By Aris Barkas / barkas@eurohoops.net
26,135 fans watched the game France-Turkey and set a new single-game attendance record for an indoor basketball game in Europe!
The tickets in Pierre Mauroy Stadium in Lille were sold out in the first day of the “Round of 16” in Eurobasket 2015 and the previous record in Eurobasket in 2005 (18,900 in the medal games) in Belgrade was broken easily.
The official number broke the previous record held by Red Star Belgrade. On 26 March 2014, Belgrade Arena was packed with 24,232 fans supporting their team against Budivelnik Kyiv in the Eurocup Quarter-Finals.
FIBA Europe President Turgay Demirel said “For basketball in general and for continental championships in particular, this is really an amazing day. It is only the qualification games for the last eight, so we are hoping that the number of fans seen here today will continue to turn out over the coming week. It will be one of our responsibilities for the future to keep the attendance numbers high for the European game. This will not be an easy task, but we will do our best.”
Kamil Novak, FIBA Executive Director Europe added: “This is a new era of European basketball. It’s not only one game. The whole Final Phase is going to be outstanding in a facility like this. The European basketball family can and should be proud of the interest in the national teams and in EuroBasket. Obviously, having almost 30,000 spectators in the arena is something unique. This is a base for our future work because this is the way we want to go – bigger, modern arenas”.