By Antonis Stroggylakis/ info@eurohoops.net
ANTWERP– Basketball Champions League Patrick Comninos met media representatives for a roundtable talk that took place Saturday (4/5) during the competition’s Final Four that is held in Antwerp, Belgium.
Here are some of the most important topics that were discussed.
On the Antwerp Final Four and the 17289 people who attended the second semifinal game:
“Not many people expected it or thought it was achievable. I said it on the draw three weeks ago that this is a big bet for us as an organization. We are still a very young organization. It’s only our third Final Four. Bringing it to a territory that admittedly is not a basketball-crazy country like perhaps Greece or Spain and opting to use one of the biggest sport indoors arena in Europe was itself a big bet. When I walked around the office and I told the guys we believe we should go to Antwerp, they looked at me. They told me there are arena challenges and that in the end it only has 5.500 seats. I said that we go to the big one. And this is a bit of our mentality. We want to test the barriers and try new things. Push the bucket a little bit”.
“Coming to Antwerp was a big opportunity for us to test if the competition has the legs to stand on. Last year in Athens we benefited from a unique atmosphere, a football atmosphere brought by the fans in the arena It created amazing imagery and stories but we were aware of the fan composition and this is how it is in territories like that. Coming to Belgium to a more neutral crowd and convincing them to come and watch four teams play basketball when they knew only one of them? That was a challenge”.
“So first and foremost I need to publicly thank the club, thank the city authorities, the port, the mayor’s office who they contributed in making history last night with more than 17.000 fans attending a game that doesn’t involve their national team. It has never been done before. It’s a record that will stay in history books. Bringing this event in such an audience and providing them with the opportunity to witness what we prepared was a great reward. Our sentiment and feelings we received were very positive last night. Our biggest challenge is that we want to replicate this. It’s not easy to do that in two out of three days in a row. We are very optimistic of the fact that the fans will want to witness again what they witnessed in the semifinals. We have a more impressive show coming on Sunday. In the end, for the first time in our short history, we are facing a Final without a host playing. When Tenerife played it was easy to fill the arena and the same thing was the case with AEK. It was actually difficult to keep people away from the arena. Now for the first time in history, there’s a final without a host. And that’s another challenge for us”.
“We feel extremely confident that after the audience saw what they saw on Friday and the fact that they have the opportunity to see their team fight for the third place and congratulate them for their run, is reason enough to fill the arena”.
On the possibility of hosting the next Final Four in a neutral arena:
“My personal experience has demonstrated that there are very very few team sport events in the world that can fill up an arena in a neutral venue. Probably the Superbowl, the UEFA Champions League Final, maybe some NCAA events. Just a handful. It’s very difficult to do this. To say that next year we will be in X city and not have the guaranteed presence of the host”.
“It’s something we have discussed a lot and something we have examined. I believe that some time perhaps in the future we will examine it more closely. But for the time being it’s still a competition that benefits tremendously for having local support. For us, from a purely operational and organizational point of view, this is a huge challenge. Finding the destination a few weeks before going there was a huge challenge. If you speak to the guys in Antwerp about what has been going on these last weeks… it’s beyond normal. But that’s the way it has to happen”.
“It will offer us quality time if we take a whole year to prepare but we might not have the imagery we have now and we are blessed with when we are having the host prepare the event”.
Attracting new sponsors:
“Sponsorship is a challenge for basketball in general. We see this in a national league level, at an international level. For a young competition, we realized and we took a consensus decision that sponsorship won’t be a priority in the first circle. And by that, I mean the first three seasons. It’s difficult to sell sponsorship for an unknown product. Organizations like ours have two revenue streams: TV rights and sponsorship. TV rights are something easy to sell because you sell content. Maybe the broadcaster doesn’t know the quality but knows that you are going to have games. So it’ easier to sell broadcast rights”.
“Sponsorship takes a lot more effort. You need to build your product, you need to track its impact. The first thing sponsors ask is a TV audience. It’s difficult to sell a product when you aren’t in the market yet and you don’t have regular statistics when it comes to your audience numbers. We are now in the first stage when we have completed our first cycle. We have a lot of valuable data on the competition and its impact, the returning investment that sponsors can expect. We know what product we have. We know what it can offer to sponsors and we are ready to tackle this more aggressively now”.
“Basketball has an inherent challenge in that the teams that play in the competition aren’t known until quite late in the season. So we have a “chicken and egg” challenge. We go to a sponsor, once our perimeters are determined, it’s a bit late for our own budget. We anticipate this and we are trying to commit in an environment that is challenging. The second cycle of TV rights has begun and it’s going very well. But now we need to start effectively the sale of sponsors. That’s a priority”.
Teams receiving opportunities with BCL:
“We have a very transparent method of accessing the Basketball Champions League. I’m a very firm believer of this when we say we need to reward results on the court. That’s exactly what we need to do. We reward results on a national league level based on ranking and we reward results on BCL level. The points that teams collect on the court creates a national ranking. Very straightforward and transparent. Part of our mission is to help develop the game at a national level and do this all across Europe. We are now finishing our third season and we’ve had games in 37 countries and we have registered more than 100 clubs in our competition. This is what BCL is all about. BCL is inclusive and this means including everyone that wants to participate. It is about growing the sport. You’ve heard me say that basketball isn’t played by a few clubs and countries. What is going here in Belgium is an impetus for helping to create momentum and to grow the sport. We can’t expect much if we restrict the sport in certain territories”.
