All things considered, can we imagine, through this evidence, a leap forward in basketball that will delight fans who do not miss a single chance to make their team win thanks to Playonlinefr.
If we were to rely on a progressive ascending curve of the audience to judge its professionalization, as in rugby and football, we can draw a general line showing that the spectators are, more and more, numerous to follow with passion the important matches basket shots.
To give an idea, 2.82 million viewers followed the Eurobasket final, opposing Spain, winner, France, silver medalist, Berlin, on Sunday September 18, 2022. This final is ranks as the #1 show among the under 50s, giving us a point of reference as to the diversity and relative youth of the enthusiast audience. The major channels compete for licenses to retransmit and the stakes gradually rise as the big channel owners tend to want to impose a monopoly.
- Favorable conditions to occupy the headlines
It is the first time that the Cup is co-organized by three countries, who share the highlights of the tournament. Major cities are the honor, including Metro Manila in the Philippines, Okinawa in Japan and Jakarta in Indonesia.
As during the Football Cup, the international federation has selected 32 teams of the highest level, which will put on a show throughout this fortnight of twists and turns. 16 of them are received by the Philippines, while Japan and Indonesia equally share those that remain.
- Spain, United States, Argentina, France, Greece?
Spain is the last country to win the previous Cup, and France has regularly finished the competition in places of honor or winning bronze medals.
The United States have won five times, holding 12 medals in total, notably in 2014 and 2010, with a very strong ability to impress teams that will try to compete against the star basketball players. Serbia or ex-Yugoslavia is the only team to have done so well. Russia, former USSR also has ten medals.
- Uneven distribution across continents
Each continent is reserved a certain number of places to participate in the last selection in Asia.
Europe is the most diversified, and therefore the most represented, holding 12 places that its teams can run for: there are still 4 positions to be taken up, for teams that have not yet completed the qualification cycle.
Oceania, on the contrary, can obtain between 0 and 2 places, even if its surface is mainly filled with oceans.
The huge African continent is only entitled to 5 places, depending on the level reached by its teams. At this time, only the Ivory Coast has scored enough baskets to join the concert of the Greats.
The Americas, North, South and Central, have already fulfilled their quota of starters for Asia, 7 teams having already qualified for the rest of the competition, until the final, if they have the chance to continue.
In Asia, two places are reserved for the host countries (therefore two out of three), which are Japan and the Philippines, Indonesia having had to give up.
- All ranks are honorable
The quarter-finals, semi-finals and finals are direct elimination. But the losers of the quarter-finals play the competition until the end to try to claim the places behind the podium, which are distributed from 5 to 8.
- American basketball in the NBA still at the top
Compared with what we have just said about European basketball, this is out of all proportion to the attraction for this sport, as it has developed among American professionals, with enormous publicity stakes, for the chains, their association with bookmakers and large American companies.
The NBA Finals in June 2022 set real records. The meeting between the Celtics and the Warriors froze more than 13 million viewers in front of their screen. At the end of the match, there were 15.35 million spectators to watch the last decisive minutes.
Game 5 was therefore at the top of the audiences among 18-34 year olds and 25-54 year olds, for the evening of the final.
With such scores, we certainly cannot aim for identical results at the Football Cup in Qatar, but the progress remains significant.
