By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
The first two-day EuroCup Head Coaches Meeting ever held was designed to allow the professionals on the team benches, who have helped lift the quality of Europe’s second-best competition, to learn from Euroleague Basketball executives about future goals and to offer their own suggestions about how to raise its profile and impact with fans.
The coaches heard from Jordi Bertomeu, Euroleague Basketball’s President and CEO, that those plans call for greater ongoing integration of standards and best practices between the EuroCup in the Turkish Airlines EuroLeague.
“We are proud that we have managed to consolidate our competitions and today we have the top two competitions in Europe,” Mr. Bertomeu said. “There are no doubts about this, and now we have to understand the role of the EuroCup. It’s not only the teams thinking their future is in the EuroLeague and this is the path. But this competition itself is becoming stronger and stronger. And next season will be the strongest in EuroCup history, with almost half of the 24 teams having recently played – and played well – in the EuroLeague.”
“Players want to play in the EuroCup and the EuroCup is the first door to go to the EuroLeague, which is the maximum level,” Maurizio Buscaglia of Dolomiti Energia Trento said. “In the end, you really feel it is one European basketball.”
Many of the coaches heard for the first time about the Euroleague Basketball business structure and strategies, the integrated marketing principles being applied to its competitions, and the digital and social media avenues to bring the protagonists closer to the fans.
“We are getting a lot of information on how the competition works and how Euroleague Basketball is built as a business model,” Luis Casimiro, head coach of Unicaja Malaga, said. “That is good to know where we stand – sometimes we hear a lot of things but reality may be different to what people say. It is much better to get this knowledge to know where we come from and defend the competition we are playing in.”
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