Nebojsa Covic, president of Red Star, talked for the website of Red Star fans. He talked about ABA League, Euroleague, money, budgets.

Our main goal is ABA league. But, to be honest, I’m not sure what will be the final outcome regarding the selection of team that will be in Euroleague, since we’ve been brought down to wild card status… If we even need ABA league in a first place. When I see that Jordi Bertomeu is suggesting, and what is the concept of further development of Euroleague and EuroCup, it could happen that ABA league absolutely lose its sense. Serbia doesn’t need that kind of ABA league, since it’s the only country that could create strong league. Of course, we shouldn’t be captives of Euroleague and EuroCup. Serbian clubs gave the most for development of ABA league. ABA league is meaningful only if it is connected with Euroleague and EuroCup. If not, why should we play?

– Does Red Star have a chance to get A license?

That chance was huge before the F4 in Belgrade, which I’m very proud of because Red Star, with a help of then Prime Minister Vucic, brought that F4 to Belgrade. I don’t see that chances now, but I believe that we in Serbia should sit down and talk, and fight for Belgrade to be a city on a Euroleague map. That needs to be done as soon as possible, because many in region live on Red Star – Partizan fight… Belgrade is very interesting and important basketball city, but it is not the only one in region that can play in Euroleague. Maybe it is more interesting to play it in Ljubljana or Zagreb, where audience is brought down to the theater level, and we all see everywhere stairs in those arenas. No one has what Partizan and Red Star have.

– What do you think of a closed Euroleague?

Everyone is trying to form the best possible teams. Euroleague is going toward an 18 teams league, where 16 would have license, and two from EuroCup. What is more and more obvious is that ECA is less and less interested in domestic leagues. But now, if the budgets are rising, there should be a bigger budget of Euroleague. Because the clubs should start earning. Now, we can’t have any income! One win in football Champions League is 2,7 million euro, and we have 37 thousand euro for one win. In football, clubs could cover a lot of expenses if they have success in Champion League or Europa League. In basketball it’s not like that. It is obvious that they are trying to make the NBA system here, but I’m not sure that it is possible. Because the Euroleague budget now is around 65 million dollars, and with the IMG there should be 95 million dollars. But when you look the whole picture, you should calculate all the clubs budgets that will give around 500 million for a season. If we look at UEFA, I think there is a budget of 7 billion euro. So we need to make the competition profitable.

– Is this concept good? To close the league and kill the sport ambitions to rest of the Europe? How could that be interesting after certain period, with no “fresh blood”…?

In my opinion, concept is not good, but we are to small to fight with that. Or maybe I’m to old and like those previous concepts. Sport changed a lot. Everyone looks at profit, there are no emotions or sentimentality. And big fish eat small fish. For us it is most important that we should know that basketball is our sport number one. We look at sport differently than others. We like to compete. Look at the NBA, they are all laughing weather they won or lost a game.

– What are your goals in Euroleague? Number of wins?

When we calculated, we talked about 12-15 wins. If we know that for the win we get 37 thousand euro, there it is, the amount that we would like to get from Euroleague. Plus, 200 thousand euro for TV rights from Euroleague. We don’t want to play Euroleague just to earn money, we want show in Belgrade, to have stability… You have a game in Friday, than in Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday and again in Sunday. Five games with transfers. We sold 4023 season tickets. And we sold 1800 packages for Euroleague only. So our income for this season from tickets sold is 1,102,799 euro! And regarding Government help, especially president Vucic’s… Our average budget was 6,5 million euro for a season since I’m in the club. And around 25% comes from the Government.