Warm-up for EASL season
EASL was supposed to launch its inaugural season last October but the pandemic got in the way. Travel restrictions remained tight and the danger of EASL becoming a virus spreader because of the home-and-away format was scary. EASL CEO Matt Beyer proposed a postponement and came up with the idea of a five-day, 10-game tournament as an interim event. The proposal was approved by EASL’s Advisory Board made up of representatives from Japan, Korea, Philippines and Greater China, FIBAAsia executive director Hagop Khajirian and EASL top brass.
Early this month, EASL staged the Champions Week featuring the eight teams that had qualified to play in the aborted first season. Manila was the early choice to host the competition but Japan was picked in the end to hold games of the first three days in Utsunomiya and the last two days in Okinawa.
The eight teams were split into two groups. San Miguel Beer, Ryukyu, Taipei and Anyang were in the first group while TNT, Utsunomiya, Seoul and Bay Area were in the second. The compressed timetable meant playing only two games for each team over four days in the group phase with the top four finishers advancing to the playoff for third and the final on the fifth day. At first, it seemed a little odd that in the group stage, teams would miss out playing one game. But as it turned out, the qualification via the quotient system made the race to the Final Four more interesting.
After four days, Anyang and Ryukyu were tied with 2-0 records. San Miguel and Taipei struck out winless. Anyang wound up with a quotient of +80 points and Ryukyu, +33. In the other group, Seoul posted a 2-0 mark and Utsunomiya was deadlocked for second spot with Bay Area with 1-1 records. TNT ended up 0-2. The Brex had a higher quotient of +27 and Bay Area was -2 but due to the winner-over-theother rule, the Dragons secured second place. In the playoff for third, Bay Area beat Ryukyu, 90-70, and took the $50,000 prize. In the final, Anyang defeated Seoul, 90-84, for the $250,000 first prize. The SK Knights settled for $100,000.
It was EASL’s fifth event since 2017 and first in Japan. The four previous competitions were held in Macao. Before the Champions Week, Bay Area placed second in the PBA Commissioner’s Cup, bowing to Barangay Ginebra in the best-of-seven finals that went the distance. The Dragons stayed in Manila for over 200 days to play in the PBA. The finals registered an average attendance of 23,616 with Game 7 setting an all-time record of 54,589. The basketball world took notice of the mammoth crowd and the Bay Area brand became recognizable globally.
For Beyer, bringing EASL back on the court after a 3-1/2 year wait was a long time coming. “The level of basketball in the region is rising and EASL will help that trend further accelerate,” he said. Regarding Champions Week, Beyer said it was “a wild ride” of 10 games in two cities over only five days. “Finishing two back-toback games on Friday in Utsunomiya, sleeping a few hours then traveling eight hours across Japan all the way to Okinawa to do two more back-to-back games on Saturday was extremely testing of everyone’s resolve,” he said. “We strengthened our partnership with the Japanese B-League, secured 24 broadcast media deals, brought on five blue chip sponsors, had 41 media outlets in attendance with nearly half from Japan and another half from around the region. It was great to host our investors who have put their hard-earned capital to work, betting on EASL’s future. I think they’re absolutely pleased with our execution ability and growth trajectory and many are doubling or tripling up on their investments in our current Series C round. We’re quickly getting game-ready for our home-and-away season beginning on Oct. 11.”