And let's go down that rabbit hole. Why is European basketball not more successful commercially? Should it be? What kind of futures are potentially awaiting it? What are the governing bodies doing wrong? What are the crucial numbers regarding its commercial failure that you have never seen before?
The article is in two parts. The first 13,481 words is simply about the state of European basketball. Why do I think it's in existential danger, what do involved parties do wrong, how to fix things, etc.
The 2nd part is titled "Possible Futures of Eurobball" and you can search that quoted text to just read that part, the first 13,576 words is a set-up for objective knowledge and my personal insight towards the financial and structural state of European basketball. It's the set-up for the final 5 thousand words examining the possible futures for European basketball. I don't suggest only reading the 2nd part because not reading the 1st part but the 2nd would make you misinformed. 1st part of the article is that crucial to the 2nd part, which is why I didn't separate them to two different articles. Reading just the 2nd part would be like trying to read Jacques Lacan without reading Sigmund Freud, just would be utterly meaningless exercise and somehow would make you more misinformed than if you hadn't read at all.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
How Did Things Come to Here?
In October 2014, it was announced that NBA signed a new TV deal with its national broadcast partners ESPN and TNT. The new deal would last until 2025 and would be worth over 2,67 billion USD a season as opposed to 930 million USD from the previous contract. This meant roughly 1,742 billion USD pure increase to NBA's yearly revenue. That's an extra 58 million USD per NBA team just from that renewed contract. Obviously not all of NBA's yearly revenue goes to its teams, but you get the point. There hasn't been a single European basketball club ever to have a budget reaching 58 million US Dollars.
Why start with the NBA? Because that TV contract is the single most important event affecting European basketball's present, future. Moreso future. European basketball was never the same and will never be the same ever again because of that TV contract.
The effect of that TV contract to NBA salary cap kicked in for the 2016-17 season. 2015-16 NBA salary cap was 70 million USD. 2016-17 NBA salary cap was 94 million USD. That 24 million increase is the biggest in pure numbers in NBA history year-to-year but only in pure numbers and also if you adjust for inflation. In terms of percentage, it is the 2nd biggest salary cap jump in NBA history. The first is the increase from 1994-95 season to 1995-96 season. From almost 16 million USD to 23 million USD. So 2016 cap jump is the 2nd biggest jump in terms of percentage however it is harder to jump %34 from 70 million compared to jumping %43 from 16 million. And yes, that NBA season was the season Michael Jordan came back to the league. The 2016 increase, or rather the 2014 TV contract deal, happened without such a monumental event like Michael Jordan coming back to the NBA.
Although the salary cap jump kicked in at the 2016 summer, everyone knew the salary cap was going to go up by 2014 October already. So 2015 offseason was the first offseason where everybody in the NBA knew they could give or get contracts accordingly with the cap jump. 2015 NBA offseason was the summer of "yeah this is high for him but remember, his contract will look normal with the cap jump" thrown around every 3 minutes in every NBA related discussion on anywhere.
This is why this TV contract renewal that shook European basketball's structure to its core is described as the "2015 NBA cap spike" or "2015 NBA cap jump" by me. Even though the cap jump did not happen until 2016.
I won't pretend to hide a rabbit in a hat, why this salary cap jump is so significant is obvious. Even European basketball watchers who don't know what a salary cap is or can't name an NBA player realises that the players they watch leave to go to the NBA because it pays higher. That's not the only reasoning of course, but it's a lot of it. Especially when it comes to players you wouldn't expect to leave. Or players who left that you would not expect them to leave under conditions before 2015.
But I don't think this was such a mega shake-up for European basketball (let me shorten it to Eurobball for the remainder of the article) only because players who would not leave Europe for the NBA started to leave after the cap spike, that is a lot of it of course. But I also think it is such a fundamental event for Eurobball because it revealed a fact, a harsh truth perhaps, certainly an epiphany for anyone who cared: Even if you don't position yourself as a business, NBA does and that's important because these were also revealed along with it:
*Even if you don't position yourself in competition with the NBA, you are.
*Even though you're not a players' medium, as eurobball is certainly a coaches' medium, a product of basketball and structure of basketball driven by coaches which is in wild contrast to NBA that is entirely a players' medium and a product of basketball & structure of basketball driven by players; you are hurt by certain types of players leaving your competitions. Or just player pool getting poorer in general even if it's irrelevant to the NBA.
I must have seen, listened, read thousands of different people talking about European basketball itself, not something on-court related, but a meta-opinion about Eurobball itself since I've been first captured by it 15 years ago. And out of all those sayings, most of which I definitely can't remember specifically, it seems to me that general consensus about Eurobball seems to be that it's not a commercialised entity and actually many eurobball fans like it that way. Especially before 2015, that is. Since 2015 questionings towards the commercial success or lack thereof have been started to be raised a lot more towards eurobball governing bodies. As much as I can remember, before 2015 such criticisms came up only when some news broke about some important basketball club having big financial problems.
That is important because nobody thinks the economy of the sport is something to the core of eurobball. But it is. Because as I outlined above, no matter what we think, eurobball is in competition with the NBA and the economy of the sport is something to the core of eurobball. Or it has to be. Otherwise its core gets shaken like it did in 2015 precisely because its economy not being something to the core of it.
Do you think "Euroleague mafia", "Bertom€u" care only about money? Good. They should. And not just them but all the domestic leagues and FIBA Europe too. I would dare to claim I once was more apathetic towards sports economy and spiteful to industrialisation of sports more than anyone who would read this article. This lasted for like a dozen years. The latter part still holds true actually. But I was so apathetic towards business in sports that I never even cared about what player got what money, which team overpaid which player and so forth. I just wanted to know the squads and watch basketball, I didn't care about the budgets, player salaries that people involve to their basketball discussions. It just the observation of the effects of 2015 NBA cap spike to eurobball gradually made me utterly obsessed about the business of eurobball and its future.
We can't pretend that eurobball is not a business anymore or that it does not compete with the NBA from a financial perspective for one simple reason: It will die if it doesn't position itself as a business. The harsh reality of the 2015 cap spike is that this thing has become a Darwinian survival race. If eurobball does not adapt and evolve financially, it will die. If certain components of eurobball does not adapt and evolve financially, they will die.
Of course technically eurobball won't vanish. But high level European basketball is a unique entity of basketball. The reason I very much dislike the "2nd best league in the world" narrative on EuroLeague (or ACB, doesn't matter) despite the fact that it's intended as a compliment to be given by people who reiterate it, even by NBA fans who never watched a second of eurobball in their lives, is precisely that uniquness. Eurobball and NBA are radically different entities of basketball that push the boundaries of belonging to the same sports. Not only they go by significantly different, sometimes directly opposing rules on and off the court, their norms at every structural area of a sport are different. Their traditions are also radically different, their legacies are, their value judgments are radically different. They are as different as a super slow clay court and 1990s super fast grass courts in tennis, that is their on-court difference only. Eurobball and NBA are somehow even more different off the court to the point that I'm quite confident in claiming eurobball shares more similarities with European football than it does with the NBA to the point that some similarities regarding the play itself is closer to football.
To claim EL or ACB as the 2nd best league in the world after the NBA, you need these competitions to be comparable first. But when it comes down to it, they don't even play by the same game rules on the court. And those rule differences are not niche differences either. You can't compare basketball competitions when one of which has more similarities with another team sport than with the basketball league that has its own rules at every area.
EuroLeague isn't some 2nd division to the NBA, because it's not the same game at any area of the sport in any sense.
And that's precisely because I have consumed it so much for 15 years, and other eurobball competitions as well, because higher level eurobball offers a way different thing than what NBA offers. If it didn't, why not just watch NBA as it has generally better players? But no, there are millions who prefer eurobball to the NBA precisely because they are not similar at all in every sense. Those people prefer what eurobball offers within this sport to what NBA offers within this sport. If they were similar, this wouldn't be the case. How many prefer English Championship football to Premier League football?
So eurobball practically dying means what it uniquely offers dies. And the thing is, only high level eurobball offers this. When you look at lower levels, it is much more similar to the NBA. And let's imagine that all the hundreds of players at this high level eurobball would flock to the NBA. What happens then? Well, now we would actually have a much more similar product to the NBA and it would be defined as the 2nd best league in the world rightfully so. And well, those millions who prefer eurobball to NBA would be gone as the basketball they prefer is not exactly watching way worse versions of high volume primary creators like James Harden, LeBron James, Giannis Antetokoumpo, Luka Doncic but in the names of Tony Wroten, Ricky Ledo and whoever playing an NBA-like basketball at a way worse level.
To me, that's what eurobball dying means.
And there is that danger. So the TV contract is up by 2025. What if NBA would see another big increase in its national TV contracts like that? How would eurobball survive if it doesn't significantly improve its economy? 2015 cap spike created opportunities for eurobball players like Dairis Bertans, Matt Thomas, Maxi Kleber, Raul Neto, Paul Zipser to have NBA careers. Who does eurobball start to lose with another cap spike like that in 2025 if its economy stays more or less the same?
This article will contain strong, harsh, maybe brutal and certainly a lot of criticism towards eurobball governing bodies. A lot of it to Euroleague Basketball. So it is important for me to clarify at first that while I do believe Euroleague Basketball has been utterly lazy and frustratingly incompetent, I also think they are close to perfect at analysing the situation. Of course laziness and incompetence matter a lot more than identifying the problems or whatever because the laziness and incompetence pertains to their actual jobs a lot more whereas they can identify the problems and have an accurate picture of the situation without holding the jobs they hold. So don't think this means I'm giving them a pass.
But I don't believe for a second Euroleague Basketball signed a long term agreement with IMG in 2015 because of FIBA. EuroLeague clubs were not switching back to FIBA no matter what, accepting a governing body like FIBA in which they don't have any control over while leaving Euroleague Basketball which they literally own was never on the table for them. Even years later like last season, you get statements from Jasikevicius about how going back to FIBA would mean going back 20 years and Saras is not even a club executive. Just an ex-player and a coach.
Euroleague signed that long deal with IMG and started to position themselves as a business from 2015 because of the NBA, not FIBA. Because as lazy and incompetent as I find them, they are close to perfect in assessing the situation. It's not just what they did in 2015, the deal with IMG, switching EuroLeague to a league format and increasing number of matches there. They also have been positioning themselves as a business in a way they haven't done in the 15 years prior, in a number of aspects. In how they want to steer the future of eurobball. In how do they approach participation to their competitions. In what firms they work with and how do they talk about it.
I have a lot to criticise them with, but to me there is no question that they have realised they need to position themselves as a business due to 2015 cap spike. My criticisms will mainly come from what they don't do after realising their position as a business and what they do poorly.
