Singapore to host FIBA Intercontinental Cup under three-year partnership

The FIBA Intercontinental Cup is set to enter a new chapter of its long history in 2023, as FIBA and Sport Singapore have agreed to a three-year partnership that expands the event to also involve Asia for the first time and better reflects the modern club basketball landscape.

The Singapore Sports Hub is destined to become the first-ever venue in Asia to host the FIBA Intercontinental Cup as it will provide the stage for the 33rd edition of the event, from September 21-24, 2023.

The competition will hence return to be staged in September so that it adapts more efficiently to the domestic and continental leagues’ calendar and the schedule of international players, and to better accommodate participating clubs.

“This agreement serves both as the realization of a basketball dream that dates back generations as well as a launchpad into the future era of global club basketball. Singapore, as a melting pot of cultures, is perhaps the ideal place to bring that vision to life,” commented FIBA Secretary General Andreas Zagklis.

“The first edition of the FIBA Intercontinental Cup in 1966 was an inspired event conceived by visionaries. They envisioned a competition that would assist in uniting different cultures through basketball but only dared to dream that one day the event would develop to the point where clubs from all corners of the globe compete in it,” Mr. Zagklis added.

The field of contenders is to expand from four to six teams and in the September event in Singapore, a Chinese club, jointly selected by FIBA and the Chinese Basketball Association, will join four teams representing the same four continental leagues as in the past two editions. The sixth participant will be announced by FIBA in due course.

Those four teams will include the champions from the 2023 Basketball Africa League (BAL), a professional league featuring the top 12 club teams from 12 African countries operated in partnership between FIBA and the NBA, the champions of Basketball Champions League 2022-23, the champions of Basketball Champions League Americas 2022-23, and NBA G League Ignite, the team that was founded in 2020 to prepare top prospects for the NBA Draft.