Macau will stage the Greater Bay Area (GBA) 3×3 Basketball Tour finals next month, the Sports Bureau (ID) and StarMac Entertainment and Production Limited announced yesterday in a joint press conference at the ID headquarters.
The event, which follows previous editions of the GBA 3×3 Basketball tournament, will be staged at the Ruins of Saint Paul’s between Oct. 25 and 29, when the qualified teams from the GBA Circuit will meet to reach the final stage that will unveil this year’s champion.
As in previous editions the event, co-organized by StarMac, the Macau-China Basketball Association and the ID, will have as title-sponsor the gaming concessionaire Wynn Resorts (Macau), S.A. that, according to the president of ID, Pun Weng Kun, in his opening speech, “will be partially bearing the costs of the event.”
The tournament circuit, which includes events in four cities in the GBA, is scheduled for the first week of October with local qualification events in Guangzhou and Shenzhen.
In the second week (Oct. 14-15), the third event will be in Hengqin, with Macau’s qualifiers scheduled for Oct. 23 and 24.
The finals, which will take place from Oct. 25 to 29, will award a prize pool of around 400,000 patacas.
The ID president said that the idea to host this event, which is the second 3×3 basketball event of the year, comes after the success of previous editions and “taking into account the daily more frequent sports interchange events between the GBA cities,” as well as, “the good reception that these events have had in the previous two editions.”
The CEO of StarMac, Lou Kit Long, noted that the high momentum of the 3×3 Basketball, which appeared in the Olympic Games for the first time in 2021, has brought the sport additional public “attention.”
Lou said the competition will feature both male and female sections in the finals. He added that the integration between the sports and Macau’s cultural and heritage elements has been benefiting Macau on its path to becoming a 3×3 Basketball mecca.
