The BAL Season 4’s teams are in 🌍🏀.

If you’ve watched the FIBA East Division’s Road to BAL on Youtube, you know that some of these teams fought hard to qualify ! The qualification tournament amassed over 200K views despite some notable glitches in sound and image 📺. That's a 60% more in viewership than the West Division !

After a lot of suspense, the results are in and here's the full roster for the fourth season of the Basketball Africa League :🇸🇳's AS Douanes, 🇪🇬's Al-Ahly (the current champs), 🇹🇳's US Monastir, 🇱🇾's Al-Ahly Benghazi, 🇷🇼's APR BBC, 🇧🇮's Dynamo BBC, 🇲🇦's FUS Rabat, 🇺🇬's City Oilers, 🇳🇬's Rivers Hoopers, 🇦🇴's Petro de Luanda, 🇨🇫's Bangui Sporting Club and 🇿🇦's Cape Town Tigers (one of Silverbacks Holdings's portfolio companies).

This will be the first time that clubs from 🇱🇾 Libya, 🇧🇮 Burundi and 🇨🇫 Central African Republic play in the BAL. This will also be the first time for APR and FUS Rabat respectively of Rwanda and Morocco, which shows that the leagues in both countries are growing more competitive ! ⛹🏾

🔍 What I also find interesting is how the make of this upcoming’s BAL is representative of the state of basketball on the continent.

Out of the 12 teams :
📌 5 are full-fledged basketball clubs not affiliated to a larger sporting association (including Silverbacks Holdings’ Cape Town Tigers)
📌 2 teams belong to army or customs agencies and 2 are directly funded by national oil companies
📌 4 teams are affiliated to larger sporting association

What does this tell us about basketball in Africa ?

💥 It’s growing...but the dominant model remains the one where the basketball team is part of a larger sports association where football generates most of the revenue (on this, read Stephen ojo, ACIArb (UK)'s exposé on Al-Ahly).

🏆 The past three champions of the BAL have come from this category (and coincidentally North Africa). Clubs like the Tigers (and now Bangui Sporting Club or Dynamo BBC) are paving the way for a new privately-funded model to emerge ! Beyond private investors, what's key for these clubs is to identify private companies as sponsors and engage with their fanbase to monetise their brand 🎫.

I’m excited to see how far these teams will go and if at all we can finally get a Sub-Saharan team lift the trophy. See you in March for the first Kalahari conference hosted by the Cape Town Tigers in 🇿🇦.