Last week, a remote meeting of the FIBA Central Board took place to evaluate the successfulness of the Continental Cup qualifiers, review the official FIBA Championships 2021-2023, 3×3 competitions, Olympics, U15 skills challenge, update FIBA strategic priorities, emphasise the importance of women’s basketball and renew FIBA internal regulations.
The FIBA Central Board has adopted new regulations to protect underage basketball players, national federations, clubs and academies and schools that educate and train highly skilled players.
„We communicate with the basketball community, schools and clubs, we know the problems encountered in training young basketball players. We share our experience with federations of other countries, therefore the vulnerability of youth basketball players, schools, clubs and coaches in the actions of basketball agents has been repeatedly discussed in the meetings of FIBA Legal and FIBA Europe Youth Commissions. The issues related to compensation for prepared players were also emphasized during the meetings, so it is gratifying that all this is taking shape. The changes will strengthen the opportunities of basketball federations to represent the interests of their schools, clubs, coaches and players even more effectively”, – said Justas Kalinauskas, a member of FIBA Law and Youth Commissions and LKF Director.
FIBA will now have stronger tools to control and strengthen the compensation mechanism for the international transfers of young players in order to protect the compensation rights of clubs, schools and coaches that train high-skilled players. Also, the link between the young players and the national federations that have contributed to the development of their skill will be even stronger from now on. Minor basketball players who have gone abroad to play basketball will be prohibited from representing that national team under the age of 23.
A new regulation on the activities of basketball agents was also approved during the FIBA Central Board meeting. From now on, the activities of basketball agents will be even more clearly regulated, the provisions on potential conflicts of interest will be updated, which basically define the relations between players, underage players, clubs and agents.
„FIBA is constantly improving its internal regulations, therefore we are glad that the proposals of the FIBA Legal Commission regarding the activities of basketball agents have been approved by the Central Board. The changes are intended to further protect the interests of the players themselves”, – said Justas Kalinauskas, Director of LKF.
The updated FIBA Basketball Agents Regulation will take effect on January 1, 2022.
Due to the success of the first edition of the FIBA U17 Skills Challenges 2020, the Central Board received a report on the preparations for the upcoming FIBA U15 Skills Challenges 2021. The format for the FIBA U15 Skills Challenges will consist of 32 participating teams per gender, with qualification open to all 213 National Federation members through Continental Qualifiers. These Qualifiers will take place during late April and early May, with the FIBA U15 Skills Challenge 2021 set to take place in October.
A comprehensive report on the FIBA Continental Cup qualifiers was presented at the FIBA Central Board meeting. The national team matches took place on all 5 continents, in 14 different cities, despite a global pandemic. The successful qualifiers stages organised by FIBA and the national federations emphasised the ability of FIBA and the federations to organise large-scale events safely, even during such difficult times.
During the meeting, reports were presented on the preparation process for the FIBA Olympic qualifiers, which will start on June 29th in Canada, Croatia, Serbia and Lithuania. An update on the preparations for the Olympic basketball tournament, which will take place in Tokyo this July, was also presented. During the meeting updates on the 2021 and 2022 FIBA Continental Cups and the FIBA U19 World Basketball Championships to be held this summer in Latvia (boys) and Hungary (girls) were discussed. During the meeting, the FIBA Medical Commission presented the forthcoming updates to the COVID-19 security protocol for FIBA tournaments and, in cooperation with the NBA and WHO, emphasized the importance of vaccines for athletes.
