Surging Interest in Euroleague

The fan base of Euroleague has continued to grow during the 2013-14 regular season. In an article posted by Euroleague.net they said that based off of data collected from 10 regular season games, there was a rise in attendance as well as heavy traffic on the leagues website.

In a total of 120 games throughout the season, attendance was up 5%.

Euroleague consulted with G2 strategic to help launch the Euroleague Basketball Ticketing Program two years ago.  Because of this program and the growth of the sport in Europe, 10 teams reported increased ticket sales.

This past year Euroleague.net brought in more than 100,000 new visitors to their website.  The growth of the game has led to a Greek, Sport24.GR's, and Italian, Gazzetta dello Sport, versions of Euroleague.net

Currently there are 195 countries worldwide broadcasting Euroleague games.  Standard viewership has also risen in large part to moving a one of the game days to Friday fromWednesday to combat when Football(soccer) matches are played in Europe

My Take:

Basketball is growing all throughout the world.  It is now the second most popular sport in the United States, distancing itself from Baseball.  Currently in many countries in Europe it is either the number two sport behind football(soccer) or in some cases like in Eastern Europe it is number one.  

Euroleague is now even featured in the extremely popular video game NBA 2K14 and they play friendlies in the United States occasionally, which shows the growth of the European game.

With the growth of the internet and social media platforms, I think the global awareness of Euroleague will continue to grow because of how easy it is to access information. I do not think, however, that any basketball league/entity can ever come close to threatening the NBA.

The NBA is king, but maybe Euroleague can be his queen...

Dr. Chris O'Hanlon

-Avid Sports Blogger and Amateur Magician