Switching EuroLeague to a league format despite decreasing the number of participant clubs makes sense from a business perspective. Because that way you guarantee every team playing each other in a season at least twice. There's a reason Jordi Bertomeu talks about this fact at every press conference he attends to this day in late 2019 since the format change in 2016. Sponsors like to be sure of this, which increases their payments. Broadcasters like to be sure of this, which increases their payments.
Spanish broadcasters did not know who would Real Madrid or Barcelona or Saski Baskonia or Unicaja Malaga or Valencia play in EuroLeague under the previous format. Now they know they will broadcast two el clasicos at least. They know Baskonia will compete against Barcelona twice at least. They know Real Madrid will play Olympiacos or Maccabi Tel Aviv. This is vital.
If you don't pay attention, you might think UEFA Champions League is the highest earner across football competitions. After all, they are known as the competition that hands out obscene amount of cash to the participant clubs and it is the top level of club football, it is the most popular club competition in football, it is the most watched sporting event aside from Olympics and World Cup.
Well, not just EPL, La Liga but also Bundesliga and Serie A earn more than UEFA CL. EPL's revenue from 2017-18 was 6,5 billion €; La Liga & Bundesliga from the same season stood at 4,4 billion €; Serie A's figure comes from a season earlier at 2016-17 not accounting for whatever increase they had a season later and the league generated 2,2 billion € that season. UEFA CL's 2017-18 season generated 2,1 billion €.
This is the reason why UEFA doesn't look down on the wish of a lot of top clubs from non-EPL leagues who fear EPL will just increase the revenue gap further and further wanting to create an exclusive pan-European league instead of the CL. Because it would multiply UEFA's revenues.
That happened to EuroLeague exactly. League revenue doubled pretty much as soon as it was switched to a league format. 2015-16 EuroLeague revenue (last season without league format) was 30 million € and 2017-18 EuroLeague revenue (2nd season with league format) was 58,8 million €. That's %96 growth in two years. The revenue generated from audiovisual rights which is mostly TV contracts was 32,3 million € in 2017-18. So 2,3 million higher than entire revenue from 2015-16 season. In 2017-18, vast majority of the TV rights were still sold under the old competition format so go figure how much immediate impact it made to few TV rights that were sold with the round robin format. This type of growth continues as 2018-19 rose up to 72 million € revenue for EuroLeague. As more old TV contracts get renewals and with expansion of the league from 16 to 18 clubs which also added the French market to the picture via ASVEL's short term licence, this type of year-to-year growth, in my opinion, will be sustainable for Euroleague going forward.
However it's far from sunshines and roses. Firstly the fact that EuroLeague, which took over from FIBA in 2000 with the promise of Telefonica's 35 million USD investment into the league for each year until 2004, managing an abysmal 30m€ league revenue from their product as recent as 2015-16 is scandalous. The fact of Euroleague still managing horrific revenue numbers both in absolute numbers and also relative to the popularity and consumption of their product despite the big recent growth perhaps can be best put into perspective by looking at highest earning basketball leagues.
After the NBA and CBA, the highest earning basketball league happens to be Japanese League at 153,4 million €. And that's from 2017-18 by the way. Yes, Japanese basketball league, that's right. In the season that Japanese B.League generated 153,4m€ revenue, EuroLeague generated 58,8m€ revenue. No, you are reading that absolutely correctly. 4th place belongs to Basketball Bundesliga at 128m€ from 2018-19 season. Perhaps the only European domestic league that has a proper revenue reflecting its value, popularity, consumption rather accurately. Oh by the way, whilst EuroLeague generated 30m€ revenue from the 2015-16 season, Japanese 2nd division had generated 28,3m€ just a season later in 2016-17. It was that close.
Now, to be fair to EuroLeague, domestic leagues tend to generate more revenue than continental competitions even if the continental competition is more popular, watched more, consumed more. I already outlined that with regards to top football leagues' revenues and UEFA Champions League's revenue above.
But it doesn't change one bit that it is beyond ridiculous, appalling, disgusting and utterly grotesque that EuroLeague is that much behind in revenue to Japanese League out of all leagues, much closer to Japanese 2nd division at a very recent time and just slightly above half of Basketball Bundesliga.
Euroleague executives and especially Mr. Bertomeu frequently boast about EuroLeague being broadcasted in nearly 200 countries, as well as in flights and cruise ships. They boast about 200 million viewers of 2018 Final 4. Economic impact of Final 4s get published with positive results like 2019 Final 4 generating 56 million € for the city of Vitoria-Gasteiz. Or 2018 Final 4 generating 50 million € for the city of Belgrade. Those are of course just direct financial impact for the weekend. The cities also benefit from positive experiences, like %86 of Belgrade Final 4 attendees will recommend visiting the city to acquaintances according to a stat. And as someone who have been to Belgrade and Serbia for the first time during 2018 F4, I can say I am firmly in that group and I've talked about how wonderful Belgrade was during my experience there for the F4 for instance. To add onto this, after 2017 Final 4, a report on Euroleague finances in a Turkish newspaper had mentioned that the "contribution of the organisation to Turkey is guessed to exceed 300m€" which obviously included estimated indirect economic effect. Although 140m€ of that was implied to be the "media returns" of Turkish Airlines through its name sponsorship. (As an aside, Turkish Airlines pays little over 7m€ annually to Euroleague, if you want one statistic capturing how awful Euroleague's extracting revenue/its reach ratio is, this is it. I know that deal was was done in 2011, but it doesn't lessen the point at all, but shows how much sports business revolves around revenue. When you are doing a terrible job gaining revenue out of your product like Euroleague and when your revenue is so low, sponsors like Turkish Airlines also manage to underbid relative to the value they'd get out of this deal and this also is valid for broadcasting deals as well. More on that later. And in the case of Turkish Airlines, as you can see, it was underbid severely.)
Now, those above are actually economic numbers more or less accurately reflecting the EuroLeague brand. Many fans flock to F4 cities every year, some fans go there without even having tickets, F4 is itself a popular basketball event that most likely have more people only watching F4 than have people watching F4 along with at least one non-F4 EuroLeague match all season long. Yet the executives of this league somehow manage to generate this pathetic revenue out of the league that is able to generate north of 50m€ just in a weekend for a host city of its ultimate event.
Nielsen Sports announced live television audience of 2017-18 EuroLeague season as just above 50 million people and that number does not include a single person from Greece, Turkey or China, three of its biggest markets (I realise EuroLeague isn't popular in China but China is such a big country that it might not be popular there and still generate a few million viewers and hence be a big market for EuroLeague nevertheless which is exactly the case, more on the Chinese market for EuroLeague later). And on top of excluding all viewers from Greece, Turkey and China; due to that number only representing live TV viewers, it also excludes TV viewers who don't watch live. Or it excludes me because I happen to be a fanatic who subscribes to EuroLeague TV and watch all the stuff there. And it excludes viewership from other official streaming services like Eurosport, flohoops as well as streaming services of broadcast partners like BeIn Sports, Movistar, Magenta Sport, RMC Sport, NovaSports, SportKlub, and even youtube where BeIn Sports Turkey airs its one FTA match per week on live on youtube (geoblocked for Turkey only of course) or whatever viewership it gets from flights and cruise ships. It excludes viewership from collective gatherings on big screens which are not common at all but still exist for Final 4 mainly and adds up to the viewership. I'm not mentioning viewers who watch the competition through illegal means because the topic is not about sheer viewership/popularity. It is about the viewership of people who could generate revenue for the competition either buy paying for a cable/streaming service or being eyeballs for TV ads or both. It is about hitting home how ludicrously horrible of a job Euroleague executives have done to generate revenue out of their product through outlining the amount of viewership they have at their hands to use to generate proper revenue.
So What Does Euroleague Wrong?
IMG executive Ioris Francini said these in a report about EuroLeague in Sportbusiness after 2016-17 season under the new format ended:
"Previously, you had to balance wide exposure on free-to-air television (FTA TV) against the often greater revenue available on pay-television. Today we’re in a very different place, where the platforms offering greatest exposure are often social channels, Facebook in particular. We’re undertaking a deep review, with the help of a third-party expert, that is engaging both sides of the JV and helping us redefine the principle of media return. With that we’ll be able to explain and address the relevance of FTA TV, social, digital, clips, content syndication and influencers, and see how we overlay a vertical strategy instead of something onedimensional. If we can tell a sponsor that a mix of media assets is much more relevant and effective if we engage X amount of social channels versus 10-minute clips on FTA TV, then the sponsor will understand. FTA remains absolutely critical because exposure is essential for EB’s partners."
Although Ioris Francini is not a Euroleague Basketball executive and is from IMG, he seems to be quite involved with Euroleague's work so I believe it is fair to take this statement as another proof of Euroleague's ability to pinpoint the situation well but inability to take action. More on that the latter in a bit.
But first, it's helpful to emphasise the importance of this topic. Free-To-Air sporting programme is essential to a sport's following. We all grow up having to consume sports that are visible to us. As someone in Turkey, you are extremely unlikely to come to love ice hockey because it's not on media for you to consume it. In Russia, it's the opposite because it's on media for you to be exposed to it. In Turkey, it's extremely unlikely for you to be a golf viewer, because it's just not on anywhere in the media for you to be exposed to it. In Anglosphere, it's the opposite because you can be exposed to it. Sure, theoretically someone from Turkey can pick up these sports and love them and be regular viewers once they get past a certain age in their lives but we just don't see that because it's super rare. We mustly know about sports that we are exposed to from an early age at the places we live.
Since FTA television is just that more available to the general public than pay-TV, sports having matches on FTA TV rather than pay-TV is a fundamental way for them to be exposed to the public. I mean FTA television (and shortly after basketball magazines) is how I discovered basketball and it has become a significant part of my life forever.
But, Euroleague, along with other sporting competitions, have largely switched to pay-TV as its broadcasting partners a while ago. It's a logical move because broadcasting deals with pay-TV channels pay that much more. But as Ioris Francini talks about it, this eliminates the exposure element of FTA TV.
However how people consume media has changed over time. Television is still huge, but internet and later social media have added tremendous depth to how people consume media and exposure to elements of culture like sports. Which, again, is what Ioris Francini talks about.
Internet and social media offer added space for sporting competitions to expose their product to people and to be able to negate that handicap of lost exposure from television by switching from FTA to pay-TV. It should and does have a lot of impact on making sure young people are familiar with your product.
So it's only a natural conclusion that Euroleague (as other eurobball entities) should invest into their social media and web services quite a bit to expose themselves to be able to gain new fans and be relevant to the new generation too.
And the job they have done there is just extremely poor.
