TAIWAN (SBL) - The Super Basketball League (SBL) will have a fourth season, according to the provisional agreement of a meeting between CTBA (Chinese Taipei Basketball Association) and the SBL teams which planned to established a league of their own.
Once again, teams which wanted to break away from the CTBA wavered after meeting CTBA President Wang Jen-da and decided to stay in the SBL.
However, they still called for the CTBA to improve marketing, ticketing, officiating and game administration.
A five-team coalition of ETSN, Taiwan Beer, Bank of Taiwan, Videoland and YMY had been privately working on a plan to establish a new league in the past two months.
Not surprisingly, Dacin Tigers, which is owned by Wang Jen-da, had been excluded by the coalition.
Yulon Dinos had said it wanted to be neutral and go with the better proposal.
Team representatives agreed in the meeting Wednesday that:
1) With the success of the SBL so far, it's better to unite than devide and all teams will stay in the SBL.
2) The SBL Committee, which conprised of nine members from seven SBL teams, CTBA and NCPFS (National Council on Physical Fitness and Sports), is the highest-governing body of the league. And the committee authorizes CTBA to operate the SBL.
3) If SBL teams still favor the committee's independence from the CTBA, the issue will be on the committee agenda next week. No matter what happens, CTBA will still be in charge of the ticketing and game administration.
Taiwanese basketball clubs had tried several times to break away from the control of CTBA ever since the closure of CBA (Chinese Basketball Alliance), Taiwan's first pro league that shut down in 1999.
Chris Wang