Alisports and the Federation of University Sports of China jointly announced the start of their 7-year collaboration in the running of the Chinese University Basketball Association (CUBA), on October 10 in the city of Xi’an, Shaanxi Province. They also announced at the same time several changes and reforms they have made to the CUBA league. 

These moves to reform the top Chinese university basketball league are considered valuable and are what is needed by the league. 

CUBA competitions are divided into three tiers and the women’s league. These divisions are based on the original system. These tiers cover 1200 universities and colleges in China and there is no relegation or promotion between the three tiers. 

Most importantly, they are going to adopt the home and away competition systems for some of the CUBA first tier competitions. CUBA used to adopt neutral venues for competitions and it was considered as one of the factors that hindered the league from having a bigger influence. The adoption of the home and away match systems has been called for by people as they think it can help enhance fan loyalty and passion for their home teams and increase the number of games. 

From the upcoming 2018-2019 season which will tip off on November 7, CUBA will adopt home and away fixtures for most of the basic level matches in the first tier of the CUBA league which covers more than 100 universities across China, except for Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia and provinces where transportation or other conditions are not mature enough to play home and away matches. 

After these basic level matches, the CUBA first tier competitions will play between-conferences matches, then the last 32, the last 8 (home and away) and the final four. The duration of the entire season will be longer as a result of these reforms in the competition system. 

Apart from the competition system, Alisports states they are going to work with Shanghai’s Great Sports, Guangzhou TV station and other TV and video organizations to produce and broadcast more CUBA matches (over 300 matches in total) with important matchups and match highlights being specially packaged. 

Alisports is also said to be going to integrate its sports related online services such as exercise banks with the CUBA. 

Alisports won the bid to operate CUBA this summer for CNY1bn. 

Reference: People.com.cn 

Proofread by Raymond Fitzpatrick