If I look at the history of Basketball Champions League, fewer and fewer clubs each year decide to leave BCL and opt to stay-in. What does it mean for the future of the competition?
Many have chosen to remain in Basketball Champions League and recently we have seen that many have chosen to make BCL their new home. For us this is an important validation of the work we are doing. My personal opinion, going back to the initial question, is that the new model proposed and developed by the Basketball Champions League has become very attractive to the clubs.
It has become a competition of very high standards, with clubs that are very keen to participate just for the sheer sporting aspect of it; clubs are very well promoted, we are the number 1 competition in Europe on Social Media with 2.5M followers, so clubs know that we can give the best possible promotion. Every year we have numerous players that transfer to Euroleague teams, so they are also seen the competition as a great promotional environment to make steps further in their career.
I think our model is one that allows clubs to view European participation as a bonus, as an additional benefit, and not as a burden. We have seen a lot of clubs, in the last years, that have pursued the dream of playing in the Euroleague, but by not having the opportunity to play there regularly they can go one year and they have a chance to repeat that performance but then has become somewhat of a financial burden for clubs.
I think that BCL is proposing a model that clubs feel there is a competitive balance: nobody knows at the beginning of the season who is going to win, we have done three Final Fours and you can see the diversity of the teams that have played those. In sport I think everybody is seeing that BCL is proposing a financial model that rewards clubs for their participation: winning €1M for becoming champion is a significant proportion of the budgets of most clubs.
We don’t push clubs to have a minimum budget that can push them into debt in order to participate in our competition, and to summarize I can say, at the end, that BCL is chosen by clubs that do take financial planning into consideration, that do not have automatic support from a larger football club, or that do not have a government backing providing a sort of safety net. These are clubs that are providing and developing a proper business approach, and therefore BCL comes to respond to these questions and to propose a model that all clubs participating can see a financial growth.
Italy will be represented next season by three teams very different one from the other. What do you think of such a variety of participants?
What we have seeing with BCL is that because we reward clubs for their results, we have a variety of participants in our competition. In the past we’ve had Orlandina, Varese, Venezia, Bologna, Avellino. In Italy alone we’ve had almost 10 different clubs [they’re 8, including Sassari, Brindisi and next year’s debutant Fortitudo].
For us this is part of our vision, to embrace as many clubs as possible and to offer them opportunity to participate in BCL. We are about to enter our 5th edition, and we will have worked with more than 130 clubs from 37 countries in just 5 seasons. That for us is quite important, going back to what we said about the role of leagues and FIBA, this goes to say that all these clubs have been touching and influencing the competition.
They would have come to our offices, participate in our workshop, received the club manual, they will have grown from their participation to BCL. For us this is what matters the most, to have this model that becomes attractive and relevant to as many clubs as possible around Europe.
The diversity of these clubs varies considerably. Sassari is a different story in these recent years as Brindisi, Fortitudo has a different story in the last 20 years: each club has its own identity but what I believe BCL does rather well is to try to put together all these different identities, even from the same country, in order to have a plurality of representatives.
Signing or agreeing to multi-year agreements with clubs could shrink the variety of clubs from some countries?
Taking into consideration that each club participating in Basketball Champions League needs to perform well in the domestic competition, they cannot perform well at the same year. The one who perform well will have the opportunity to participate, the other maybe will have to wait one more season.
We don’t see this as a problem: I think you may see some familiar faces over the years, but that will only mean that some clubs have benefitted from this model that allows them to plan and to be consistent and they have generated revenues and promotion by being involved in BCL. They continue to perform well, and they continue to return to BCL. I don’t think that the variety will stop.
In Italy we will have a new team next season, one with an impressive fan base: Fortitudo has been absent from Europe for a number of years; we have a club coming for a second year in Brindisi and another that has been in our environment for the past 4-5 years in Sassari. I think at the end that for as long a club performs well you will continue to see them.
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