Bertomeu: We want to resume EuroLeague and EuroCup. Final decision before end of May

EuroLeague Basketball CEO Jordi Bertomeu has a conference call with some European selected media about the current EuroLeague and EuroCup seasons that have been suspended in March.

Bertomeu confirned that the goal is to resume both competitions taking in mind that they can’t play later than July.

“We want to resume our competitions, perhaps fans won’t be able to attend the games.
But only when we will be able to guarantee the health of everyone, we will resume.
And we want to resume it with the actual format. The idea is to have the players back, put them in a two-week quarantine and have a two-week training camp (Jordi Bertomeu says that it is not EuroLeague responsibility if players that returned to their homeland won’t be able to report to the teams if seasons resume)

We are also working on different options to resume EuroLeague and EuroCup with different formats. We might have to resume the season only in one venue. And play the Final Eight instead of playoffs in EuroLeague. And also Final Eight to end EuroCup season.

It is obvious at this point that we will not have our Final Four in May.

We believe we cannot go later than the end of July. We are absolutely against resuming the competitions in September and October.

Wild cards for next year are not in our minds this moment because we want to finish this season.
We are trying to focus on resuming the competitions. We don’t have in mind yet how allocate teams for next season.

The main thing is that we will resume only if we can guarantee 100% the health of our players, coaches and people involved.

We are not going to take any risky decision. If we have to cancel the season, we will do it. If we see a risk, we are not going to propose our clubs anything.

The deadline to make a final decision on whether resume the EuroLeague and EuroCup seasons is May. Not before the first half of May, more close to June. But not later than the end of May.

We can’t deny that one way or another, next season will also be affected. But we should not talk about it based on feelings and speculations. We need a more accurate understanding of how this situation will finish in order to have an answer for the future

We did not have any conversation with Luca Baraldi of Virtus Bologna or Partizan Belgrade president about an EuroCup Final Eight because our goal is to finish the season with the current format.