For one, all of their social media channels except for VK, is in English but just in English. EuroLeague's official account should be in English of course as it is lingua franca especially for such an international competition. The problem is most EuroLeague viewers don't speak English. EuroLeague should have created different twitter, facebook, instagram accounts in the languages of all of their core markets years ago already plus additional ones too. Meaning accounts such as "EuroLeague Spain/Espana" and also for Italy, Greece, Russia, Turkey, Israel, Lithuania, Germany, Serbia, France plus Croatia, Montenegro, Slovenia, Brazil, Australia, Poland, Argentina maybe even for North America for Canada, US, Mexico and MENA, Africa. These accounts would be in appropriate languages and content would differ from the neutral, in-English, general EuroLeague account. An Australia account would cover past and present Aussie players in EuroLeague and EuroCup a lot naturally. A Germany account would cover Bayern and Alba quite a lot naturally.
When the majority of your viewers do not speak English and yet you restrict your league to produce in-English content on social media, not reaching out to so many people, it's just one of those basic things that they don't do which is incredibly frustrating. The amount of further engagement, bonding these accounts would provide to so many EuroLeague viewers and also exposure to new possible viewers is off the charts.
This is not something that would cost too much money either. Instead of hiring a British company to do your work in social media and not oversee it at all, hire independent social media managers within the structure of your company. Plus, you could have the people you hired for Spain accounts work on Argentina, Mexico and people you hired for France accounts work on Africa too and so on. No need to hire as many people as the number of accounts. And it's not just much expensive to do this. It is just plainly frustrating that we are pretty much into 2020s now and Euroleague won't seemingly ever do this despite the fact that they take home, what, %45 of league revenue and has not increased the bonuses they give out to clubs over the last 4 seasons despite the rapid revenue growth they experienced during this period. I don't know what kind of a deal they have with IMG but what IMG is putting on the table is also another subject to wonder that is completely in the dark.
This is an essential for core and extended markets. There are also other markets that need marketing.
China
China is the biggest basketball market in the world; in terms of number of viewers, fans at least. Euroleague has a big structural problem with regards to Chinese market: Matches are played mostly after midnight there when most people are asleep.
But this doesn't negate the necessity of Euroleague to market their product in China. And that's another area where they have been lazy and incompetent.
There was more effort towards Chinese market circa 2016 by Euroleague. And that resulted in Euroleague boasting about Fenerbahce - Baskonia SF from 2016 drawing 3,16 million average viewership & 12 million total viewers from China's CCTV5 channel.
Two things:
*That semi-final started at 3AM by local hours.
*This may or may not be big numbers for CCTV5 at that time of the programming, I have no clue, but it is certainly a huge number for Euroleague.
Euroleague also boasted about media coverage of Euroleague in China throughout 2015-16 season:
a total of 13 traditional print media, among them Sports Weekly, China Sports Daily, Southern Urban Daily and Beijing Times, wrote articles about the Euroleague during the season. Likewise, 40 different internet media websites, including Sohu Sports, Sina Sports , Netease Sports, Tencent Sports, not to mention the prestigious news agency Xinhua News, dedicated coverage of the Euroleague to their readers.Although I'm not sure how much this is because of any marketing effort. We eurobball fans like to belittle EuroLeague's reach (that is in my opinion precisely due to the lack of basic and non-basic fan engagement and marketing work that Euroleague lacks) but as I've been more obsessed about eurobball finances over the last year and consumed more content towards the topic, I've been surprised at the reach of EuroLeague many times. Despite the lazy and incompetent job Euroleague Basketball has done, the product has gained a mark in unexpected places due to its clubs, classic matches, legendary players, Final 4s and years of exposure through FTA TV. So you can just open the sports section of popular South Korean website Naver and find EuroLeague content to the extent of news of something Jasikevicius said recently or whatnot. Of course, South Korea is not really a basketball market and you won't find eurobball news ever on the main pages but if you search for it, they are there and even the fact that they are there never mind them being up to date is an example of the reach Euroleague has.
Euroleague also boasted about the facts that at one point of the 2016 Final 4 weekend, Final 4 trended to the 7th place on Weibo (huge social media site from China for the uninitiated) and that Final 4 content attracted 12 million views there, and that Final 4 got almost 10.000 comments in one hour there and that live updates from Euroleague Weibo account drew 188,540 views.
Ah, so Euroleague does have a Weibo account to market the competition to people in China and have signed deals with Chinese tech companies to extend their reach in China, right? Maybe they do a better job in China than in Europe itself? Not quite the case.
Want to know what happened to that Euroleague Weibo account? Yes, something happened to it. It got deleted!
By 2018, the account was inactive. It had 418,778 followers. On an inactive account. The account only had a total of 9461 updates (updates could be considered analogous to tweets in twitter) and the last one was many months ago. It was utterly inactive. In comparison, the NBA Weibo account then had 175 thousand updates. 174938 vs 9461 to be exact. They had 38 million followers then. A year later in 2019 NBA account had risen to 207165 total updates and to 41,7 million followers. NBA account experienced a %10 growth in followers with thousands of new content on Weibo to be reached to Chinese people. And, that inactive Euroleague Weibo account was deleted.
NBA puts up thousands of pieces of content on there every year and gets rewarded with millions more new followers each year. But NBA is a totally different class of a social media beast (which overinflates their brand image, not that that's a bad thing for them, not at all) so let's compare those EuroLeague metrics to others.
Kontinental Hockey League has an ice hockey club from China which is a huge advantage for them in the Chinese market compared to EuroLeague which not only doesn't have a club from China, it does not have any historical connection to China or Chinese basketball throughout its history from all the way back to the FIBA era. With respect to Shang Ping, he doesn't count. Not when even the majority of Panathinaikos supporters would not remember him. Chinese sponsors to EuroLeague and Alba Berlin don't count too, that's just business that nobody really cares. And the few friendlies played between EuroLeague and CBA clubs in China don't count either because playing friendlies is not a way to expose your product, it is a marketing step after you already exposed your product. If you don't introduce your product, present its ethos, tell what it's about, convey its uniqueness and properties, differentiate it from other sporting competitions, produce content to achieve all these first; there is zero point in playing friendlies because targeted group (in this case Chinese basketball fans) don't know what it's about.
So with all this emphasis on absence of connection between China and eurobball, inactive EuroLeague account having more than 400k followers could be compared to KHL which has a Chinese club and naturally Chinese athletes but also a new account on Weibo. That KHL account has opened in August/September of 2019 and has shared 4303 pieces of content since which is little less than the half of EuroLeague's # of content until it became inactive and later deleted. But of course 4303 in just a few months means this KHL account is a lot more active than EuroLeague ever was. But KHL account has just 2150 followers.
To give other examples from other official sports accounts on Weibo, French Open account has 1,7 million followers with similar amount of content to what EuroLeague had at 8065. Important to note French Open drew more than 110 million Chinese live viewers from television once in a match when Li Na made the Final there. Again, EuroLeague doesn't have such a historical connection with China. Also impact of activity on Weibo followers can be exemplified through football leagues. English Premier League account has 49.122 updates on Weibo with just above 4 million followers. La Liga has 36.175 updates and just above 2,5 million followers. However Bundesliga has just 1778 updates and just 10.264 followers. Ligue 1 has just 974 updates and 10.435 followers. Of course Bundesliga and Ligue 1 are also less popular than EPL and La Liga however that big of a difference is not due to that, but mostly due to more activity bringing more exposure and more followers.
I think there is a prejudice among basketball fans in Europe at least towards China's infatuation with basketball, or a wrong impression perpetuated by NBA's meta-marketing towards that market. What I mean is when we hear about China's interest towards basketball, it is always towards their infatuation with the NBA and NBA constituted its meta-marketing by narratives of Chinese basketball fans going crazy for certain mega NBA stars. So that picture painted along with a lack of understanding of China's basketball culture seemingly gave off the impression that China gets affiliated with the show businessy face of the NBA and that's what they love. CBA's reputation as a league with "casual basketball" in some senses also helps this image. But looking at some metrics that I went into detailly above, it seems like that's not an accurate reflection of Chinese basketball culture and there is a serious space for Chinese basketball fans to get into the more competitive technical and tactical style of basketball that is eurobball. I think NBA being much more popular than CBA there, is also a sign of this. Whilst NBA is a lot more show businessy and much more of an entertainment corporation than the entire eurobball structure, and is focused towards an athleticism and skillset oriented brand of basketball instead of the collectivised style of technical and tactical brand of basketball that is eurobball; NBA still offers an a lot more technical and tactical side of the sport than the CBA even if those are not parts of its ethos a la eurobball.
So the audacity for Euroleague to essentially go "Meh, we forgot about this account completely, didn't we? Better delete this than have this inactive and useless like this for nothing" is hilarious and maddening. This is only the fault of Euroleague executives because they don't do their jobs, they are lazy, they are incompetent, they are apathetic, they don't oversee the crucial work that should be done to the point of that work not existing anymore and they don't care about that either.
Yes, they do analyse the situation at various segments of realities of eurobball well. But "if we get Germany, France, UK involved, we'll increase EuroLeague revenue a lot through the size of TV marketing sector there" is pure laziness. It's not a vision. Their thesis is correct, Euroleague would highly benefit from these markets having higher viewership which would bring higher revenue for the league. These are the biggest TV markets and economies in the continent, there is no question why Germany and Japan are so ahead of other domestic leagues except the NBA and CBA in terms of revenue despite not being top 5 basketball leagues (or top 15 in Japan's case) has a lot to do with the size of their economy and the advertisement industry. But, "let's put a club from these countries to the league" is an infuriatingly lazy action to take towards realising this thesis. That's literally their entire work. "Let's put a club from these three countries to the league and money will follow". And they don't do anything else. Not even the most basic stuff. Is there a German, French website of EuroLeague? No. Any German, French social media accounts? No. Any other type of marketing and exposure efforts to spread the league to these countries? No. But let's not do the work and just add clubs from these countries to the competition and the money will follow.
The imprint of this laziness is all over the place on every area of work of Euroleague Basketball. "Let's just deal with a British company to do our audiovisual content and not oversee anything". "Let's just deal with a bunch of tech companies from China and completely disregard that market otherwise".
The latter is one of the more crazy things. Euroleague has signed deals with so many Chinese companies throughout this decade, especially in the latter half of it. Because China is a huge market for the sport. Companies there look for options other than CBA, NBA too in the hopes that EuroLeague will grow further there and their initial investments will turn out to be brilliant deals. And it is clever for Euroleague to deal with Chinese companies too because marketing in China is a completely different animal. Any western product that wants to market itself there signs deals with Chinese companies to do the marketing because if they do it themselves with no help, they fail or underperform.
