East Asia Super League Gets FIBA Support And Recognition

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SPORTS | August 26, 2020

(Image Source: East Asia Super League)

The East Asia Super League (EASL), one of the fastest-growing professional sports leagues in Asia Pacific today, has officially earned and gained the support and recognition from the premiere international basketball governing body Fedéracion Internationale de Basketball (FIBA) through a ten-year partnership agreement for the impending launch of a new premier league slated to begin on October 2020, one month after the FIBA Champions Cup, featuring the top professional leagues from East Asia and the Philippines.
The first two editions of EASL's new tournament, 2021-2022 and 2022-2023, will match up the league's top eight teams in a home-and-away group stage which will culminate in a Final Four playoff showdown on February determining the champion, runner-up and third place finishers. By 2023, EASL plans to expand the number of participating teams in the tournament to 16. In addition, the EASL matches are slated to be integrated into the schedules of the participating professional basketball leagues, including the Philippine Basketball Association (PBA).

"The recognition of the East Asia Super League is based on a shown commitment to developing basketball in the region and in line with FIBA's club competition strategy that is to shape international club competitions," said FIBA Secretary-General Andreas Zagklis. Meanwhile, FIBA Asia Executive Director Hagop Khajirian praised and recognized the EASL for demonstrating great operational capacity to organize a high-level competition for top clubs and a strong commitment to elevate the sport of basketball in East Asia within the organization's regulatory framework for leagues.

On the other hand, EASL CEO Matt Beyer stated that the league is thrilled to receive FIBA's support and is confident that it will become one of the top professional basketball competitions in the world by 2025 with top teams from the Greater China region, Japan, Korea and the Philippines. He also said, "We are also looking forward to aligning with FIBA's vision to strengthen domestic clubs and league competitions in East Asia with a domestic fanbase of over two billion people, which will contribute to FIBA's global club championship ambitions." The newly-forged agreement with FIBA follows the EASL's successful staging of four pre-season tournaments over the past three years featuring top teams from CBA (China), B.LEAGUE (Japan), KBL (South Korea), PBA (Philippines), SBL (Chinese Taipei) and ABL (Southeast Asia) including the week-long Terrific 12 tournament last September 2019 which attracted both sellout live audiences and more than 117 million viewers worldwide on broadcast and digital platforms.