The Leicester Riders will look to take their next step into European Basketball with their application for the 22'/23' Basketball Champions League Season.
The BCL is run by FIBA and is home to a lot of very high level competition. Amongst the rest of European Club competition, excluding domestic leagues, many may regard the BCL as the third-tier of European Basketball behind that of the EuroCup which the London Lions will be competing in next season and of course, the EuroLeague.
The format of the BCL is slightly more complex than that of the EuroCup. It begins with the Qualifying Rounds where 24 teams will compete in 4 qualification rounds. Those who don't qualify will play in the FIBA Europe Cup. Upon qualification, teams will then be entered into the regular season where there will be 32 teams split into 8 groups of 4. Each team will play each other twice and the top team from each group will automatically advance to the Round of 16, whilst the 2nd and 3rd place seeds will compete for the final R16 spots in a Play-In fixture.
The Round of 16 is then played in a similar round-robin structure to the Regular Season. 16 teams will be split into 4 groups of 4, with only the top teams advancing to the Quarter Final stages, which is a best of 3 series. The 4 winners of the best of 3 series will advance to the Final Four where the champion will then be crowned.
This won't be the first time the Riders have looked to compete in European basketball since being established in 1967. They looked to do the same in the 2018-2019 season, but failed to win a game during the qualification rounds.
Following a domestic season which saw them win the treble, hopefully this year will see a lot more success for the Riders in Europe. If their application is successful, this will be the first time that two British Basketball clubs have simultaneously competed in Europe since 2001/2002.