But Euroleague signs long term deals with Chinese companies and then completely disregards the market. It's the same attitude they have in Europe with regards to France, Germany, UK markets. "We made deals with these tech companies from China and now they will increase popularity there". No. These companies came to you with long term deals even, because there is huge potential for you to see huge growth in China due to unmeasurably big unused potential there. Not because they thought "We should sign a deal with Euroleague out ouf the blue and then do their work for them increasing the popularity of the competition here solely on our own, whilst they do nothing; and then pay them more money with a renewed deal once EuroLeague gets more popular because of our own efforts".
Russia
Russia is an overlooked market to me. I get that basketball is not particularly popular there and current television deal of Euroleague there is a mess. But Euroleague and people talk about aiming for Germany for instance, but is basketball popularity much different in Germany than Russia?
Basketball may never be as popular as ice hockey in Russia but KHL which largely is composed by Russian ice hockey clubs had a revenue of 820m€ in 2016-17 and basketball certainly won't be as popular as football in Russia but Russian Premier League also generated 813m€ revenue in 2016-17. Those are big numbers that suggest Russian TV market could be profitable for Euroleague. Russian basketball seems like it will always have a remarkable presence in EuroCup too, so there's that as well. Of course I don't imagine Euroleague getting hundreds of millions of € from Russian broadcasting deals any time soon (currently it seems like it's not even 7 figures anyway; yes it's that of a mess there) but it doesn't need to reach those levels for Russia to be a key economical market.
EuroLeague has an official page on popular social media platform VK whose majority of users are from Russia. And guess what? Unlike Weibo, it is active, it has 301.559 followers there which is very good compared to other accounts (much more active VTB League account has 152.798 followers; much much much more active NBA account has 240.677; UFC which has Russian superstar Khabib as its best ever athlete -or so I have heard- nears 265 thousand; KHL has 1.646.497 followers, Russian Premier League has 2 million). CSKA Basket's official account also has 230,043 followers which stands as very good in comparison to CSKA football account that has 826,742 followers and 79,290 followers of CSKA's ice hockey account. Even Zenit's basketball account has 114,613 followers whilst their football account is nearing 1,1 million. Also other basketball clubs like Nizhny Novgorod with more than 65 thousand, Lokomotiv Kuban with more than 35 thousand, UNICS Kazan with just north of 31 thousand and Khimki above 26 thousand, Avtodor at 13 thousand also have solid to decent following considering their fanbases.
But I already pointed out the shortcoming again in the parenthesis above. Euroleague's VK account is very much behind in activity compared to other official sports accounts. It looks like they barely average one post a day at the maximum which is probably generous whereas other accounts pump out so much more content on their VK pages.
It's not as disastrous as the Weibo ordeal but once again Euroleague's stable insufficiency in marketing is on display, this time in one of their core markets.
If anything, it seems like Euroleague holds the potential to transform basketball to a significantly more popular sport in Russia by looking at these metrics from VK despite the fact that these relatively impressive metrics for EuroLeague are there despite Euroleague rather than through any work of theirs. I mean just looking at the NBA VK page should be shameful for Euroleague. How much more active it is, how they incorporate their versions of NBA website from Russia, Ukraine and Belarus to their VK account and so on. It's hard to tell for whom this is a core market. It certainly looks as if it is a core market for NBA and doesn't really matter to EuroLeague while the reality is the opposite where it actually is a core market of EuroLeague and doesn't really matter to the NBA.
And let's not forget, whilst most EuroLeague viewers don't speak English and Euroleague.net is scandolously only in English; this is further affected in Russia than other eurobball markets. Russian language is more different than English relative to other languages of different markets in EuroLeague, it has a different alphabet than every other one. Because of such reasons and a few others, percentage of English speakers in Russia is even lower than other countries with EuroLeague clubs. So if there is one language that needs a EuroLeague website in itself the most, it would be Russian. This VK account is the only Russian content Euroleague produces but even that lacks content so much relative to other VK accounts of various sporting organisations.
Bright Future for EuroLeague, But Domestic Leagues?
Despite all of the shortcomings of Euroleague from a business perspective, they still did the right thing by switching to a round robin league format and this just increased the intensity of interest in the league. Along with the mark, memory and footprints remaning from the all the decades of eurobball, the goodwill and following that clubs have generated, the recognition of the unique brand of basketball eurobball inherentely possesses; EuroLeague is bound to continue its rapid growth as a business. As much as I criticise the lazy approach of Euroleague towards growth, the idea of incorporation of Germany, France and UK as EuroLeague markets is a smart move that will accelerate the growth. Although I have questions about incorporating London and Paris based clubs to an 18 team league especially when other clubs are aiming for EuroLeague with remarkable investments too like Valencia and Virtus Bologna. But more on that later.
But we shall not forget the threat of survival is on eurobball, not just EuroLeague. If EuroLeague saves itself with business growth, which looks like it will, but if other competitions don't follow, then every non-EuroLeague organisation will fail at this existential threat and the gap between EuroLeague and other eurobball competitions will increase to a point that only relevant competition will be EuroLeague.
It will be the end of domestic leagues. Nowadays narratives within eurobball community are towards domestic leagues being unimportant or whatever but I find that inaccurate. I think that sentiment merely comes from the increased amount of EuroLeague matches and the intensity of interest rising towards EuroLeague with the new format. Back when there were fewer matches in EuroLeague with a less attractive tournament type of a format and even before then when there were even fewer Euroleague matches under FIBA rule in the previous century, domestic leagues were naturally more on the spotlight.
But increased spotlight towards EuroLeague regular season does not make domestic leagues irrelevant. Those regular season matches in domestic leagues still matter, every one of them. Maybe not in every league, super top heavy leagues like ESAKE without Olympiacos, LKL and Winner League with its single elimination format at the end might not present their regular seasons as particularly vital. But matches like Barcelona vs Bilbao at ACB or Efes vs Ormanspor at BSL matter a lot, even if the EuroLeague sides are heavy favourites. This is because homecourt advantage in the playoffs is vital. Last season Real Madrid captured homecourt advantage throughout ACB playoffs with just one more win than Barça in RS. Efes captured homecourt advantage throughout BSL playoffs with just one more win than Fener in RS. Whilst ACB Finals did not go into a decider match in the top's seed homecourt like BSL Finals did, we all remember how competitive ACB Finals still was with ridiculous winners and close matches. Real going up 2-0 in Madrid with a historic comeback late in the 2nd match finished off by Jaycee Carroll's memorable winner was simply vital to the series and los blancos' championship.
I do realise there are many viewers who only care about EuroLeague and watch EuroLeague but that's just a subjective preferance that has minimal impact on the importance of domestic leagues right now. Clubs still care a lot about domestic competitions and the diversified competition structure of eurobball is still there and is simply the norm.
But EuroLeague increasing the revenue gap by growing rapidly whilst domestic competitions stay put would only divide eurobball as EuroLeague clubs would get more powerful and other clubs would fight to merely continue to exist. This is especially the case if EuroLeague clubs leave their domestic competitions entirely to only compete at EL.
Exclusive EuroLeague Idea
Clubs playing solely in EuroLeague looks like something clubs could be more willing than Euroleague itself. I realise that the clubs are the largest shareholders of Euroleague Basketball so this reads like an oxymoron but it isn't.
Because Euroleague Basketball CEO Jordi Bertomeu has been strongly implying his lack of desire to turn EuroLeague into an exclusive league for the past year or so. And a recent explicit statement as well.
At a press conference in Berlin a few weeks ago he first answered a question about the season being too demanding on the players by saying he understands the situation but they don't want to decrease the number of matches because of the financial growth the league experienced since switching to the new format with more matches via increased viewership. But this is not an implication of their vision as "We should increase teams and hence matches even more and slowly fade out of domestic leagues to increase the growth even more". Because following statements indicate they don't have such a vision.
Euroleague wants to have a league with 16 licenced clubs and 2 spots remained for EuroCup finalists (or previous EuroCup finalist having success in EuroLeague and getting to stay next season too). This participation method is reported to be recently accepted by EuroLeague clubs and will seemingly be put into action in the short term.
So Jordi Bertomeu said these about increasing licenced clubs but staying at 18 teams in Berlin:
"I believe so. So, I understand that from a calendar standpoint, 18 is a number that makes our calendar busier, but it's a good number because we keep the balance between territory distribution and the quality of the teams. Probably we can keep the same balance going further, but not much further than, probably, 20 or 22. But when we have this in front of us, we also have to consider the national leagues. Going further than 18 will make impossible to combine the national leagues with the EuroLeague. That's something we don't have in our mind in this moment. So, 18 will be the number in the short- or mid-term, because we believe that going to more than 18 will make the participation of our teams in the domestic league impossible. And we don't want to do it."
Bolded part is important because it clearly negates any idea of Euroleague wishing to increase matches even more to try to replicate the growth they experienced by increasing matches in the first place with the round robin format. It is crucial because:
*They are against the idea of diluting EuroLeague further. A 24 team exclusive EuroLeague with 46 matchdays in regular season would decrease the amount of matches EuroLeague clubs play now but would dilute the regular season. As it is, the clubs play a maximum amount of 34 regular season matches in any competition they play. An increase to 46 decreases the importance of every regular season match that much more. And as I said earlier, the competitiveness and the importance of regular season in eurobball is a part of its identity as its style of basketball. Decreasing the importance of regular season and having more relaxed, casual regular season a la NBA as a glorified prep period is something eurobball governing bodies should always avoid. I don't know how conscious Euroleague Basketball is about that, but they have the right state of mind here.
*It shows their intend to protect domestic leagues. Not only they don't want to switch to an exclusive EuroLeague and leaving domestic leagues essentially in the dust, they also are essentially protecting the importance of domestic leagues by not wanting to increase number of EuroLeague teams in a season from 18 to 20 or whatever without it being an exclusive league too. If EuroLeague increased teams from 18 to whatever without turning itself to an exclusive league, we would see EuroLeague clubs contemplating about leaving domestic competitions more or trying for alternate options like playing those leagues with inferior squads at least until the playoffs.
Bertomeu was also asked about this exclusive EuroLeague idea directly and shut it down in the same press conference:
"No, because as I said when I talked about the number of teams, when I want our teams to leave the domestic leagues, I will propose a league with 24 clubs and 46 game days. It's as simple as this. But I am not doing this. I am trying to keep the number that, despite the numbers with the calendars that we were talking about before, allows our clubs to keep playing in the national leagues. "
And just a few days ago a report came out from another press session of Mr. Bertomeu where he says that they want to keep going like this until 2025 and then see what they do with the state of eurobball then. This is a smart approach. As I stressed multiple times already, I think Euroleague Basketball assesses eurobball very well. They are just supremely lazy and insufficient about their work.
