Asen Hristov: We provide basketball emotion in the Balkans

Asen Hristov, chairman of Eurohold, main sponsor of the Balkan League:
 
"I want to thank everyone - the journalists for the coverage and my team here for the organization. I think this first edition of the Eurohold Balkan League was really very successful. I had never seen so many games finishing by a one-point margin, as well as so many surprises in one competition - for example the team that was considered the favourite, Swisslion Takovo, lost to Mega HL in the quarterfinals. As the main sponsor we are quite satisfied with the advertising product - we are much more popular now in several countries.
 
I hope everything will continue like that in the years to come and I will be the honorable guest of the 100th edition. For this one we have guests from the Euroleague, from FIBA Europe. We also have some high officials from the Bulgarian government who will give out the prises after the final. This Final Four has brought financial benefits to the municipality of Samokov and that is exactly our idea - for sports to help the economy. I am confident the Eurohold Balkan League will grow. But want try to limit ourselves to the Balkan region because there is specific emotion here in the Balkans which brings much more energy to each game. And emotion is what we want to provide to people - that`s our social function. It`s true there`s globalization in the world but not so much in sports where local competitions like this are much better and easier for sponsors to organize. Of course the Balkan League is now very popular and many countries want to join even with two teams from each and even CEZ Nymburk from the Czech Republic asked if they could participate. But we know that Europe is not part of the Balkans although the Balkans are part of Europe.
 
But with Israel is different because people in that country are close to the Balkan mentality and there are many ties between them and the Balkans. That`s why the participation of an Israeli team next year is almost certain. We`ll also have at least two teams from each of the founding countries as well as teams from new countries: besides Israel, those are Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina and probably Greece and Turkey. About the teams from the latter two there are some technical issues to solve. We`ve now decided to have 12 teams in the competition for the 2009-10 season in the two groups of six. The organizers will cover all expences of the teams and this budget for the next year is already provided from us.
 
The exacy teams to take part will be known by the 31th of May at the latest. The choice of clubs from each country will depend on the local federation. Our main conditions will be: financial stability and number of spectators. For us the spectators are much more important than how strong the team is because we are selling a product.
 
There are also some new ideas which we will  think of in the future, like the champion of the Eurohold Balkan League to play in some kind of a tournament against the winners of other regional leagues. As sponsors we will try and find a way for our champion to take part at some bigger level of competition. Our aim is to create good tradition and high value."