By; MOHAMMED ABDULLAHI, Dakar
Basketball Africa League (BAL), premier African clubs basketball competition will possibly be hosted in Lagos, Nigeria in the nearest future according to BAL President, Amadou Gallo Fall during the opening press conference of the BAL’s 4th season Sahara Conference in Dakar, Senegal.
While answering questions from journalists, Amadou noted Lagos as an important market for BAL having been one of the initial six host cities designated for the inaugural BAL in 2020 before Covid-19 truncated the plans.
He also seized the opportunity to congratulate Nigeria and the project team behind the groundbreaking 12,000 capacity Lagos Arena which is scheduled to be completed in December 2025.
BAL 4th season Sahara Conference begins on Saturday, 4th to Sunday 12th May 2024 at the Dakar Arena with 4 teams including Nigeria’s reigning champions, Rivers Hoopers, AS Douanes from the host city, Dakar, US Monastir, Tunisian club that won the second edition of BAL and APR club Rwanda.
In the past three editions of the BAL, Rivers Hoopers and Kwara Falcons represented Nigeria in the 2021 and 2023 regional qualifier conferences respectively but failed to qualify to the BAL playoff finals, all in Kigali, Rwanda. Hopefully, Rivers Hoopers will break that jinx this year.
The 2024 BAL season is reaching fans in 214 countries and territories in 17 languages through free-to-air and paid TV broadcast partnerships with the African Union of Broadcasting, American Forces Network (AFN), Canal+, NBA TV, Tencent Video, TSN, TV5 Monde, Visionary TV and Voice of America (VOA), and livestreaming on the NBA App, NBA.com, BAL.NBA.com and the BAL’s YouTube channel.
