The History of the African Basketball League

The Basketball Africa League (BAL) is known to many basketball fans and bettors, especially, of course, in Africa.

If you’re a fan, you’ll want to know more about the BAL teams, and if you’re a basketball bettor, you need to learn about them to place better bets.

This article will give you everything you need to know about the basketball league, its clubs, their history and achievements, and many other interesting facts. Then, together with the best basketball predictions for 1×2 and many other types of bets, you’ll have all you need to start betting on the Basketball Africa League.

What Is the Basketball Africa League?

The African Basketball League, or the Basketball Africa League as it’s officially known, is the leading men’s basketball league in Africa. This makes it the most significant basketball tournament for the whole continent.

The BAL competition contains 12 teams, and each qualifies for the BAL via their own domestic competitions and the qualification process we’ll cover later in the piece. This makes it very comparable to the Champions League.

The organizing bodies of the league are the International Basketball Federation (FIBA) and the American NBA.

The tournament began in October 2019, when the first qualification matches began, while the first BAL began in May 2021. Only two of these seasons have been completed by now, in 2021 and 2022, but many more are expected to come.

The competition is new as it has replaced the FIBA Africa Basketball League, which lasted from 1971 to 2019 with as many as 32 seasons.

The History of the Basketball Africa League

The story of BAL began on 16 February 2019 when the NBA and FIBA declared a new continent-wide pro basketball league for Africa. Adam Silver, then and current NBA commissioner, said that the BAL would feature 12 teams after the first qualifications had concluded. He also implied that the retired US President Barack Obama would have a role in the tournament. Obama later became a strategic partner of NBA Africa.

In May 2019, it was reported that the president of the BAL would be Amadou Gallo Fall, the former NBA Vice President for international affairs. He also helped the NBA open up offices in South Africa, and he helped open up a basketball academy in his native country of Senegal.

Later in September, the basketball courts and the cities for the initial season were decided. Kigali Arena in the Rwandan city of Kigali became the location for the initial Final Four.

Only a month later, in October 2019, the first qualifications started, and as many as 31 teams competed. Bettors had a field time because 89 games were played for over two months, until 21 December 2019.

As expected, many international basketball predictions were made during the qualifications and later for the inaugural season, but then 2020 brought the coronavirus pandemic, so the season was postponed. Later, in 2021, the governing bodies decided that the first BAL tournament would begin in the middle of May 2021.