FIBA Europe President Demirel declares EuroBasket 2015 a major success

LILLE (EuroBasket 2015) - FIBA Europe President Turgay Demirel and FIBA Executive Director Europe Kamil Novak, along with French Basketball Federation (FFBB) President and FIBA Central Board member Jean-Pierre Siutat were the main speakers at the EuroBasket 2015 wrap-up press conference in Lille, France on Sunday.

Mr Demirel told the media gathered in the French city for the Final Phase of the tournament that EuroBasket 2015 has been an outstanding success in all aspects, particularly the four-country format.

"This new format has been an amazing success for European basketball. It worked very well despite difficulties like the shortage of preparation time and co-ordination between four different countries.

"We are very proud that this format worked so well for the benefit of European and world basketball. I would like to thank the national federations of these four countries for a great job.

"It has been an unforgettable event especially because of the Final Phase and the record attendance in this amazing venue in Lille.

"We had 26,922 spectators watching the Semi-Final at this arena, that is a big achievement for European basketball and we are very proud of this. Jean-Pierre Siutat deserves praise for this because it was his vision and he made it happen within less than 12 months.

"There was a record of media attendance, the accredited media were 1,488 and TV ratings show that there was a great increase from 2013 in France, Germany, Greece, Spain, Lithuania. More than 620,000 spectator have cheered on their teams to date, when the last tournament in Slovenia had only 328,000 spectators, so ticket sales almost doubled.

Mr Novak also made reference to the achievement of organising the tournament in a slight timeframe.

"I want to thank all people involved in this championship and especially all the volunteers who made this big tournament happen.

"The biggest challenge has been that the hosts had roughly 11 months to organise everything and I doubt there has ever been a similar event with such a short preparation period. We are talking about four LOCs, four countries, four cultures, so it has been a wonderful challenge also in terms of co-ordination.

"This has been a historical step for European basketball and we are already looking forward to EuroBasket 2017."

Go to eurobasket2015.org for complete coverage of EuroBasket 2015.

FIBA