Introduce the basketball leagues and wealthy teams in Europe?

European Basketball Impacts NBA (Part 2): Get to know the European League and ULEB

After being harsh on the European basketball market, let’s seriously judge the current situation of the European League:

In the short term, there is still a long way to go to develop the basketball market in Europe.

Basketball is not a mainstream sport in the major European economies of Germany, Britain, and France; it can be said that the largest basketball markets in Europe are three: Italy-Spain; Greece-Turkey; and Russia. The teams in the former Yugoslavia have a good talent reserve, but lack the support of huge funds and cannot yet compete with the previous three market groups from an economic perspective. Those who have money have no market, and those who have no money are the first innate problem.

The second inherent shortcoming is the huge dominance of the football league over the sports market. It is said that it is easy to enjoy the shade under the big trees, but don’t forget that there are no trees growing under the big trees.

In addition, judging from the experience of the Football League, the gold-dollar policy often leads to some drawbacks, ranging from survival problems for small and weak clubs to illegal operations. But European basketball leagues have a profound imprint of the gold-dollar policy of traditional European leagues.

The top league in Europe is the "EuroLeague" similar to the Football Champions League. The number of viewers in last year's EuroLeague final was 13,480. According to the EuroLeague 2007-08 season audience provided by Ball In Europe In terms of attendance figures, 3 of the 24 European League participating teams have attendances of more than 10,000, and the highest attendance of Maccabi Tel Aviv remains at 11,000. However, at the same time, as many as 13 teams have an average of less than 5,000 viewers per game, and the impressive AJ Milan (Armani Jeans Milano) averages only 2,364 viewers per game. The total average of 24 teams is 5,777 people. The website also gave a simple statistics on the average number of viewers per game when the top 16 teams played against each other that season, and the result was 7300.3. According to wiki information, the average number of viewers per game of Spanish top league ACB in the 2006-07 season was 6,763, which was somewhere in between.

For comparison, the NBA's average number of viewers in the 2007-08 season was 17,396, [b]the WNBA's average number of viewers per game in the 2007 season was 7,742[/b].

This is the result of the continuous increase in attendance since the establishment of the European League. Maybe some teams are limited by the size of the stadium and cannot increase the number of spectators. However, according to the results of this survey, only Maccabi among the 24 teams has an attendance rate of 100. What's more, even if the venue does not allow the number of spectators in the European League, at least it means that the football team The team still needs to build a stadium on a large scale, right? The situation in Europe and the United States is different and it is difficult to compare. However, in the stadium disputes between teams such as the Supersonics, the amount of investment in building new stadiums in the United States is probably hundreds of millions of dollars (Supersonics owner Bennett requested from the city of Seattle that the cost of building a new stadium is 5 billion US dollars).

Because data such as the broadcast rights income of European leagues cannot be found, it is difficult to estimate the broadcast market of European leagues. I only know that according to the official website of ULEB, the European League is broadcast in major European countries, and the broadcast coverage rate is the same as the attendance rate, which is also increasing year by year.

Of course, many teams in Europe can rely on some government actions or other factors to obtain a steady stream of economic support, thus providing endless motivation for the team to spend money and develop. Typical examples include the La Liga duo who are never afraid of spending money, and the oil-soaked rubles spent by the Russian league; Maccabi is almost the home team in Israel; among the most expensive leagues in Europe, only the Italian and Greek leagues The strong economic source is not particularly clear.

(In the long run, when the European leagues can compete with the NBA, the destructive power of these "teams with European characteristics" will be amazing. The NBA is purely out of The salary cap and transaction rules stipulated for commercial operations are certainly effective and excellent measures, but no powerful European team will like to be subject to such constraints.

European leagues, from the once glorious Serie A to the most successful Premier League today, are all leagues that believe in a law of the jungle model with high investment, fighting for wages and transfer fees, and rely on a huge club base to maintain the ecological balance between clubs. The result is roughly equivalent to a Lincoln sedan hitting a Hummer, and it won't end well. ——But this is not the problem we are facing now. )

Now it’s time to say the second sentence. Things that really threaten the NBA are happening quietly in Europe, and they have nothing to do with the vigorous poaching news.

European basketball leagues, due to their large number of clubs, long-standing club traditions, especially the traditions of wealthy clubs, and the experience accumulated in the development of football leagues, actually have the ability to enter the basketball market. The only question is whether they can develop healthily and smoothly and whether they can overcome their own weaknesses.

At least, ULEB is trying to create a successful league model.

Unlike UEFA, which controls national teams and club events in continental Europe, ULEB, which currently hosts club events, is not a subordinate unit of FIBA. It was originally a small group dominated by several wealthy European clubs. The situation is very It is similar to the G14 Group in football, except that the franchisees are not individual clubs but national leagues. Fortunately for G14, ULEB has achieved a dominant position in European club competitions after more than ten years of hard work, eventually forcing FIBA ??to give up its control of European club basketball competitions (however, as time went by, FIBA's influence once again penetrated into competition organized by ULEB). Therefore, in general, the national team competitions in continental Europe are organized by FIBA ??Europe, and ULEB organizes club competitions, including the top-level EuroLeague and the second-level EuroLeague Cup (similar to the UEFA Cup). Starting next season, ULEB will cooperate with FIBA ??again, the EuroLeague Cup will change its name back to the European Cup (EuroCup), and a third-level league EuroChallange will be established.

As of this season, the competition rules under ULEB are a strange mixture. Similar to football's UEFA Champions League, UEFA Cup and other competitions, the UEFA Europa League and UEFA Europa League (next season's European Cup) adopt a method of allocating competition quotas to each member country. However, because it was originally a conglomerate of several wealthy clubs, ULEB's quota allocation is more complicated and focuses more on wealthy clubs. Each country has "contracted teams" that fixedly occupy a portion of their country's European League quotas. For example, Spain has four quotas for participating in the European Leagues every year, two of which belong to the contracted teams, and the other two are determined based on league results. The contract between the signing team and the European League is for three years. Unless the player ranks in the bottom half of the domestic league that season, his or her place in the European League will be guaranteed.

On July 11 this year, European League CEO Bertolmo announced a new European League plan. According to this plan, starting from the 2009-10 season, the European League will become a "real European league", including There will be 16 teams that can have long-term confirmed quotas based on their performance; at the same time, all countries will have the possibility to have or increase their quotas to participate in the European League. Bertolmo said that "stability, performance-related and open leagues" will be the new characteristics of European leagues.

Preliminary rules of the new European League:

1 The 16 teams will receive long-term contracts (called A-level licenses), but if the performance ranks at the bottom of the 16 teams, the contract will be terminated. In this group, one team will lose its license every year and one team will be substituted (this part is like the league promotion and relegation system). The so-called performance ranking is determined by comprehensively considering the team's performance in the European League and European Cup (equivalent to football's UEFA Cup) in the past three years, the broadcast market, and the number of stadium attendances (this part obviously draws on the Football Champions League and UEFA Cup). quota allocation system, but with added market content). A maximum of three teams in a country's league can have similar licenses.

2 All European national leagues will be ranked according to their members’ performance in European leagues and cups as well as market potential. For at least 7 top-ranked leagues, a B-level license will be issued to ensure a member participating in the European League. qualifications. The license is also eliminated annually based on the overall score of the past three years.

3 The winner of the European Cup gets a spot in the Europa League next season.

4 All participating clubs should have a stadium with more than 10,000 seats as their home stadium. Or there is a stadium with more than 5,000 seats, and there are plans to build a new arena within three years.

5 The first batch of Class A license recipients for the 2009-10 season must be teams that have played in the European League for at least four seasons since the launch of the European League in 2000. The first batch of Class A and Class B licenses will remain unchanged for three years after being determined. At the beginning of the 2012-13 season, the last ones will be eliminated according to regulations every year.

Such changes are necessary. It has been 10 years since the start of the European League. The fixed European League quota allocation determined at the beginning of its establishment has now become a joke. The wealthy Russian league has only one quota to participate in the European League. This year, the second-place Khimki team in the Russian League, which accepted Garbajosa and Delfino in one fell swoop, is strong, but because CSKA has always retained the European League To qualify, you can only play in the UEFA Europa League every year.

At the same time, the practice of no entry threshold for traditional European leagues is also a huge harm to the overall packaging and sales of a league. Although an open competition organization model is the fairest, it is difficult to create a distinct competition in a completely open competition. overall image. In the past, football has always adopted a natural competition model of survival of the fittest to select elite clubs to form the final high-level competition (graded leagues, staged UEFA Champions League and UEFA Cup); but since the result of this nominal natural selection is semi- For closed competitions (wealthy clubs and rich teams control the main body of the most advanced leagues), why not simply formulate a semi-closed competition system to gain the benefits of standardizing club behavior and establishing an overall brand image?

So, in principle, the new European League is the same as before the reform. It is still a graft of the traditional Champions League/UEFA Cup model and the closed league model of a coalition of giants. But this is a rule that is more reasonable, more open, more in line with FIBA’s principle of equality among member states, and more inclusive of leagues in other European countries. It fully demonstrates ULEB’s ambition: it must have an NBA-style high franchise threshold. , and we must make full use of basketball resources across Europe. ULEB is transforming from a wealthy small group to a real European basketball league.

(One more thing, the competition, division and integration of ULEB and FIBA ??can illustrate what may happen if the G14 group can persist.)

Of course, it is not possible. A good beginning will lead to a good ending. Only the Premier League in European football leagues has achieved great operational success. Starting from the expansion of the stadium, ULEB has just started. However, an organization with goals and plans can achieve much greater things than a few talented individuals.