Hidayet Türkoğlu, President of the Turkish Basketball Federation (TBF), published a message about the new year. Referring to the successful results of the Turkish teams in the past year and conveying his congratulations, Türkoğlu wished everyone a healthy, happy and successful year in 2023.
BF President Hidayet Türkoğlu published a message regarding the New Year. Türkoğlu made the following statements in his message:
“Dear members of our basketball family and dear basketball fans, as we welcome 2023, which is of great significance due to the 100th anniversary of our Republic, we are also excited to be stepping into a new milestone in Turkish basketball. Abdi İpekçi Sports Hall is an important milestone in the ongoing and construction works. We are very happy to bring the Basketball Development Center, where we have made progress, to our country in the 100th anniversary of our Republic. I believe that when this giant facility is completed, it will be a structure that will go down in our sports history. We share the same enthusiasm for the development of Turkish basketball, and we are very happy to put the Basketball Development Center into the service of our nation. Our facility, whose construction will be completed in 2023, is a project that will shape the future of Turkish basketball, as well as bringing more young athletes to basketball. It will make significant contributions to our basketball in order to ensure permanent success at the national and national team level.
Turkey; Along with the Spanish League, it is a country in the top two in Europe in terms of budget, success and interest. The success of our clubs in Europe reveals how high the quality of basketball is in our country. Last season, both men and women, Turkish teams left their mark on the European stage. Congratulations once again to Fenerbahçe Safiport, who played in the final in the Women’s Euroleague, and to Çukurova Basket and Galatasaray, our two teams, who also took part in the Women’s EuroCup final four. Likewise, I congratulate A. Efes, who became the THY Euroleague Champion for the second time in a row in men, Bahçeşehir College, which won the FIBA Europecup, and Frutti Extra Bursaspor, who succeeded in playing in the final in the Eurocup. We wish the success of our clubs in Europe to continue.
Unfortunately, our Men’s National Team had unfortunate results in the Men’s European Championship and World Cup Qualifiers last year. However, the struggle and performance of our nationals won the appreciation of everyone. I think that we will reflect this struggle to the result in the Olympic Games pre-qualification competitions to be held next summer. We have a team of young and high potential players. In addition, in the lower age categories of our national teams, we expect many talented basketball players to wear the A National Team uniform in the coming years. The most concrete example of this was that our Under-18 Men’s National Team won the silver medal this summer in Izmir, ranking second in Europe. Congratulations once again to our young people for their achievements that make us all proud.
Our A Women’s National Team, on the other hand, won the Slovenia and Albania matches they played in the European Championships Qualifiers and closed 2022 as the undefeated group leader. Our U16 and U20 girls’ national teams were promoted to the European Championship A league again, after a good fight and successful performances. As in men’s, we look to the future with more hope and confidence in women’s basketball.
It has always been one of our primary goals that basketball enters every home and that more spectators meet with basketball. For this purpose, we have significantly increased the number of matches broadcast live on TV in all our leagues over the years. At the same time, we ensured that matches not broadcast on TV in all our leagues reach basketball fans via the TBF YouTube channel. By 2022, we have also made an important technological breakthrough to improve the quality of our digital broadcasts. We installed artificial intelligence automation camera systems in 25 halls in 15 different cities in Turkey. These cameras work by detecting the ball and crowd with artificial intelligence technology and can shoot in 4K quality. In this way, we record all our matches in our halls without any technical personnel and deliver them to all over the world with live broadcasts. We believe that this digital transformation project, which has not even been used in the NBA yet, will add great value to Turkish basketball.
Our number of sponsors in 2022 continued to increase, as if proving how much the image and financial potential of Turkish basketball had increased. Last year alone, we signed 23 sponsorship deals. Our Turkish Insurance Basketball Super League and ING Women’s Basketball Super League continued to increase their brand values with their new name sponsors. I would like to thank once again all our stakeholders who trust Turkish basketball and prefer to reach wider audiences with basketball.
Dear members of our basketball family and dear basketball fans, we hope that the new year will bring blessings for our country and nation, and wish all basketball fans a healthy, happy and successful year; I would also like to state that we will continue our efforts to disseminate sports culture and increase sports achievements in our country. With these thoughts, I congratulate your new year and wish everyone a year full of sports and health.
