Jordi Bertomeu took the opportunity of the II National Congress of Economy and Sports Law, held in Madrid, to expound on six key points that, in his view, will help European professional competitions in these complex times to face future challenges to their survival in the form we have known them until now.
Euroleague Basketball CEO, Jordi Bertomeu, participated in the II National Congress of Economy and Sports Law held in Madrid, by giving a speech on the future of European basketball competitions. The Euroleague CEO’s speech was part of a roundtable discussion in which Eduardo Portela, the ULEB and ACB president, Pedro Tomas, president of the Spanish Football League (LFP) and Thomas Kurth, General Director of the G-14, also took part.
After reflecting on the unavoidable relationship existing between professional sports and the business figures that a specific sports competition can display, Bertomeu wanted to emphasize the fact that the legal, social and media environment sometimes force what is clearly a business activity, which professional sports is, to be managed under not-so-managerial criteria.
Some of the examples that Bertomeu gave to exemplify this difficulty were: the rules that impede the free recruitment of players depending on their nationality; the general understanding that NBA teams demand insurance guarantees before ceding their players to national teams and the lack of understanding towards this same demand from European teams; an insistence on sports performance as the only way to join competitions, to the exclusion of other crucial issues like economical health and the social environment of the project. According to the Euroleague CEO, these are the main difference between professional sports in Europe and in the United States.
The current economic situation, according to Bertomeu, is especially worrisome because it is affecting two fundamental pillars of professional sports: audio-visual media and advertising.
Taking into account these realities, the CEO of Europe’s top basketball competition offered six keys to resist this situation, and at the same time, initiate the best possible model for the future: the autonomy of professional organizations in the environment of the international federative organization; the need of professional organizations to reason in collective terms; the resistance to building closed leagues that go against European sports culture; on the other hand, admitting the need to provide stability to the most powerful clubs to guarantee both competition level and the continuity of sports projects; the centralization of the management of commercial rights as the system to guarantee an optimum income level, maintaining product unity and improving its quality; the reorientation of marketing strategies depending on prospects offered by the new TV scene.
Contact:
Marshall Glickman
Chief Marketing Officer
Euroleague
+34 93 327 8427
marshall.glickman@euroleague.net