With the end of the regular season in most European leagues, the time for contract negotiation has arrived. With the teams’ current financial situation, players will probably earn less money for their services: The worldwide financial crisis has reached the hardwood. Through two examples, BallinEurope.com will explain just how deep the crisis truly runs in European basketball right now.
Part 1: Cheerleader disputes in Israel
As our friend Yarone Arbel reports for FIBA.com, a cheerleader controversy is simmering in Israel. What’s going on in the Holy Land? Yarone reports that
Disagreements have erupted over the principle of having cheerleaders in the Basketball Super League, the top league in the country.
A controversy arose with a new regulation that had actually been accepted by the league’s board the previous summer obliging each and every club among the 12 members of the league to have a respectful cheerleading team.
The members of the top Israeli basketball league are forced to have a cheerleading squad that is at least “respectful.” We won’t go into details about what is meant by “respectful,” but the obligation to have a cheerleading team sounds suspect to me. It’s not that I’m against this type of animation, but why force teams to have a cheerleading team? Even the Boston Celtics went without a dance team prior to 2006, so why do Israeli teams need something like that?
Until this season, very few clubs had a cheerleading group at their games. Some used junior high, or even younger, dance class students to fill that spot. Most, however, had none.
The league told each club to run dance classes for the dancers and to enforce an age limit of 16.
This means that the league forced the teams to take on additional costs for running their club and to give away money normally used for players to set up some halftime shows. I still don’t get it. And of course, several teams formed an opposition to this rule, one being Hapoel Jerusalem. But the reason why they are against this is somehow ambiguous.
Fans claimed their own cheers would be interrupted and identified cheerleaders with high-class sit-and-clap fans: a stark contrast to their own style.
The club claimed that among the fans is a big population of religious people who feel uncomfortable with scantily-clad dancers.
All these arguments did not help and Hapoel Jerusalem was forced to have its own cheerleading team. And it doesn’t look too bad, either…
While it appeared that everything had concluded happily, a dozen women’s rights activists have made a joint appeal against the league’s cheerleader obligation rule. The group claims that
a performance of a cheerleading group deepens the sexist approach towards girls and women and could increase the level of sexual violence towards us and the social relation to girls and women as sexual objects.
After several wars of words through the local media, the story was calming down but arose again with Mrs. Limor Livnat’s nomination to the position of Minister of Sport in Israel. Some 19 organizations put together a letter to Livnat requesting that she force the League to eliminate this rule. So far, nothing has changed and we will of course follow this story to conclusion.
In part two, read up on the “real” problems currently facing the basketball world with a story about a mascot gone on strike.