It's not explicitly stated but "going like this" means to me that they will keep the number of EuroLeague teams at 18. And they won't have an exclusive EuroLeague. Until 2025 these things won't change, is what I understand from that statement along with other statements made by them before. What could change and will likely change is switching participation to 16 licenced teams and 2 spots from EuroCup and a new London based club in EuroLeague if not both a London and a Paris based club. Participation changing to 16 licences and 2 EuroCup spots is almost a guarantee but London and Paris clubs are not that close. They might or might not happen but it is certainly Euroleague Basketball's focus to get to those markets and London seems like more of a priority than Paris at the moment.
Before closing this chapter, I should note that whilst Euroleague Basketball's stance on this topic seems firm, clubs talk about playing in an exclusive EuroLeague more openly. You can see various coaches, executives from EuroLeague clubs talking about this that they could play in an exclusive EuroLeague and leave their domestic competitions. I want to read those as messages to their domestic leagues to hurry up and increase revenue. In some cases like when Baskonia president Jose Antonio Querejeta says it, he explicitly states that they might leave ACB if EuroLeague continues to grow and ACB doesn't. In others economic reasons are not mentioned at all like when Real Madrid president Florentino Perez threatens to leave the ACB.
But I believe in all such cases, the reasons are always economic and are ways to pressure their domestic governing bodies to increase their revenues. Or it's because executives don't believe their domestic league will ever reach sufficient revenue, this might be the reason behind the recent news of Zalgiris director Motiejunas mentioning the possibility of leaving LKL.
Furthermore, even if they wanted to leave their domestic competitions, they cannot do this without other EuroLeague clubs doing so. EuroLeague clubs will act all together if they leave their domestic competitions one day and the way to do that will be through Euroleague Basketball's intention to move away clubs from domestic competitions to EuroLeague only. Since we established that's far from Euroleague Basketball's intention, at the very least until 2025, clubs' intentions don't matter for the moment because they are far from united on this topic.
Why 2025 matters and Perspective to the NBA
I want to reitirate how important 2025 is. While I argue eurobball is in a survival struggle, this all leads up to 2025. Eurobball is still euroball with the current NBA revenue and NBA revenue is largely affected by the national TV contracts. The contracts of ESPN and TNT are up in that year so if NBA sees another such revenue increase it saw the last time they renewed contracts with ESPN and TNT... Now that is the actual threat to eurobball. When ESPN and TNT bid that much, it felt like an overbid because people move away from cable TV in the US, NBA hadn't seen massive rating increases to the point that it would be justifiable for ESPN and TNT to increase their payments almost 3 times over by going up from 930m USD to 2,7 billion, not at all. It feels like they paid that much betting NBA viewership would increase even further and further. Or US marketing sector just grew that much within that time, but that's more than a little doubtful. However NBA is not seeing that viewership growth and in fact since LeBron James switched to Los Angeles Lakers, it has first seen around %20 viewership decline in its regular season followed by another around %20 decline in playoffs without LeBron and then followed by current regular season so far again around %20 viewership decline on national (and also regional as well) networks. So now the tide sort of turned on the NBA and NBA community is discussing what the league does wrong or whether Giannis Antetokunmpo's and Luka Doncic's rise as the next faces of the league poses a threat to the league popularity in the US if Americans won't be able to relate to foreign stars like American stars meanwhile the NBA is trying to spice up the regular season by ideas such as a mid-season tournament a la domestic cups in eurobball. That mid-season cup idea is also a way for the NBA to generate extra revenue to ESPN and TNT to justify their lucrative payment to the league.
But this is not important from the perspective of eurobball. We can't look at current trends and predict NBA revenue won't see a dramatic increase in 2025 through a renewed national TV contract. Eurobball executives should always act like next contract renewal will always happen just a couple seasons after big market NBA franchises like New York Knicks, LA Lakers, LA Clippers, Golden State Warriors, Chicago Bulls, Boston Celtics, Houston Rockets will all be championship contenders with young stars headlining these teams. That would create an NBA revenue increase and hence salary cap increase dramatically no matter what because not only national TV deal but also regional TV deals these franchises make with broadcasters in their area as well as merchandise sales would all shoot UP.
Eurobball executives should always position themselves with this scenario in mind because that is how NBA revenue would skyrocket. The idea that NBA is an international league getting a lot of cash from all around the globe is a very ignorant one that some NBA fans believe for some reason. NBA by all means acts like a domestic league that it is from a financial point of view too. For one, almost %40 of NBA revenue comes from the ESPN & TNT payment. Then there are regional network deals. Lakers and Knicks earn more than 100m USD each season through these deals, Lakers is getting closer to 200m than 100m by the way. Of course smaller market franchises like Grizzlies earn less, Grizzlies had the poorest regional network deal in 2016-17 with a revenue of 9,4m€. These regional network deals that franchises do themselves also get into NBA revenue because of the league structure where NBA owns the franchises which is why they are franchises but not clubs like in Europe. Clubs are much more independent and not franchises to any sporting governing body in Europe so it's fair to say US professional sports model overinflate the image of its economics by holding up all revenue in one place which is why despite huge revenue numbers of the NBA, right after the cap boom despite the lofty ESPN & TNT payments, many NBA franchises don't make any profit.
Anyway, the most recent number was a total of 628 million USD from these regional network deals, that was in 2014. This sum was %33 of NBA's media revenue then with national TV deals making up %54. After the new national TV deal, this percentage must have swinged more in national TV's favour but since then some franchises renewed their regional TV deals with more lucrative payments. But the point is, %87 of NBA revenue was from US television deals. All the international TV deals and league pass revenue gets into %13. This includes the lucrative China deal. Basically no international revenue aside from China really affects NBA's economy. If they would be gone, it just wouldn't affect things much. Chinese broadcasters will pay 300m USD to the NBA for each season for 5 years. That's 10m per franchise. So even that is much lower than regional network deals. But it's safe to say only important revenue of the NBA comes from US television deals + China TV deal.
There is also the important 1 billion USD merchandise revenue. It's about 1/7 of the NBA revenue. However most of these revenue also would come from US and then China so there's that. Merch revenue is also much less profitable than TV deals but is important of course.
So 2025 matters because NBA national TV deal is up then. And it also matters because the long term licences that 11 EuroLeague clubs attained in 2016 will expire then. A new structure of EuroLeague will be founded upon then, even if nothing changes, the contract will be renewed so 2025 is also crucial for EuroLeague.
Domestic Leagues
I do believe some domestic leagues do a good job. I will talk about them shortly (if you are stupid enough to believe me at this point) and then move over to leagues that deserve criticism.
I think ABA Liga does it best. They use English a lot on their content, which might be an easier step for them to take compared to ACB or LBA due to having clubs from multiple countries but still.
Their matches are accessible. They upload all matches in full to youtube. From what I've been told these videos are not even geoblocked in ex-Yugoslav countries. And they could have easily geoblocked them and receive no criticism from me, it would just be their business model and it would make sense either way.
And well, those are the big things that should be done and they do it. All of their stuff is in English but people from ex-Yugoslav countries who don't speak English may follow the league through television broadcasts, sports media and so forth in their languages. Whilst the league using English opens the gate to international viewers.
Belgium League PBL is not known as a major league in Europe unlike ABA but I have to give them kudos as well and you can watch their matches for free online on recently opened embl.tv. It might not be a major league but Belgian clubs like Antwerp Giants, Spirou Charleroi, BC Oostende are preferred teams to watch for eurobball hipsters. PBL website also has an English version along with French and Dutch.
Winner League is another league to praise because of winnerleague.tv. They have created that website just for international viewers to subscribe and watch for 5€ per month. It is not available in Israel. It's just for international viewership. They also too have an English version of their website which might be extra important because due to their social media accounts naturally writing in Hebrew, their youtube videos and such are less accessible to international viewers. When you go to Winner League youtube channel, click on a highlight video or whatever, it's really not easy to pick up what the video is about a lot of the times. They have that content on their website at basket.co.il on English so you know what you are viewing.
Now, there might be more detailed stuff that these leagues are not doing so well in, but I praise these leagues on making their content so accessible when bigger leagues with bigger resources fail at basic stuff like that. Plus, because these leagues don't have a ton of resources, I can't really criticise them for not taking a more aggressive approach at marketing or whatever. These 3 leagues do very well, I have nothing them to criticise with, period.
Moving onto two bigger leagues that I will praise but have a couple criticisms too.
LegaBasket Serie A (LBA) is available to watch for everyone by subscribing to Eurosport Player. So they are accessible like others I mentioned for international viewers to watch. But their website is only in Italian. Not having English content on a league's website is just not something to gloss over for me especially when smaller leagues from smaller countries can manage that like PBL and Winner League.
I have something else to give them credit for. And that is, they have interesting specials and programming on their youtube channel with studio shows and such. Their youtube channel is really rich in content. And the part I will criticise them is, it's all in Italian. I get that bulk of viewers will always come from Italy and focusing on domestic market is clever because as I've already established with revenue numbers for various leagues and a look into NBA, money always mostly comes from the internal market. Just creating diverse and rich content for their youtube channel is a plus for them in their marketing. But come on, how hard it is to just have English subtitles on youtube at least?
I have similar feelings towards Basketball Bundesliga. Now, you already know they are successful. This league has the 3rd biggest revenue in basketball after NBA and CBA. I call them as perhaps the only league in Europe that has a proper revenue in relation to their product. But they don't have an English version of their website and more importantly there is no way of somebody out of Germany being able to watch their league. Unlike the 4 leagues I talked above, now we have got into the territory of quite literally unwatchable eurobball domestic leagues for international viewers. Some leagues at least get broadcasted in a few other countries in the continent, I doubt Basketball Bundesliga is broadcasted anywhere else. I'd say close-by countries like in Austria or Switzerland perhaps but basketball is utterly irrelevant in those countries to be televised. But I don't know, don't quote me on this.
There are a lot of options. You don't want to put up your full matches on youtube like ABA does for free or don't want to do it on a website like PBL does for free? Fine. Set up a website like Winner League and charge people. You don't want to have those costs? Do it like Lega Basket and have your broadcast partner's streaming service have the streaming rights for people to be able to subscribe and watch. Bundesliga's broadcast partner is Magenta Sport. Not an international broadcaster like Eurosport, but it doesn't matter. Magenta Sport has a streaming service for German people for 10€ per month that has live matches and replays. Just open that to international viewers too. Limiting your league to your country is inexcusable stuff with so many options for models out there to do this.
