Stu Jackson, the new President of Basketball Operations of Elan Bearnais Pau, gave some thoughts to the BasketNews site on the project of the American company Counterpointe Sports Groupe (CSG), which took over the club with the blessing of the town hall. Excerpts:
“One of the key areas is for Rick Pitino to be our consultant for the youth academy to help us develop and implement a player skills development program. He’s the best skill developer on the planet, witnessing the fact that no matter where he is and what players he has, they tend to play at a much higher level than people think. We actually intended to have Iona University for a game or two in France, but that became logistically problematic as the trip was originally planned to Greece. ”
. ”For the basketball team, our main goal is to improve our performance and our ranking from last season. Secondly, from now on, we want to be able to be in the hunt for the French championship. Thirdly, our highest goal is to have a team participating in European competitions: Champions League, EuroCup, EuroLeague, the highest level we can achieve. ”
“I don’t want to talk about specific numbers, but as an example, this year our budget has increased significantly compared to last year. As a result, we could attract more quality players to the club, which we hope will translate into better performances during the season. ”
“We want to use cryptocurrency as a mechanism to not only engage fans, but provide them with the ability to own (the club). Pau fans are very loyal and enthusiastic, but by giving them partial ownership of the squad we believe they will increase their level of emotional and practical investment in the club. After removing regulatory hurdles in the country, we hope to issue tokens by this calendar year or early next year. Up to what percentage, we just don’t know yet ”.
Before investing in Elan Béarnais, the group had “extensive discussions with many people, including teams from EuroLeague, EuroCup and Basketball Champions League to simply learn and listen to how to approach our project with our best assets. ”
“(…) While today we can say that the EuroLeague is closed, nobody knows what tomorrow has in store. We have to start building now. ”
“The United States has dominated basketball globally for many decades, but if you look to the future – and the recent Olympics are proof of it – France is the biggest threat to dominance. from the United States, because of the large number of young, athletic and skilled players in France. ”
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