New President for International Basketball Federation

(ATR) Hamane Niang of Mali will become FIBA president at the federation’s congress next month.

Around the Rings is told that the former African basketball president is the only candidate for the position. FIBA operates a rotation system for the presidency, meaning an African president will serve from 2019-2023.

The ex-Mali sports minister will replace outgoing FIBA president Horacio Muratore, who was elected to the post in 2014, at the FIBA World Congress in Beijing, running from August 29-31.

Niang was head of FIBA Africa from 2014 to 2019 and a member of the international federation’s Board during the same period.

The 67-year-old, who has worked at the Mali Bank of Development and in the government’s finance ministry, was president of the Mali Basketball federation from 1999 to 2007 before his appointment as sports and culture minister from 2007 to 2011. Prior to his election as Africa’s basketball chief, he was president of the FIBA Africa Council for Finances from 2001 to 2014.

FIBA ExCo Decisions

Basketball’s ruling body received updates on preparations for the World Cup in Beijing next month and on Tokyo Olympic qualification.

FIBA's flagship event, featuring a record 32 national teams, will be played in eight Chinese cities from Aug. 31 to Sept. 15.

An evaluation report on the FIBA Basketball World Cup qualifiers was presented to the ExCo following research by an independent sports consultancy.

It confirmed the success of the first ever qualifiers measured by attendance, media coverage and interest from fans around the globe.

The research shows that the 420 games attracted 1.7 million fans to 157 arenas around the world, resulting in 157 sold-out games and an average arena occupancy of 68 percent.

The format attracted big crowds on all continents, including 23,500 watching the Philippines play Australia in Manila and 12,167 in Helsinki for the clash between Finland and France.

FIBA said that live television coverage in more than 150 markets was supplemented by a social media reach of 2.2 billion, with 591 million impressions and 7.5 million engagements across all platforms, as well as a total of 429 million video views.

Following requests by national federations from Americas and Europe, the ExCo has reviewed the calendar for the Continental Cups 2021 qualifiers.

At its final meeting of the 2014-2019 cycle last Friday, the ExCo decided to optimize the Continental Cups 2021 qualifiers, by having all teams play two official games during each window of the qualifiers.

It means the qualifier game from the Nov. 2019 window will be rescheduled so that the qualifiers will start next February and continue in November 2020 and February 2021, with two games played by each team in every window.

"This new schedule will further reduce the workload of players, optimize the logistics and costs for national federations, and allow more space for the national leagues in an exceptionally condensed season before the Olympic Games," FIBA said in a statement.

Olympic Qualifiers

FIBA’s leaders decided that the World Cup 2019 will qualify seven teams for Tokyo 2020. The 16 next best classified teams at the World Cup will get the chance of qualifying through the FIBA Olympic qualifying tournaments.

The ExCo has confirmed the sporting criteria for the selection of the two additional teams per region to complete the lineup of 24 teams for the FIBA Olympic qualifiers.

Reported by Mark Bisson

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