“I will share a story about Olympic Fribourg. A different kind of Cinderella Story. Champions of Switzerland. In the first qualification round, they go to play in Saratov vs. Avtodor. They didn’t even know when this is on the map. Then they go to Groningen in Holland. Then they played in Sakarya in Turkey. They made it. And this gave a tremendous boost to Swiss basketball. Last Saturday in the Swiss Cup Final and 6.000 people attended. This is 10 times more than the average number of attendance in league games. And this happened because Fribourg played all season long at a top level. They welcomed Venezia and PAOK in the arena. For me, this is what the sport is all about. It’s about growing the sport, giving opportunities and expanding the basis. Otherwise, it will just be an introvert environment without organic growth”.
Media rights and growth:
“We are a startup that is one year older. We are still very young. We are realistic here. What we hear from clubs that have a lot of experience is that what has been achieved is amazing. That we delivered something that takes a lot of times to build. France or Greece remain some of our top markets. Now expect a significant improvement in a lot more markets”.
“We are trying to establish the BCL in more territories as possible. We put a focus on Spain. ACB is arguably one of the top leagues in Europe. BCL suffered a bit by being broadcasted on regional TV in the Canary Islands or Murcia. We want national exposure. We are in the process of discussions with the hope of a national broadcaster in Spain. It will be a huge leap for us in an environment that has an overexposure for basketball. Then we will try to tap in secondary markets where there are a lot of opportunities and desire. We have 160 million live viewers on TV last year. An important number. I leave social media aside because it’s another record-breaking field”.
BCL attracting more high profile clubs:
“That’s our biggest strategic challenge. Trying to find that balance. In the world of basketball, there has been over the last decades a storyline where it’s not the results that matter so much but the brand that matters more. This is difficult to overcome. The fans might not be enticed when their team is playing against some teams they have not heard before. As the competition grew so were the attendance numbers”.
“This is linked to the fact that fans have been trained to look for the brand and not the result. For us, we are wearing now both hats. The hat of the executive body that is FIBA and the shareholders’ that’s the leagues. We’re focused on league results. This is natural in the world of sports. It has become a bit unnatural in a club environment in basketball and it takes time to change this mentality. A couple of seasons ago, Venezia won the Italian League. The perception was that Milano was the best team. The court showed differently. This is something that takes a lot of time. To dispel this perception that Milano is the best team. Nobody looks at the standings. These teams played for months, one of them is champion but the other team is considered better”.
“We are working and focusing and stressing a lot the importance of the result. We are happy to have the top teams. We call ourselves Champions League and we are maybe criticized for that but we have the most champions. But champions aren’t rewarded. It’s still about the brand. We need to acknowledge it but also find the right balance. A part of the endemic problems in basketball is club competitions that clubs choose in which the competition they participate. We have this unfortunate situation where we need to attract the clubs that perform well. This is essential. But the audience necessitates it, the ones that also carry a heavy name. Not an easy task”.
“Hapoel Jerusalem plays in BCL based on results. I find it paradoxical that in the last five years Maccabi hasn’t won all titles but the perception is that Maccabi is the only team in Israeli basketball. How do you put value to the success of the champion if you presuppose that? We need to work on that together. To explain that this isn’t the case if we talk about sports. We are talking about who beat whom on the court. It’s about results and we have to put a value on it. If we don’t, we negate everything that happens on a domestic level. And this is where the production of young players comes from. It’s a joint effort that has to be made”.
Clubs operating in uncertainty/Revenue distribution:
“There is a structural problem in the game of basketball. The way that the competitions are structured. The access to them and the transparency or lack of it in terms of access to the competition. The respect of sports criteria. These are crucial questions. I think that the challenge we have when it comes to this, will not easily and automatically disappear as long as this structure remains. As far as we’re concerned we are out there proposing a different model than what existed in basketball this last couple of years. A model where clubs know in September what it takes to participate in European competition”.
“This wasn’t the case before we introduced BCL. I heard horror stories from clubs that were waiting until July to find out if they are in or out of the competition. This didn’t allow them any planning. The no. 1 challenge for clubs is the lack of certainty. The fact that 11 clubs have certainty and others do not, highlights the problem and doesn’t hide it. It creates an imbalance when there’s a competition with teams that have an unequal starting point”.
“We proposed a different model. On September a team knows that if a team wins the league, they’ll play in the BCL. They can plan accordingly, can invest, see where they are halfway through the season and think about potentially making additions”.
“What is missing in basketball is the opportunity to plan. As a result, it creates this unacceptably low income. You heard me compare numbers between football and basketball. They are depressing. This shouldn’t be the case because basketball is the no. 2 sport in the world. There is something inherently wrong there. If we don’t have a structure that provides clarity and certainty to the fans and broadcasters so that they know what is that is sold, it will be difficult to have organic growth. New money. We can’t have 40 million that goes around a few clubs and the rest are bystanders watching their bottom line being negative and celebrating if they don’t lose as much as the previous year”.
“This isn’t business. Business requires organic growth and opportunities. We have demonstrated that there is another way out there. Without organic growth, the sport will decay. It will become introvert. A small group of clubs playing against each other and the rest being bystanders. Basketball in Europe is not played by a handful of clubs. It’s played by a big number of clubs”.
“It’s not about distributing 50 million. The point is how to make the 50 become 100 etc. This is organic growth. We know where these 50 go and rightly so. It goes to the bigger clubs. It’s about growth and bringing in new markets. Bringing new clubs and investors. Money needs money to grow. How do you get a club in Poland to become interested? You need someone to be inspired and put money. But he needs to see light at the end of a tunnel. Financially and sports wise. But now the champion of Poland won’t play in EuroLeague. So why invest in a club?”
“We highlight that if you invest and the club wins the league, this is the competition you participate. It’s very clear and well known. What we cover, what we provide. And the 1 million that the champion gets”.
Photo credit: Basketball Champions League