Exclusive: Euroleague Basketball President Looking to Take Up UK Expansion ‘challenge’

By Ismail Uddin

Jordi Bertomeu, pills Euroleague Basketball president, medicine has revealed the organisation is ready to take up the ‘challenge’ and attempt to enter the UK market when their Final Four event comes around in May. 

The Euroleague Final Four will be staged in London’s O2 Arena in May and is set to return for the 2014 season if all goes to plan. 

With the UK dominated by the NBA, the Spaniard is not expecting it to be easy to win over the UK fans but feels it is a necessary step to progress the organisation. 

“We felt that it was the time to take the challenge to come to London, where there is no significant basketball tradition at the level of top competition, he told iSportconnect exclusively. 

“They have had the Olympics and the NBA games every year, but they’ve never had any European basketball championships of national teams or any event where we can check if there is interest in us.“ 

“We decided to take this challenge because it will help us promote basketball there and also we have to prove ourselves that the league is strong and that we are ready to face this challenge. 

“I think we can deliver a high quality product because we have an amazing arena – the O2. We will conduct activities in the city, for four days there will be a basketball venue at Trafalgar Square so we will include many activities to try to expand and show there is high quality basketball in Europe.” 

Bertomeu also revealed they how much they have sold for his event and the many different nationalities that will be attending. 

He added: “We’ve already sold around 40%, so it’s interesting because supporters from our traditional markets outside of the UK will come, but also in London we have many different communities that we believe will also be interested. 

“We will work specifically with them. We have many people from Lithuania, Russia, Greece, Turkey, many different communities here so we will work with them because I’m sure they will have interest. Also, we have traditional British basketball fans buying tickets, around 10% are British people. “

Read his full interview here>>

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