Then again, Bundesliga actually has money and their clubs are stable. They can invest and they do invest. Their clubs are mostly all organised really well and extremely professional. Their fan relations organisationally are perfect. They have the money and they seem to spend it well in Germany. The league grew so much. In 2018-19, 8 million Germans watched Basketball Bundesliga which is almost the double of viewers just from couple seasons back in 2016-17. So the league does a tremendous job growing basketball in the country, but nothing internationally at all.
Now moving onto leagues that will mostly face criticism with not much to praise for. I will only touch on major leagues left.
VTB United League is the 2nd best league in Europe. They have an English website and they have videos on youtube in English that will attract international viewers. All positive but no way for international viewers to watch the league unless it's televised in one's country which is not much likely. That is the most important thing, ultimately the goal is eyeballs on your matches. Not having a way for foreign viewers to watch your league is maddening.
Another thing to praise United League is their transparency with the budgets of the teams each season. So basically the only thing I can criticise them with is inaccessibility of the matches but that's the most significant thing.
Moving onto Turkish BSL. Tivibu is the current broadcasting partner of this league. Let me tell you, it's a mess of a process figuring out how to watch this league even as a Turkish citizen. Tivibu is a pay-TV service and they want you to buy their pay-TV service. But I don't watch TV and hence don't own a television. I just want a streaming service to be able to watch BSL. Well, it's basically impossible to find any info on how to do that online. Then I want to call them and learn the info via telephone but I can't do that either. Basically I just fill out an unnecessary form online, then they call me and I have to be available to talk whenever they call me to just ask how do I watch BSL. Anyway they give me the relevant information finally and to their credit, it's super cheap to subscribe to their TV service online and watch BSL. It's less than 2€ per month. But it's not a user friendly OTT platform like EuroLeague TV so it takes some effort trying to watch BSL matches on replay.
They of course, like every other league in this category, do not offer accessibility for foreigners to be able to watch unless it's televised in another country (I know it's televised in ex-Yugo countries at least) which is the major red flag. But it's hard even for Turkish citizens to be able to watch the league easily. Very cheap, but takes effort.
Furthermore, all of the league's content online is just in Turkish and the league doesn't even have a website. They do not even have an effing website. They just have a page related to the league on the website of the Turkish Basketball Federation.
Not only they don't have a website, since years back, they have pressured and suppressed the brilliant archival website of tblstat.net that also has an English version and is just an amazing place for statistical information on BSL. But because of their pressure, this brilliant website doesn't even get to use many of the stats they had years ago. It's still a great website but it used to be much better before the federation killed that part years ago, pressuring this website by not allowing it to use statistics and whatever. It's just unbelievable. I can wholeheartedly say that BSL fails with marketing not only internationally but also domestically too.
Pro A... No English content again, they are French, might be understandable. If they actually expanded interest at the league through Francophonie world, that would be sufficient for them without needing any other international market. Their content in French seems high in volume which is good.
The issue is again, the league is not available to watch for international users. I want to praise them for being transparent with clubs budgets too, like United League.
ESAKE has a website in English which is good and they've been behind at social media and online stuff for years but they seem to have caught up to basic things at least which is also better late than never. But again, can't watch the league.
The thing is they have FTA matches that are actually available to foreign viewers too but they don't market these things. We have to go out of their way to find out which match is FTA and when. Just announce on social media and your website in English that you have a free to air match broadcasted on some Greek TV channel that will be available to watch for international viewers too via this link to that TV channel's website at whatever day on whatever hour.
LKL seems very rich in online content but I can just says "seems" because it's mostly in Lithuanian. Their website has an English version though. But again, can't watch it. I have not been able to watch Zalgiris-Rytas derby for years now which just sucks for me.
I have left ACB last on purpose.
This is the best domestic league in Europe. Not only that, it is comfortably so. It has enough of a brand recognition, enough of a mark, enough of a quality to really separate itself from other domestic leagues to garner a substansive following.
It has considerable following from all over eurobball community plus even other Spanish speaking parts of the world.
They had a terrible, unfashionable, unusable website for years up until this year finally. But they don't have an English version. ACB is the league that pisses me off the most by not having an English version of their website despite the fact that I speak some Spanish and can use their website as it is unlike some other leagues. And that is because I know the sheer amount of people who want to watch ACB but can't even find a version of their website in English.
And again, they don't offer any way for international users to watch their league online. Now, ACB is the most broadcasted domestic league in Europe in terms of number of countries it gets televised in. Just for the country I live in for instance, it is the only foreign domestic eurobball league that gets televised in Turkey. As far as I know, it was getting televised a few years ago even when NBA was not getting televised as it had a hard time finding a broadcaster. And that's despite the fact that NBA is easier to pick up for sports channels due to the respective hours NBA and ACB get broadcasted in Turkey. The hours ACB occupies is a lot more competitive with many more sports events going on at the same time whereas NBA doesn't face such competition in general in Europe.
Still, that's no excuse for ACB to not offer accessibility for foreign viewers to watch online. It has that many foreign broadcast partners because it is more popular than any other eurobball domestic league which gets reflected in that many more viewers who can't watch the league because it is not accessible for them.
I have watched ACB illegally for years, full disclosure. I have nothing to hide on that, because that is solely ACB's fault, not mine. And the thing is, the options to watch illegally aren't even good, at least haven't been good for the last couple seasons, if ACB had a way for me to be able to watch their league online, I'd pay for it instantly because it would be so much more easier for me to be able to watch and would offer me to be able to watch some matches that I can't watch by offering it in full scope. By the way, I have emailed every single one of these leagues that don't offer any streaming for international viewers asking how to watch their league, where can I subscribe and so forth. None of them even answered that type of an email.
ACB revenue just sticks around 30m€ figures by the way. I mean, just terrible. Wonder why Basketball Bundesliga quadruples them in revenue while ACB probably has more than 4x times the interest level.
I'll criticise them for something I didn't criticise other leagues too. ACB is big enough of a league to have English versions for everything. Not just English version of their website, but English versions of their social media accounts too. They are big enough of a league that they must do that.
Honestly other leagues should do that too. It's not some hard thing. Cedevita Olimpija Ljubljana has an English twitter account aside from one in Slovene. That's just one club that's far from a rich basketball club. We are talking about leagues here. But I've especially criticised ACB on this because they are big enough of a league that they just must have that.
Clubs
There are hundreds of clubs, even just sticking to EuroLeague and EuroCup, there are too many. I won't go into them specifically like the leagues. But, I will say that having an English website might be even more crucial for the clubs than the leagues. Because there are foreigners within the continent or from another continent, wishing to go catch a match and they go to the websites of the clubs for ticketing information. When a club doesn't have a proper English website, they just lose that direct matchday revenue.
Often times foreigners coming to Turkey have asked me about ways to catch an Efes match or a Fener match and so on, and I am always happy to help people with that. But they shouldn't have to find someone from Turkey who knows this information and can help them. All eurobball clubs should have the proper ticketing information and ways for foreigners to be able to buy tickets and catch a match during their trips. So whichever clubs do that well, they deserve praise. Whichever don't, and I realise most don't, they deserve criticism.
Another thing about merchandise. It's often from eurobball community that people love a kit or want to buy a specific player's jersey after a transfer to a specific club. And in this regard clubs seem to be better than the ticketing stuff, but a lot of clubs don't have in-English versions of their online stores. Or they don't have online stores at all which is a lot worse. Or they have one but there are few pieces of merch or few and even obscure sizes and whatnot. Basically just an insufficient merchandise supply. Merchandise is not something as profitable as media revenues or ticketing revenues in sports business, but still it is an important source of revenue.
And the clubs that have these great online stores that deserve praise can be random too. Like, Aquila Basket Trento is not some European powerhouse even though they are a respectful club. But I loved one of their away kits this season after seeing a EuroCup match of theirs and wanted to buy it. And what do I see, their online store is amazing with many enticing goods. But you look at some actual powerhouse clubs and their online store is insufficient at best.
I mean stuff like proper access to ticketing and merchandise are not even marketing stuff that I can criticise clubs as "You don't do enough marketing on your part" or whatever. It's just about direct access to direct revenue for these clubs, even a lot of clubs just don't have ways to garner proper revenue through these sources. They literally sabotage themselves with poor ways of access to these revenue sources becuase it turns down away customers that are willing to pay but can't due to club's fault in establishing proper accessability to ticketing and merchandise sales.
By the way, EuroLeague could also be criticised about merchandise. Again, it's not much of a focus for me since it's not as profitable as media rights and sponsorships; but EuroLeague Store being so awful for years is a big opportunity missed for EuroLeague too. Even the positive deals they make with regards to merchandise like the deal they made with Kickz, is insufficient. Those designs made by Kickz were so lazy. Apparently Euroleague is nearing a deal with Amazon to create an online store in 2020, hopefully that will be better for EuroLeague merchandise.
One last thing on ULEB. ULEB kick started EuroLeague essentially but it has been useless for a while as certain clubs have become shareholders and have control over EuroLeague that is not just left over to ULEB.
The thing is, ULEB still should do stuff that they don't. ULEB should be the governing body to unite the domestic leagues, increase their marketing efforts and hence don't allow EuroLeague to grow whilst domestic leagues stay put but trigger the domestic leagues to grow like EuroLeague does.
Possible Futures of Eurobball
There are more than 10k words above. No sane person would continue reading this to this point. But all of that above is just an information overload on the state of basketball economy. After having all that information which I've collected for over a year, we can speculate about the possible futures of eurobball on more realistic grounds.
Domestic competitions are important. Domestic competitions rising economically alongside EuroLeague is important. This should be the goal of eurobball. Because if EuroLeague just continues to grow and domestic leagues stay put, domestic leagues will die with the EuroLeague clubs leaving them at one point. If that happens, this is inevitable. Maybe not in the short term, but it would be inevitable.
Also if some domestic leagues join EuroLeague's rapid revenue growth but others stay put, we will have even a more complicated situation at our hands. It would mirror the situation in European football where EPL is increasing revenue gap compared to other leagues every year and other top European clubs in other leagues want to create an exclusive European league analogous to what an exclusive EuroLeague would be to mitigate that gap in revenue. That would happen in eurobball too. Some league(s)' clubs would favour domestic leagues, other ones who did not experience revenue growth through their domestic leagues would push for an exclusive EuroLeague. I don't know how that opposition would result because we are not there at all, there is not information around for me to guess how that stand-off would finish. But this opposition is a possible future of eurobball.
So again, eurobball competitions need to grow together.
EuroCup
EuroCup is important. I mean just by being the 2nd tier European competition, it is important. I think Euroleague Basketball does even a worse job with EuroCup than with EuroLeague. Trademarks of same laziness can be found there. They think by increasing the number of EuroCup teams qualifying to EuroLeague next season through success in EC is enough to make EuroCup grow.
