By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
The Turkish Airlines Euroleague launches an exciting, new era for the 2016-17 season with a change in competition structure that lets fans see all 16 teams meet one another at least twice every season. The round-robin format for a 30-game regular season is a first for elite European club sports and ensures that fans everywhere will witness the best of European basketball more often than ever before.
The regular season schedule, which runs from mid-October to early April, is now available, earlier than ever, and features two innovations.
First, all teams will play two games over four days during five separate weeks of the season, one per month except February. During those double-game weeks, no team will play on back-to-back nights and all teams will play one home game and one away game.
Another first is that the calendar is asymmetrical, meaning that teams will not necessarily play their rematches against each other in the second half of the season in the same sequence that they played their first games. True to the goal of seeing the best against the best, week-in and week-out, the calendar features 12 rematches of former Euroleague finalists and 44 games between former Euroleague champions.
Both are true when the regular season tips off on Wednesday, October 12 with a single game, Real Madrid vs Olympiacos Piraeus in the Spanish capital, that will commemorate the original opening game from the competition’s last major change of eras, in 2000. A day later, reigning Turkish Airlines Euroleague champion CSKA opens its title defense on the road at Galatasaray Odeabank Istanbul, the reigning Eurocup champ in a duel of continental champions from last season.
The regular season will conclude on the first week of April, with Maccabi FOX Tel Aviv hosting Panathinaikos Athens, a game that has decided a continental championship on three occasions, and CSKA welcoming Olympiacos Piraeus in a repeat of the 2012 championship game.
Among the highlights of the new format is the guarantee that all teams will face one another twice – once at home and once on the road – and accordingly, this season marks the first time that the previous season’s finalists will meet in the regular season, too. The first of those clashes comes in Round 14 on December 23 in Moscow, where CSKA hosts Fenerbahce Istanbul. The opposite fixture at Ulker Sports Arena in Istanbul is set for Round 21 on February 2, 2017.
The intrigue continues after opening week with a Round 2 that offers CSKA hosting Panathinaikos, Fenerbahce visiting FC Barcelona Lassa and Maccabi squaring off at home against Madrid. That represents a small sample of what fans will witness throughout the 26 weeks of action during which 30 rounds of league games will be played.
The first week in which teams will play two games each is between October 25 and 28, for Rounds 3 and 4, with a total of 16 games of Euroleague devotion packed between Tuesday and Friday. While Round 3 takes Barcelona on a tough road test against Crvena Zvezda Telekom Belgrade, Round 4 schedules a pair of Istanbul derbies – Darussafaka Dogus vs. Anadolu Efes on October 27 and Galatasaray Odeabank vs. Fenerbahce a day later.
Round 6 will see a clash between the last two Euroleague champions and the winningest club in Euroleague history: reigning champ and seven-time winner CSKA hosts 2015 champion and nine-time winner Madrid on November 11. On the same day, Laboral Kutxa Vitoria Gasteiz will welcome Fenerbahce in a repeat of last year’s Final Four semifinal.
Archrivalries are the highlight in Round 8, when Fenerbahce and Efes go against each other on November 17, while a day later El Clasico takes place between Barcelona and Madrid and Panathinaikos hosts Olympiacos in the great Athens derby.
See the entire 2016-17 Turkish Airlines Euroleague Regular Season calendar here and make your plans to enjoy all the best of European basketball like never before!