Alcohol prevents Lithuanians from watching Euroleague games

January 5, 2008 by Tobias 

And we always thought things in Europe are more liberal. I just came across the following article which was published on sportsbusiness.com.

Lithuanian TV broadcasters were forced to cancel live coverage of Euroleague basketball matches due to a new law banning prime-time advertising of alcohol.

The law, which took effect on January 1, 2008, bans all alcohol-related ads and symbols on television from 6 am to 11 pm.

Many Lithuanian club sides are sponsored by breweries and Lithuania has two teams competing in the Euroleague tournament - Zalgiris and Lietuvos Rytas. Broadcasters are only able to offer delayed-as-live coverage of European basketball’s top club competition from 11pm.

Just imagine the United States would have this law .. No more advertising for Budweiser on TV - can you imagine? This is like taking away the “N” from the NBA..


Filed Under: Basketball business, Basketball on TV, Euroleague, Lithuania, funny notes
Tagged:

Comments

2 Responses to “Alcohol prevents Lithuanians from watching Euroleague games”

  1. Christophe on January 5th, 2008 1:02 pm

    More on this story can also be found on the IBN forums
    http://forums.interbasket.net/showthread.php?t=5770

  2. Radio Vatican talks Euroleague on January 31st, 2008 10:35 pm

    [...] of our readers probably remember the story about Lithuanian TV channels that can not broadcast live games of basketball before 23h because of the publicity of [...]

Feel free to leave a comment...
and oh, if you want a pic to show with your comment, go get a gravatar!