Title-defending teams will enjoy no privileges in the 3×3 basketball tournament to be held from June to October, Lou Kit Long, CEO of Starmac Entertainment Production Ltd., co-organizing agency of the event, said yesterday.
A press conference was held yesterday to announce details of the event. Lou spoke on the sidelines of the conference.
Asked by the Times whether the tournament will offer privileges to title defenders, the co-organizer confirmed that they would also need to start along with other competitors. He added that the champions in last year’s event were actually Asian Games title-holders.
It is not uncommon in sporting events that title defenders enjoy certain privileges. For example, winners of the football Champions League in Europe, defending champions automatically qualify for the competition in the following season.
Nonetheless, even without any privileges, Lou believes that the tournament will be attractive to basketball players, “considering the scale of our awards and prizes,” Lou said.
He is confident that even players from across the country will be attracted to play in the competition, which is a national event.
Officially known as the Wynn Cup – 3×3 Greater Bay Area Tour, the finals of the basketball tournament will be held in Macau between October 10 and 16.
This is the second edition of the competition held last year under the same name, which was also sponsored by Wynn Macau S.A.
In fact, resort operators were “encouraged” to join with the government to title sponsor sporting events so as to promote the “Tourism+Sports” concept coined by Macao Government Tourism Office.
The concept aims at promoting tourism using various events and attractions. As a matter of fact, it can be understood as providing a multifaceted tourism offering, such as conference tourism in Hong Kong, art tourism in Paris, fashion tourism in New York and natural tourism in Australia.
The main difference between this year’s tournament and last year’s is that the scale of this year’s event has been expanded to include matches in each of the nine major cities within the Greater Bay Area (GBA), before the tournament finals are held in Macau.
Beginning in June, the 10-station tournament will see its eight champion teams from each station joining together to compete for the championship and awards in Macau. Therefore, a total of 80 teams will be competing in Macau for the tournament championship.
Elaborating on the regulations, Lou pointed out that station qualifiers will also be held in Macau to determine the station champions, who will be competing in the finals on behalf of Macau.
The format of the competition is relatively complex, being separated into GBA, Open and Female Categories. The eight winners in the GBA category, which will be determined by matches held in the ten GBA cities, will compete for the championship in Macau.
Each team competing in the GBA category must see at least a GBA resident in order to qualify. Teams in the other two categories do not have any similar restriction.
In contrast, the Open Category will have a quota of 96 teams, and the Female category a quota of 48 teams.