Again, they assess things well. 16 licenced EuroLeague clubs + 2 open spots through EuroCup is something that increases EuroCup's importance further.
But again, they disastrously fail at marketing and creating brand image with EuroCup too. Even worse than EuroLeague.
Only positive thing I can say about what they do with EuroCup is separation of broadcasting deals with EuroLeague broadcasting deals. They separated those a few years ago.
Other than that, EuroCup social media accounts are grossly inactive, late on things or just don't even exist on places they should. Russian clubs have been a vital part of EuroCup for a long while now, but EuroCup doesn't have an account on VK for instance.
Scheduling is mind boggling. EuroCup has to face UEFA Champions League frequently and that is what it is. They can't do anything about that, most logical days for EuroCup to be on are tuesdays and wednesdays. There is also EuroLeague double round weeks now and some overlaps with EuroCup days and EuroLeague days are bound to happen due to that.
But... the day I'm writing these words is the day 1 of EuroCup's last round of regular season. There are multiple matches to determine who will make it to Top 16. They are literally elimination matches. It's do or die action. This is a significant round of EC. Aaaand it's also EuroLeague double round week. What!?
This happened last year as well, I literally couldn't watch EuroCup's elimination battles of the last RS round because of this. This year, same again. What kind of scheduling is this? EuroCup is not your competition dear Euroleague Basketball; it's your product too.
So Euroleague Basketball has control on EuroLeague, they can shift double round weeks themselves. Then they also have control over EuroCup schedule. To make things worse, EuroCup has a two week break within its regular season. It happened between round 7 and round 8. Shift the break to avoid this scheduling disaster or just have a one week break so that EuroCup RS would already finish before EL double round week. And then add that subtracted week of rest to another period of break between the different stages of the competition. It's just one simple way to fix this, there are many others.
I don't watch football so I don't know this but I question whether EuroCup even has a week to itself without facing UCL or EuroLeague that week. Not only Euroleague Basketball treats EuroCup like as if it's not its competition, they treat it like it's FIBA's or some other competitor's product. No wonder EuroCup is not as popular as it should be.
So 16 licences in EuroLeague and only open spots being through EuroCup is a good move to prop up EuroCup. They are good at pulling moves like that from the comfort of their seats. But once it gets to actual work like scheduling or marketing, they are beyond horrific.
Finally, EuroLeague extending its playoffs to 10 teams is a possibility. Because the playoff race is insane in EuroLeague and making top 8 for clubs who qualify through EuroCup is a tough bar to get through to play EuroLeague again next season. Playoffs could be expanded to 10 where #7 seed and #10 seed, along with #8 seed and #9 seed play a single elimination match that is played on the homecourt of the higher seed to make the quarterfinals and play a series with #1 and #2 seeded teams.
Extra single elimination matches like that would increase viewership, increasing the number of playoff teams would make EuroCup qualifiers more likely to get to stay in EuroLeague next season (participation could be re-awarded if they make the top 10 or qualify to quarterfinals, doesn't matter). So this would increase EuroCup's importance as well. It would also make EuroLeague regular season at its late stages more relevant for bottom half clubs and their fans since it increases chances of playoffs.
Personally I'd be fine if this doesn't happen. Sure, reward the #7 and #8 seeds by qualifying them directly to their quarterfinals series. But I'd be fine if it happens too, because playoff race is just that close and homecourt advantage for #7 and #8 seeds in a single elimination match honours their success by getting those spots over #9 and #10 seeds.
16 EuroLeague Licences
So it's a near guarantee that we will see an 18 team, 16 licenced teams, 2 EuroCup finalists, non-exclusive version of EuroLeague soon.
Let's talk about the 16 licences. 11 of them will obviously be the long term lienced clubs that are shareholders of Euroleague and signed long term contracts right before the new round robin format. 5 left.
Safe to say 2 of them will go to Bayern and ASVEL. These might not have deals up to mid-2020s like those 11 permanent clubs have. Bayern might receive such an extension but I don't know about ASVEL. These two might just have shorter licences like they have now. 3 left.
Have to imagine one spot will go to Alba Berlin. It's a top notch club organisationally with a passionate fan base, currently with a unique brand of basketball under a legendary coach, is in a big market both in terms of the country and the city that Euroleague clearly wants to have. 2 left.
And here's the problem. Let's just say 2 remaining spots go to Khimki/Crvena Zvezda or perhaps in the case of CZV more realistically to ABA Liga champion every season in the form of a wildcard. They also could prefer not to give a licence to Khimki too and just have the best non-CSKA finisher in United League in EuroLeague each season. But Khimki boosted their investment so much that they might just get a licence as well.
Okay but what happens to London expansion? If it doesn't happen, no problem. 16 licences are filled reasonably and with 2 spots open through EuroCup, it is a pretty good participation system. But if and when it happens, whose spot London club will get is a big issue.
You can't knock off the 2nd United League spot. It's the 2nd best domestic league in eurobball and they deserve a 2nd club.
Will they knock off ABA Liga spot? ABA Liga is a major league and ex-Yugoslav clubs having to access in EuroLeague only through making EuroCup Finals seems so brutal. That's no fun. Nobody wants to see that. That region has left a huge mark in this sport's history as well as Euroleague history. Yugoslavia, a defunct country, still has 7 Euroleague champion teams. That country that is no more is still the 5th most successful country in Euroleague history in this regard, trailing only Spain, Italy, Greece and USSR.
But it is a fact that region is also not a big market financially for EuroLeague. Crvena Zvezda president announced that his club will be getting only 200k€ from EuroLeague local television deal this season. That is so so bad, it was well below my expectations. It's not just bad in a vacuum, it is terrible compared to lucrative television deals Spanish, Greek clubs and Maccabi Tel Aviv enjoy. I didn't expect Crvena Zvezda to earn millions like those, but 200k€ is just horrible.
One exception to that would be if Crvena Zvezda just gets money from Serbian TV contract. I figured that since EuroLeague TV rights get dealt to one broadcaster for the whole ex-Yugoslavia region, the ABA Liga champion would receive its television money from the contract of that region. On those grounds, 200k€ is horrible. But if Crvena Zvezda just gets the money from the Serbian contract with SportKlub, 200k€ is still not good but not horrible by any means. But I don't know how realistic that is since the contract is not negotiated separately for different countries within the region.
I get that it's low because it's a small country (even if we combine all ex-Yugo countries, still small) with a small economy but it's one of the regions where EuroLeague is really popular. I mean attendance at some matches nears 20k, I'm sure there are so many people watching on TV too, even with a small economy from a small country, ad revenue for that must be higher. But anyway, this is the reality of the situation.
But I don't think EuroLeague will strip ABA Liga's spot because based on Jordi Bertomeu's statements, it seems like Euroleague Basketball is actually in the "everybody" who wants the representation of ABA Liga with a guaranteed spot.
Bertomeu said these about new clubs joining EuroLeague from that same press conference in Berlin that I quoted above:
"I think the EuroLeague has been very clear in the last years that we have some markets where we want to improve our footprint, or to have a footprint, from one side. And from the other side, there are some traditional basketball markets that we believe the EuroLeague has to have a presence in. In the first category, I think we have always mentioned Germany, France and the UK as our strategic markets, and our intention is to move our sport more north to these three big markets. Decisions like the one we made on ASVEL Villeurbanne and Bayern Munich have to be understood in the framework of this vision. Germany will remain as a priority, because we believe that to have at least two teams in Germany is something worthy and important for us. France, again. UK, probably you believe it's a dream to have a team in a market with no basketball tradition. We are people who like to take challenges, so we are working in these directions. But, also, there are markets like Russia and the Balkan area that corresponds with the Adriatic League region that also are very good territories for basketball and have to be taken into account. So, we are working basically in these two areas, for different reasons, the ones I mentioned."He also said these in Milano, again just a few weeks ago:
"It's a first step on the way to having the 16 long-term licenses, as it allows us to evaluate different realities. We're not looking for a particular national league, but rather for clubs, as the EuroLeague is a league of clubs and the owners of the EuroLeague are the clubs. There are realities like the ABA League, where a team must represent that reality, and we have other realities like Germany, or we have a very specific project to have a team in the United Kingdom, and there are interesting projects like Valencia or Virtus Bologna or in Russia, for example. Those rules approved last summer will permit us to test which teams are ready to obtain a long-term license. It's the road used for Olimpia Milan; we tested them for two seasons, we considered it was a correct decision and they have earned a long-term license."So well, who left? The only other club I can think of that could lose its spot because of a London based club is ASVEL. But they can't do that, losing France as a market for England when basketball is a lot more irrelevant in England doesn't make any sense. This could have been done if there was a club from Paris within the 11 long term licenced clubs but that's obviously not the case.
Once again, a club from London is not realistic at the moment. But it's something Euroleague Basketball actively tries to achieve. But it looks like to me that keeping the 18 team league as they intend to, and also adding a London based club to this is even a more daunting task than actually managing to establish a EuroLeague level club from London.
If I had to bet, I'd bet that 2nd VTB team would lose its spot due to the added London club. But that's not easy to swallow for anyone involved from clubs to Euroleague Basketball to United League to fans like me. Especially when Khimki boosted its investment this much. They are literally one of the handful clubs with the biggest budgets in Europe.
What If Success Comes?
What if eurobball succeeds in growing revenue together by mid-2020s?
Well, this would mean that number of seriously investing clubs would increase. At that point, an 18 team EuroLeague might not be enough.
We already see signs of this. EuroLeague still has a horrible revenue in a vacuum but clubs know the big revenue growth of recent years and increased their investments. Valencia wants a piece of EuroLeague, you know, a licence. Not just dominating EuroCup and getting a spot. So despite having an already suitable arena, they are building an expensive new one that's bigger. I have a feeling a lot of it is just to signal Euroleague that they are ready to invest big.
Virtus Bologna wants a piece of EuroLeague, a licence. They have boosted their investment a lot for this season and they have cruised through EuroCup regular season and are at the top of standings of Serie A. They are also a historic EuroLeague powerhouse that won the title twice and made a lot more finals and Final 4s. They will build a new bigger arena too.
Even Promitheas wants that EuroLeague spot, although they look more distanced towards that goal than Valencia and VirtusBo.
But the point is, this is the situation as it is. Imagine if eurobball economy grows together. We might see historic clubs that currently not able to invest much but not as much as to struggle for existence in the lowest divisions in their countries, like Virtus Roma, Cantu, Fortitudo Bologna, Joventut Badalona, Rytas, Cibona, Treviso Basket, Aris and so forth boosting their investments to get a pie of EuroLeague.
