Hmain partner Gunnar Wöbke has “already found such a void”. And for his colleague at the Fraport Skyliners, Yannick Binas, it was “a sad moment”. Over and over: On Wednesday evening, the Gießen 46ers’ home defeat against Braunschweig finally sealed Frankfurt’s relegation to the second basketball division, Pro A.
The three remaining matches against Gießen, Crailsheim and Bayreuth are no longer relevant for the penultimate team, who only won seven of 31 games. With the Skyliners from Frankfurt, a highly respected location is saying goodbye to the upper house, which from 1999 onwards had been one of the top addresses in German basketball for many years.
2000 cup winners, 2004 German champions and 2016 FIBA Europe Cup winners – this collection of titles adorns the club, which in all these years has never lived above its means financially. But its best days are long gone.
“It was often scarce”
The relegation has “honestly been announced in recent years with the increasingly poor prospects due to the lack of a multifunctional arena,” says Binas. In addition, the corona pandemic “hit in”.
In 2013, the Skyliners were able to avert relegation for the first time with a home win against Ludwigsburg on the last day of the game. “It has often been tight in recent years,” it said on Thursday in an “open letter” from Frankfurt.
But whatever rescue measures they took this season did not show the desired success. “Somehow it was like we were constantly stuck in quicksand: Every time we thought we’d get the curve and pull ourselves out of the mess, something new happened that threw us back again.” The coach and team felt like they were in a vicious circle. With no way out.
Hoping for wild card
However, the Hessians still have a back door. You must hope for a wildcard award. A total of 22 clubs submitted the license documents for the coming season to the Basketball Bundesliga (BBL) on time. Four clubs from Pro A: Jena, Rostock, Trier and Bremerhaven. In Pro A, if a team reached the final that didn’t want to be promoted, there could be a wildcard.
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This would also apply in the event that the BBL refuses a license to a club from the group of applicants for economic reasons. In any case, the BBL must decide whether it makes sense to award a wildcard, for example to maintain the field of 18 first division clubs.
“Check and calculate”
After that, it would have to be clarified how high the price for this wild card is. Before this season it totaled €700,000; Giessen, who are about to be relegated again, initially had to pay 350,000 euros. The Skyliners would “check and calculate” whether they could “financially” handle a wild card. The amount to invest would probably be “a fifth or a sixth of our total budget,” says Binas. “We would also have to set up a competitive player budget.”
If the Frankfurters actually had to compete in the Pro A, their total budget would be reduced by about half. “We will probably have a seven-figure amount less,” says Binas. Before the corona pandemic, the Skyliners had a total budget of around five million euros. Most recently, it should have been around 30 percent less. After all, at the sponsor level, “all top partners” stayed with the club in Pro A, says Binas.
