League woos Chinese ‘but will succeed regardless’
CEO Kerins would like mainland teams on board amid planned expansion
Two months after predicting basketball’s East Asia Super League could break even during the 2026-27 season, the chief of the competition has pushed the timeline forward by a season.
Henry Kerins, the league’s co-founder and CEO, also said officials were taking their time over discussions with the Chinese Basketball Association (CBA) but that a planned expansion from eight to 16 teams would happen in the 2025-26 season.
This would be regardless of the participation of any teams from the mainland.
“I think we’ll double our [broadcast] revenues, and we’ve brought down a huge amount of our operating costs, by about 27.5 per cent,” Kerins said of the coming season. “I think we’re going to break even at the end of next season.”
The league would soon announce the host venue and sponsors of its play-offs, the Final Four, with the location set to be a “well-known city in our ecosystem”, he said.
There are two teams each from
Taiwan, South Korea, Japan and the Philippines for the second season, while the competition continues to engage with the CBA to get mainland teams on board eventually. The league’s deal with global governing body Fiba allows time to do so.
“The CBA is a huge league with a lot of logistics and scheduling related to it, so we’re taking our time with that,” Kerins said. “Our prime focus is really on our existing markets.
“We have incredible markets now, so CBA is not imperative, but of course we want to have them. I want to see the best Chinese teams playing the best Japanese and Korean teams. I think every fan does. It’s a 10-plus-five-year agreement, so we have a 15-year view on where we want to be and we don’t have time issues. We have exclusivity in Mongolia and China from Fiba.”
Wide interest would allow expansion to 16 teams to happen by the 2025-26 season even if the Chinese had yet to commit by then, he said.
“Everyone we’ve partnered with wants this to grow,” Kerins said. “It benefits their leagues, clubs and national teams, it benefits that entire ecosystem. We had representatives from a lot of leagues at the Final Four [in March] asking to join us.
“There are other markets I want to join us, so the problem is not the options but how we find competitive basketball that’s really the best of the best.”
Kerins did not divulge specific leagues but suggested Southeast Asia was a priority. “It is an extremely young and exciting market, and those leagues are investing,” he said.
Set to tip off on October 2, the next EASL season has Busan KCC Egis and Suwon KT Sonicboom confirmed from the Korean Basketball League. They will be joined by the champions and runners-up of the Taiwanese P. League+, Japan’s B League and from the Philippine Basketball Association season.