But not all can get into EuroLeague of course. On the other hand, if EuroLeague teams in a season gets increased to 24 or whatever, that's simply not compatible with the domestic leagues. I don't think Euroleague will want to ever switch back to the old format before the round robin format. So can't see teams increasing from 18.
Development of EuroCup is crucial here. I love EuroCup but a lot of people don't even care about it. It needs to grow substantially and generate solid revenue so that teams who make it there get good revenue too. Because if Pro A increases its revenue a lot so teams there earn considerable money but if the only EuroLeague participant Pro A club(s) get that piece of EuroLeague revenue whilst others receive peanuts from EuroCup (and FIBA competitions too), then it will only mean EuroLeague clubs will have huge financial advantages and everyone will aim for EuroLeague. If EuroCup grows a lot too on its own, it will be more healthy for eurobball.
But ultimately if eurobball succeeds in growing together, demand for clubs to be in EuroLeague and these demands being rational will be more than 18. So the logical solution here could be the abolishment of EuroLeague licences entirely and making EuroLeague and EuroCup participation be entirely domestic league based.
This is bound to create some side effect to EuroLeague financially because participant clubs would not be known beforehand like they are largely known today and will be even moreso with the upcoming 16+2 format. But I think that side effect is not as big or important as the complications that dramatically increased revenues of the clubs will create on the round robin structure of EuroLeague with 18 teams.
To be honest that would be the ideal spot to arrive for me. Ideally that's what I want. I think that's what most fans would wish to see. Ideally though, not now. Basically just turning eurobball to current European football structure. But EuroCup would be a bigger deal than UEFA Europa League (relatively speaking to in relation of these competitions to EuroLeague and UCL respectively, I don't mean EuroCup interest would pass UEL's or whatever, of course not) due to EuroLeague having 18 teams vs UCL's 32 and both EuroCup finalists qualifying to EuroLeague next season instead of one UEL champion qualifying to UCL next season.
FIBA
There's prevalent narrative that FIBA vs Euroleague war hurts eurobball. And that the reason eurobball is economically weak is partially due to this war. If you read thus far, you know that's just far from the truth.
FIBA vs Euroleague war does not hurt eurobball because Euroleague won it pretty handily. If it was close, it would hurt eurobball.
There are no EuroLeague worthy clubs in BCL (I heavily symphatise with Brose Bamberg which has been a staple of EuroLeague for years only to get ignored by Euroleague Basketball in favour of bigger German markets in Munich and Berlin). There are EuroCup worthy clubs in BCL but "2nd tier European competition worthy" clubs are much more prevalent in EuroCup than BCL. EuroCup is clearly the 2nd tier to BCL's 3rd tier, that's inarguable to me. I also believe perhaps a couple clubs from FIBA Europe Cup deserves EuroCup level every season.
FIBA created the national team windows but they lost that too, if they succeeded it would be detrimental to eurobball. But EuroLeague players don't play them and FIBA ended up diluting their own product. We might say it hurt eurobball because of some deserving national teams not making it to 2019 WC but it didn't hurt European club basketball.
So this war doesn't really hurt eurobball. But I also think it benefits eurobball as well. FIBA invests into eurobball with two competitions. With a total of 4 European competitions, dozens of clubs end up playing a European competition next to their domestic ones. This means extra revenue, even if little and a better balance for domestic leagues. Because for instance, when EuroLeague teams go through demanding EuroLeague schedules, a competitior from their domestic league that is a decent team but not playing any European competition because they don't get to participate in EuroCup either (in this scenario no FIBA competition exists) would have a big advantage in terms of getting more practice time, less risk of injuries, being more fresh. By having such clubs play BCL and FIBA Europe Cup, domestic leagues get to have better balance in this regard.
BCL and FIBA Europe Cup, especially BCL because FIBA puts up a lot of marketing for that competition, also get to create just new storylines, excitement, narratives, matches for fans of clubs to experience which increases fan engagement and that is good for clubs' revenues aside from the revenue they'd get from playing extra European matches.
The fact that it's a European competition matters in this sense too. These teams get to have European part of their seasons, fans get to experience that. Quite different from a club being able to only compete at domestic competitions every single year.
So I view the existence of BCL and Europe Cup as positives and the idea that FIBA vs Euroleague war is some terrible thing for eurobball is ludicrous to me precisely because that war is not particularly competitive. But I would want to see BCL and Europe Cup increase their revenues for participating clubs' sake too. Of course. Just not as much as to get enough power to disrupt eurobball through the national team windows which they are not able to at the moment. I don't believe they will ever come to such a powerful place from a business perspective anyway, but just saying.
Does Any Responsibility Fall on Eurobball Fans?
So essentially what you will get out of this article is, aside from hard numbers on finances, interest levels and so forth, my desperate emphasis on the importance of exposure and hence marketing.
Marketing just doesn't happen from top to bottom for sports. Maybe grassroots marketing is even more important.
A lot of the trouble for eurobball comes from people who like it to watch but then lose interest with time. I think the sole reason for this is the lack of structure within eurobball. There's no solid structure in place where people can see certain content to increase their engagement. This is why those people who lose interest with time gravitate towards other sports like football or NBA where that structure is put in place. Football because it's popular everywhere enough to be exposed to content and discussion and debate from most of the places on the planet. NBA because it's English dominant and if you know English, you'll be exposed to plethora of NBA content and discussion and debate. And from my view, NBA fans are more eager towards creating content for the league naturally whether it's something as little as tweeting a lot of stuff regarding the NBA or creating and listening to many podcasts, doing visual analysis, creating franchise focused blogs, message boards dedicated to nitpick NBA history.
The dominance of one language helps NBA a lot here. Football is a lot more international and there is not a single dominant language. So football content is restricted to a regional space a lot more rather than the universal and bonded space of content NBA has (except for China I imagine but the country is so big that it doesn't even matter much that it's separate).
Eurobball has this same issue with football. There are important differences though. The biggest one is that football is so enormous that its content and discussion being mostly restricted to regional spaces is not even an issue. The other one is English is lingua franca but Anglophone countries are not interested in eurobball wheresa England is, as English say, "the home of football" which produces a lot of the content for the sport. So this creates a problem for eurobball because it's not big like football where it can just be restricted to regional spaces of content and discussion; it needs to be like the NBA with a more universal space. Although never can be like NBA because there is not a dominant language like English is for the NBA. But needs to have a side of more universal space of content and discussion closer to the NBA.
And the way through that is English because it's the only possible lingua franca for eurobball fans to communicate with each other. The issue is of course, unlike football, English is the native language of a very miniscule set of eurobball fans and also just the fact that English speaking eurobball fans like whoever clicked on this article or this website ever, are in the minority compared to ones who don't speak English.
Regardless the path to a more universal space of content and discussion is necessary for eurobball. And if you don't care about eurobball's existence that much, this doesn't apply to you. If you care about it but not to the point of you would want to do something about it and you'd just want to see its executives do stuff with no contribution from you; this doesn't apply to you also.
For the remaining group, grassroots marketing happens through fans. You apparently speak English enough to ever click this website, then create stuff in English. English is the only way for eurobball fans of different countries to be able to form a common space for content. But do it your own language too if you wish, because as I said, most eurobball fans don't speak English so content in different languages matter.
I just think for structural big things with regards to content, English needs to have everything. It needs to have statistical websites, which have popped up in recent years, so thanks to those who created statistical platforms for eurobball and filled that gap. It needs to have podcasts in English (and to be honest in every language) so thanks to those podcasters. It needs to have an English twitter space, so thanks to those who pioneered it and contribute to it. It needs to have English news sources, so thanks to those who contribute in that regard. There are big structural holes about content that haven't been filled yet, and I've been working on those since last year and will increase my pace with different projects with 2020 coming up to fill other empty spaces regarding content & discussion in English especially that I view as important to grassroots exposure.
Conclusion
One thing is very important here. It's the idea that popularity in sports is fixed and can't face radical changes. That isn't true, with enough of an ambitious marketing effort, things can change. Especially for something like eurobball with loads of untapped or unused potential. MMA could be an example to follow. I frankly know next to nothing about MMA but I know it's been around for a long while but only rose to the level of mainstream sports in the recent few years. How did that happen? I don't know, because I don't follow it, but I am pretty sure it happened through enormous marketing efforts and the marketing success of the sport's executives along with some grassroots marketing. Formula 1 is another thing, F1 tapping this much to the US market after the purchase of Liberty Media would never be guessed by anyone years ago.
The odd thing for me is, I just want eurobball to come to a financial place to survive for good. I'm not fantasising about it taking the #2 place behind football firmly in Europe by getting past tennis, F1, MotoGP and taking stars away from the NBA or whatever. I'm not one of those eurobball fans who are upset or disappointed over stars like Luka Doncic leaving to the NBA. I always thought stars of that calibre should always go to the NBA because it is the platform of basketball for top players to be. I love the NBA but NBA is only worth watching because of its structure to put a spotlight on the best players. Even just the different rules of basketball don't allow it happen in eurobball. When we watch Giannis Antetokounmpo play under FIBA rules, we see that. There are a few dozen examples of it relating to US national teams in FIBA tournaments too where judgment of basketball through NBA values fail or underwhelm at FIBA basketball which at least through its on-court rules is a reflection of eurobball or vice versa.
Personally, I find the NBA structure revolving around its top players fun. Even though NBA regular season has started to lose my interest through its ludicrous rule changes and officiating norms of last couple seasons, I've been an NBA nut to the point of once writing an article about how underrated Bill Sharman's biomechanics are with visual analysis of his ankle rocker and shin angles during dribbling. Individual players won't ever be put into that kind of significance ever in eurobball, so having a one or more of the handful best players in the world play in eurobball is not maximising their talent. Conversely I believe there are some really good NBA coaches who just waste their talent by coaching in the NBA as eurobball is the ultimate platform of coaching, strategical nuance and collectivised tactical basketball.
So I'm not obsessed about this because I want eurobball to prosper or whatever. I am obsessed about this because I am convinced eurobball will die if things don't improve and I refuse to just sit back and watch it happen. So any responsibility falls on other random eurobball fans if they agree with that, no responsibility falls upon them if that's not their view. It's that simple to me.
Finally, I have written this article this lengthy because I am not much invested in people reading it but moreso I needed this to be comprehensive enough and to be written in such a way to be relevant for at least 2 years in my efforts to stir or start certain dynamic structures in eurobball to make it better. I hope it will be useful as reference and guidance to me for the next two years at the very least and if by any chance somebody else took the bulky time to read this text and took out something from it, that's just a bonus.
No comments:
Post a Comment