The president of the Lega Basket Serie A Umberto Gandini talked about the challenge he is waiting for in Italian basketball also close to the Frecciarossa Final Eight in Turin. His words were released to GQ Italia.
This is the incipit of the interview, with the full version available for consultation Who
“We want to put basketball back on center stage and make it as influential a sport as it was in the past.” According to Umberto Gandini, president of the Lega Basket Serie A since 2020, it is no longer time to wait: basketball, in Italy, must hurry to return to being a sport on everyone’s lips. Let’s face it: the ball in wedges still makes people fall in love in our latitudes, as evidenced by the excellent public results on the occasion of the great feats of the national team (and there have been some in recent months), but the imperative now is to convey that scattered and fragmented interest in something lasting, stable. This is Gandini’s mission.
On the eve of the Italian Cup Final Eight, what Gandini defines as the “flagship of the League”, the president of LBA takes the opportunity to tell what is in the future plans of Italian basketball. “The statistical surveys tell us that the population interested in basketball has grown by 7.7 percent,” he observes. «It is an important fact, considering that interest in football, for example, has grown by four percent. Our task now is to convert these interested parties into enthusiasts and users of the product. It is a path that we must take together with the sixteen clubs».
