Possible “Nueva revolución a la vista” in Spain? Fearing contraction, small-market owners meet

March 22, 2012

Is Europe’s reputed top domestic league actually under threat from within? According to the excellent Spanish-based website Tu Basket, representatives of nine Liga Endesa clubs – Lagun Aro GBC, Fuenlabrada, Lycentum Alicante, FIATC Joventut, Valladolid, Asefa Estudiantes, Gran Canaria 2014, Assignia Manresa, and CAI Zaragoza – are meeting in Madrid today to discuss alleged unfair financial regulation within and possible contraction under sweeping “economic control measures” currently being considered by the league and commissioner Albert Agusti.

According to Tu Basket, reps from Lagun Aro, Fuenlabrada and Valladolid tipped off the Liga’s small market clubs (Blusens Monbus and UCAM Murcia were also invited to the meeting but did not attend), expressing concerns the “clear goal” behind the measures is contraction of the league from 18 to 14 teams, i.e. sending four of the 11 above-mentioned clubs to the second division.

The draft of the regulations does not in fact address contraction issues, but small-market owners feel their clubs may be enervated by penalties assessed to teams who attempt to sign players while running up debt. While many clubs big and small in Spain do operate in this way as a temporary measure when free-agent signing possibilities come up, the resisting owners feel the thousand-euro debtors should be less harshly penalized than the big-name clubs running millions in the red.

“¿Nueva revolución a la vista?” wonders Tu Basket, “¿Valdrá de algo o como las anteriores?”

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This post was published on March 22, 2012
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Comments: 3
  1. RT
    12 years ago

    I think there are too many teams in Liga ACB. 18 is just too many. People really overrate the level of that league by a lot. You always hear how all the teams are good and all that, which simply isn’t true. There are 4-5 teams every year that are terrible and don’t hold the level of the league up.

    The league is said to be more balanced but that is just some wrong perception, due to marketing mostly. It’s not balanced at all. It’s way too top heavy, even over other lesser leagues that everyone says are less balanced.

    The truth is that the Greek league for example has more balanced teams at the bottom of the league than the ACB does. 10-12 placed teams in Greek League (out of 13-14 teams) go and make the Last 16 of Eurocup in recent years.

    Conversely, if take a 15-18 place ACB club and put them in Eurocup they would struggle to make it out of the group round. So the ACB is not to the level that it claims and markets, nor what people say it is. It’s quite overrated, just like the NBA is.

    It would be smart for them to contract to 14 teams because then the league would maintain a higher level in all the clubs and it would actually be closer to what it claims in league marketing.

    In Russia they have contracted teams and worked out very well for them. The NBA also should have contracted some teams, but was not smart enough to do so. A few years back in Italy’s top league they contracted a couple teams and the league had dramatically improved since then.

    I think it would be very smart by ACB actually if they did this. I would also recommend the Greek League contracting down to 12 teams. They normally have 14 and the level suffers due to the bottom two teams. This year they had 13 teams and just one team was really below the others. 12 would be a much nicer fit there.

    The leagues in Turkey, France, and Germany also have too many teams in their leagues. I think this would be a good move by the ACB and I actually hope that the Greek League would do the same. It really helped restore the A Series in Italy back up after they did contraction. ACB is probably using that as a model.

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  2. AL
    12 years ago

    No, the ACB is not overrated. Just look at the standings. They are really competitive, even the smaller budget teams are tough as nails. Look at Fuenlabrada for example, starting with no sponsor and playing with half the starting roster at the eurochallenge, they went quite far, even defeating Besiktas at home. But to realize that, you should watch games, something that you clearly dont do.

    Not disrespecting the other mediterranean/balkanic and Russian leagues of course. After all these are the leagues that bring some dignity to European basketball.

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  3. BISCAYNE
    12 years ago

    National leagues wise Turkey is the second best and Spain is clearly ahead of them. You see that they both have 18 teams. The problem here is not the number of teams rather it is the level of competition. In any kind of league there will always be some teams which are behind and some ahead that does not mean the competition level in league is by any means dropped. It means that particular team is not fit in the league and should be relegated. Even some might say that in these particular high competition leagues there is a fierce competition among the lower spots because they do not want to relegate. This competition comes at a cost which is better teams might crush them but that is the beauty of the game. Even the dead last spot team can win against a top team.
    Another example is the NBA. Every season there is a team that struggles. By your logic they should just drop them because they are not in par with the others but they try to help them by giving them higher draft picks which helps them rebuild their teams.

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