknowledgment now.

Now about the media and the crowd. Mostly Greek fans are in best case medal seekers and usually “party joiners after a visible success.

They were just a few hundreds of people who knew that the early 80’s battles between Galis-giannakis-Calligaris had a world stage potential. It was the famous 87 which started the “party”. About NT everyone is ready to taste the success but in the same time it is so easy to turn their backs as in early 00’s or even crusify them as in early 10’s. August of 05 was really quiet as the losers couldn’t bring a medal in Olympic tournament or in EuroBasket 03. We are living now the “third party” NT era for the reason you already know

I shouldn’t be that harsh though, all this process made a respectable percentage of people to get deeper into the basics of the sport. Of course they are not the majority. This is why although there are respectable b-ball journalists they are forced to follow the masses. I do have a couple of radio shows to follow and enjoy them.

[Levenspiel]

As I'm new here I don't want to spam all topics but I have a question to all of you.

How is the media coverage in your country considering the upcoming World Cup? Is there even a coverage? And if yes are there a lot of quality articles in (sports) newspapers, online columns, podcasts, good analysis of opponents, teams, discussions about rosters etc.

Welcome to the boards, Katastroika. This is another good question and deserves its thread. Cheers.

for my country, I checked online and it seems they (NTV) will only broadcast Turkey and the US games. So, if this is true, they totally miss the meaning of the WC. in Hungary I don't know, there may be none. I'll watch online.

if you happen to watch bball highlight videos from Turkish TVs, you probably listened to Ismail Senol. A cool guy, with a bit of over-enthusiastic style. Previously it was Murat Kosova, an extremely annoying, totally biased commenting (imho). More previously, late 90s, it was Murat Murathanoglu & Ismet Badem. You could pick Murahanoglu with his strange/unique pronunciation of American names. and before that there was the legend, Avni Kupeli, on state TV (I heard his father was a general in the 1980 coup d'etat, so he got this job by an order. he really had no idea about bball).

[usagre]

In the US it’s getting its usual slim to no coverage. Actually probably all the withdrawals has led to more talk about it than if you had a powerhouse team going. A good example is that the Boston Celtics are 12 month a year topic on Boston sports talk and with 4 of their players potentially playing on the team you wouldn’t know it by watching their coverage.

[Dtown]

In the US it’s getting its usual slim to no coverage. Actually probably all the withdrawals has led to more talk about it than if you had a powerhouse team going. A good example is that the Boston Celtics are 12 month a year topic on Boston sports talk and with 4 of their players potentially playing on the team you wouldn’t know it by watching their coverage.

Agreed, the withdrawals have gotten the world cup in the news more than anything else, even then the topics usually are 'How does this effect next year's Olympics'. I imagine the tournament will go the same way, if the US wins and goes undefeated it will probably just get a two minute blurb on Sportscenter, and maybe 4 minutes on one of the NBA specific shows. If the US loses, or someone from the NBA gets hurt, then it will get more news.

Online is a bit better, you can find the coverage if you know where to look. ESPN will have the entire tournament on ESPN+ so they're at least doing token coverage of NBA players.

[paspalj]

After 5 years the whole TV situation in the US still confuses me :P

I have a TV and I get some (?) channels through a thing called TVPlus (?) but I don't have cable and I guess there is no "regular" antenna stations?
I just stream the game I want to see and cast it on my TV

[Tesla]

Journalism standards world wide have fallen drastically the last few years. Half serious newspapers have become tabloid journalism at best. Even more accurately Id say they have turned into prototypical women's magazines. The west has been leading the way with this trend so I think in Europe you are still likely to still find a little better standard of journalism. I find it an absolute disgrace when American, British, Australian journalists try to criticise journalism in other countries. Especially on international affairs, people in the west have no clue what is on going on. They are more informed about the Kardashians and that kind of crap. Obama oversaw the US destroy Syria & Libya but he's seen as some sort of pacifist. The Germans try to blame Russians for that mess. Who has Trump bombed? Regular Serbian people who have little connection to Libya and Syria were our on the streets protesting against those countries getting bombed. In Serbia there is a massive choice in the amount of print media. There are more papers in distribution then in the west. I generally find Serbian news far more informative, and imagine it would be similar in places like Greece, Poland... I'm often blown away by the quality of articles I find in Serbian media. Something I'm proud of for Serbia... though yes it is on the decline like everywhere else.

