A scene from the 2019 Terry Pick 12 tournament in which Seoul SK participated in professional basketball. EASL provided
KBL will participate in the East Asia Super League (EASL).
EASL is the first basketball club competition league in East Asia, launched through a 10-year agreement with the International Basketball Federation (FIBA) and FIBA Asia.
KBL’s participation in the league was confirmed according to the agreement signed with EASL.
EASL will be held in a home-and-away format from October 2022. The winning team in the first year will receive a cash prize of 1 million US dollars (about 1.1 billion won).
For reference, the prize money for winning the KBL regular league and the championship game is 100 million won each.
Eight teams will participate in the first season of EASL. Each team will play on a 12-man roster, including two foreign players and one Asian quarter player.
The winners and runners-up teams from the previous year’s KBL, Japan B.League, and Philippine PBA will participate, and the newly established Bay Area Chunyu Phoenixes (Hong Kong) and the Taiwan P.League+ winning team will participate on behalf of Greater China.
In Korea, the two teams that advance to the 2021-2022 season professional basketball championship will step on the EASL stage for the first time in history.
The group qualifiers will be conducted in a round robin format with 8 teams divided into two groups of 4 teams each.
A total of 24 matches will be played from October 2022 to February 2023, with each team playing 6 matches at home and away.
Group qualifiers are held for two matches every Wednesday night, and the top two teams in each group advance to the quarterfinals ‘Final Four’ to be held in March 2023, where the semi-finals and finals will be played in a single draw.
KBL President Kim Hee-ok said, “I am very happy to continue to cooperate with the East Asian Super League. will be,” he said.
EASL successfully held four international invitational tournaments in Macau from 2017 to 2019, boosting the momentum to welcome the invitation season in the home and away format. The 2019 Terry Pick 12 competition recorded a total of 117 million viewers.
Matt Bayer, CEO of EASL, said, “EASL is the hub of East Asian basketball and it is an honor to be able to compete with the best club teams in East Asia at the highest level.”
“Our mission is to become the best basketball league in East Asia and to become one of the top three basketball leagues in the world in terms of fan base and commercial revenue by 2025,” he added.
Andreas Jacques, Secretary General of the International Basketball Federation (FIBA) said, “In line with FIBA’s strategic goal of globalization for the formation of international competitions, the FIBA Executive Committee has supported the establishment of the East Asian Super League.”
