Three French Euroleague teams in 2009/2010

March 28, 2009

We have discussed this subject for ever and now it is official, France will have 3 Euroleague teams in 2009/2010. Despite disastrous results, Jordi Bertomeu declared in a recent interview with the French newspaper l’Equipe that three French teams will be among the 30 teams that will start into the next Euroleague season.

One team will be granted a B License as French Champion, the vice-champion will be granted a B License too and may be qualified directly for the regular season or has to go through the qualification phase. And then, a 3-year Wildcard will be distributed to ASVEL that will have to go through the qualification phase. So the year-long lobbying by the French team from Villeurbanne, bringing even Tony Parker in as shareholder, has come to a good end.

However, if ASVEL qualifies for the French Finals, the Wildcard will go to another French team that still needs to be decided on unknown criteria so far. So France can say thank you to Canal+ and the very big amount of money paid by the French TV channel to get the TV rights and the future creation of a big club in Villeurbanne to be now even better represented despite having poorer and poorer results. But in a worst case scenario for them, France will have only one team in the regular phase if the two other teams lose in the Qualification round which does not seem that illogic.

And one last personal comment, if France gets three entrance tickets on the criteria that are mentioned above, Germany should at least get a 2nd spot in the 2009/2010 edition.

Mar 28, 2009ballineurope

This post was published on March 28, 2009

Comments: 10

Gruebler
16 years ago
It’s strange indeed that France is supposed to get three spots while in Germany only the champion will play Euroleague. One has to keep in mind that the champ not necessarily will be ALBA but might very well be a minor club.
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Orkodijo
16 years ago
Three teams from France? Gimme a break. They don’t have one team worthy of Euroleague. This is ridicolous. France deserves one team/”place” in Euroleague and so does the Germany. Additional “places” should go to Russia and Serbia. I’m very sad that Euroleageu is slowly turning into a joke.
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Teo
16 years ago
so france has the same amount of places like greece. how is that for ridiculous…
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- robbe
  16 years ago
  @All: As it looks, France will have only one direct qualification spot though. And I don’t see any french team advance through the qualification, as those two groups are going to be very tough, with the third Greek team, the third Italian team, the second Russian team, maybe a fifth Spanish teams, and others.
  
  Greece has two A-Licences.
  
  So even if three French teams looks a bit odd, I think we won’t have more than one French participant in the regular season.
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Christophe
16 years ago
@Robbe
exactly. this is the point. France has 1 team that will play the Euroleague for sure. This is one less than before. The two teams in the Qualification phase will have a very tough job to qualify, and if they do qualify, then they deserve the spots
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Eric
16 years ago
Well, I am French and I will try to defend my country……
Does France deserve 1 guaranteed spot + 2 unprotected spots in the quali ? The obvious answer is no.
So why do we get those tickets ?
Because the project of Mr Bertomeu is to have a closed league with perennial money. And France brings this kind of club Le Mans/Nancy/Asvel are really well structured clubs. They don’t lose money and this is very important for the new Euroleague.
I am not saying that clubs in other countries don’t have the same guarantee, but as mentionned by Christophe, Canal + pays a lot of money for the TV rights…..a really superior amount if you compare via a ratio of games played by French team/games broadcasted.
There are no French teams in the Top 16, but I can see Euroleague games every week : Canal + really supports the Euroleague via this exposure, and it’s really an investissement for this channel because there no more than 20.000 people watching (compared to 100.000 for the weekly ProA game).

Why is Canal + giving so much for so few national games ?
This is only my opinion, it’s not based on facts. Canal is the historical broadcaster of NBA basketball. The future Euroleague (like it or not) is becoming an EuroNBA. Canal, on the French market sees a strong concurrence emerging from a new rival : Orange (former FranceTelecom) TV via Adsl. Orange is a much bigger company, promoting their TV offer via exclusive rights that they buy at an amount that even Canal + can’t follow. Canal has lost half of the French football league, they may lose the rights for the Champion’s League. So it’s really important for Canal to promote basketball as a second choice, a second big story à la Champion’s League. Canal must make something out of basketball, that’s why they give so much money to Euroleague.

In conclusion, Canal + has bought the right for 3 French teams, it’s really clear that it’s not fair to most of your local teams. But on the other hand, Canal+ really believes in the future of European basketball, a sport that they believe (and that I hope) will attract more and more customer to its private channels. They want to become a major partner in the future of our sport, and in a kind of way Mr Bertomeu is thanking them with thoses licenses.
On the national scene, it also a very positive signs for the basketball community. Football is the main scene and behind it’s a race between b-ball, handball and rugby. With this “”gift””, it’s also a sign in the direction of all the future sponsors : if you support a club you will get an European exposure. It’s a gamble for a future positive circle.

Well…..i just hope that our clubs won’t be as broken as the last 2 years.
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Joaquin
16 years ago
I prefer only 2 french teams: ASVEL and French Champion.

Currently there are better russian, serbian and turkish teams than french teams.
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Michael
16 years ago
3 French clubs? Really? My goodness, the Pro A of France has been absolutely terrible lately. Really they have not deserved even 1 club in the Euroleague and now they get 3? And ASVEL getting a contract over clubs like Lietuvos Rytas, Khimki, Milano, Dynamo, Joventut, Aris, hell even ALBA? Seriously? No really, for real they get a contract over clubs like that?

So now Russia has only 2 spots (compared to France’s 3), yet they have 4 teams like CSKA, Khimki, UNICS, and Dynamo that are all far better than any French club, yet France has 3 places? France has the same places as Italy???? How can that be possible? France has the same amount of places as Greece? Is this a joke? I mean, ASVEL will probably finish in about 8th or 9th place in the domestic league if they played in Greece’s A1.

I really hope Bertomeu knows what he is doing, but it sure does not look like it.
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- santos
  16 years ago
  Greek Championship?
  This is not an athletic affair. Greek championship is a jungle. Euroleague is business, and they do very well trying to award the French market. They should give more option to the teams from western , civilized, wealthy countries. Greek championship is like you spend millions of euros and throw the players in a arena with uncivilized funs…
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Marco
16 years ago
@santos: …and in the course of all this chaos still winning an incredible amount of national and club medals internationally. get a clue, man, why should the euroleague help countries with dead fans to watch a sport they don’t care about. one time everyone is praising the passionate greek fans at the final four, the other time every sore loser starts crying about how uncivilized they are and how the euroleague has to do this and that and the other thing. that’s a cheap shot, especially considering that so many countries have or have had these kinds of problems in professional sports. The euroleague is absolutely worthless without a strong greek representation, and the best thing is to be constructive about helping those two greek rivals to clean it up instead of complaining around about things that have nothing to do with you. Basketball is not the strong suit of your average western “civilized” country, but it is played at its best in all sorts of countries NOT named France, Germany and England. So Partizan, Pao and Oly have overpassionate fans, and some loser just heard about it right now because they are more in the media than they used to… shocking news for you, aye?
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