[locdogjr]

In Taiwan Eleven sports is actually running promos that they will show it. The Jones cup featured a few teams tuning up for the world cup but this wasn't even pushed as a marketing tactic (Korea, Jordan, Japan....)

Overall, with all the NBA pullouts most people aren't too interested. I know people who were planning on going to China for the games and just decided to save their money due to the lack of excitement surrounding it. I was going to go but given the Canadian roster pull outs as well as the cost of Chinese visas and the current political climate, I decided against it and am clearly not alone.

As for what I see from Canada? A big ole nothing burger outside of the normal bball geeks as usual.

[MrRager]

I read a quite interesting answer from a Lithuanian fellow interbasket poster who answered that 90% would answer "Lithuania will win Gold" and 10% "Sabonis will be MVP".

Yeah, no disrespect to that guy, but either he's living in a dark dark village, or he wanted to make a good joke. Or most likely, he's one of those Lithuanians, who always paint their country in a bad light, especially to foreigners. It's a inferiority complex, probably stil passed to new generations by the people wounded by the Soviet regime.
Actually the coverage is not bad in Lithuania, you can get all the WC related news if you want. Also, already mentioned here, but what the new wave of basketball journalists are doing with their podcasts is really informative and refreshing. I think the most cringe-worthy material in Lithuania regarding any basketball tournament are commercials starring NT players. But even them have become more scarce this year due to reasons unknown.
If to summarize, Lithuanian basketball media really focuses on Serbia a lot, their strength and chances to win WC, absence of the stars in USA squad and of course Canada and Australia. Less is said about France or Spain, of course Giannis and Greece is in the focus as well.

[SaliH]

Welcome to the boards, Katastroika. This is another good question and deserves its thread. Cheers.

for my country, I checked online and it seems they (NTV) will only broadcast Turkey and the US games. So, if this is true, they totally miss the meaning of the WC. in Hungary I don't know, there may be none. I'll watch online.

if you happen to watch bball highlight videos from Turkish TVs, you probably listened to Ismail Senol. A cool guy, with a bit of over-enthusiastic style. Previously it was Murat Kosova, an extremely annoying, totally biased commenting (imho). More previously, late 90s, it was Murat Murathanoglu & Ismet Badem. You could pick Murahanoglu with his strange/unique pronunciation of American names. and before that there was the legend, Avni Kupeli, on state TV (I heard his father was a general in the 1980 coup d'etat, so he got this job by an order. he really had no idea about bball).

Broadcasting only Turkey and the US games? Are they that stupid or just in a financial mess so they can’t afford to show any other games of the tournament? When having teams like Serbia, Greece, Lithuania, France, Spain etc it is a shame to not show some of their games too especially in round 2 and above.

[christodoulou76]

I will start from out national sportscasters.

Two people. 15 years or so. One with a good knowledge of TRACK AND FIELD history, and another with some limited b-ball knowledge who he really overestimates it though. Unnoumerous hilarious tactical analysis. The “long rebound” issue and many others, silly repeatedly autistic comments like we are going to a Hitchcock’s ending, making up their own nicknames for the players, for which I am sure they will get sued one day, and mostly a cringe sense of humor, like the one you feel embarrassed for them...

In the beginning it was funny then somehow irritating or even frustrating.
To tell you the truth, now I can’t think a tournament without them. It’s like the cigar on the morning coffee.

All the nicknames concocted by one of these commentators

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkbRsRCot10