On October 20, Panathinaikos of Athens begins its quest for a sixth Euroleague basketball title at home to Spanish side Unicaja.
It promises to be quite a night. The Greeks are reigning Euroleague champions and will begin the title defence in front of some the world’s most passionate fans - an atmosphere that is living, breathing, slam-dunking proof that football is not the only game in town across swathes of southern and eastern Europe.
Euroleague is a basketball competition that gets football-style treatment from its supporters. The fans are a singing, chanting tribe whose painted faces, flags, banners and coloured smoke create a unique atmosphere that makes other sports appear comatose by comparison.
In fact the fans and their passion are one of the things that makes Euroleague stand apart from other sports leagues. And according to president and CEO Jordi Bertomeu, they are an integral part of Euroleague’s brand and experience.
“Our concept for Euroleague is about the clubs rather than individual players and it is the devotion the fans have to those clubs which is special,” he says.
Euroleague Basketball has always been about the clubs. It was born out of their frustration and resentment of a governing body which, they believed, was simply not up to speed when it came to looking after their interests.
That was back in the late 1990s, some years after European football took its own tortuous journey through the same choppy waters. But the eventual destination was very different.
While UEFA, European football’s governing body, successfully quashed a potential breakaway of its leading football clubs by dramatically re-vamping its marquee competition, the International Basketball Federation, FIBA, was simply unable to respond in the way the clubs had demanded. So they walked.
The result was the creation of Euroleague, an international competition for Europe’s leading basketball clubs which created a relatively brief but intensely bitter civil war within the sport.
At the centre of it all was Jordi Bertomeu, a lawyer and head of the Spanish national basketball league, the Liga ACB, who was appointed to get the Euroleague show on the road.
“The situation arose because the clubs had reached a certain level of maturity and simply did not find the same level of professionalism in the federation,” he reflects.
“That’s not a criticism but there was a feeling of recession among the club owners who felt that they were being prevented from taking advantage of commercial opportunities. They wanted to be closer to the decision-making process and to take the business decisions. What other business is there where the owners are not involved in making the key decisions?
“In the key European basketball countries a model was already in place. In Spain, Italy, Greece and France the clubs were already at the heart of their domestic leagues. The question was why could this not be done at the European level?”
In February 2000 representatives of the European clubs met with FIBA and presented a plan which, says Bertomeu, represented a change of criteria and the need for a more professional and commercial approach.
“We didn’t want to break away, but FIBA’s reaction was bad and that led to a revolution,” he says. “The clubs decided to leave.”
So Bertomeu was part of Euroleague from the very first minute and was to go on to remain at the centre of what has become one of Europe’s most ambitious and fastest growing sports leagues.
Not that it was easy. In year one the basketball was split into two competitions - the FIBA SuproLeague and Euroleague - as some clubs enthusiastically threw their weight behind the breakaway venture, while others stuck with the existing FIBA competition.
For the full interview see the latest edition of SportBusiness International published September 1.
