The FIBA Europe Cup 2022-23 is going strong, with the Finals approaching on April 19. Thirty-two basketball teams have been facing each other since September last year. Basketball is primarily watched by TV consumers, but thousands of viewers also tune in to the sport’s live streams on YouTube and Twitch. Although we can’t know the winner of this season yet, we certainly know which FIBA events dominated the stream rankings in the 2021-22 season.
The International Basketball Federation (FIBA) has organized numerous events throughout 2021 and 2022. They mainly included 3x3 tournaments from across the globe, such as the FIBA 3x3 AmeriCup and the FIBA 3x3 World Tour Hong Kong. These events varied significantly in terms of stream viewership. For example, the 3x3 Community Basketball Championship Finals reached only 405 Peak Viewers, whereas the FIBA 3x3 World Tour Debrecen Masters 2021 peaked at 2,900 viewers. This shows the variety of event types offered by FIBA, featuring smaller community events as well as national circuits.
However, the FIBA 3x3 World Tour Debrecen Masters 2021 wasn’t the most-watched event by far. The top 3 FIBA events of 2021-22 have reached even bigger audiences.
The most popular FIBA event of the previous season, by a considerable margin, is the FIBA 3x3 Streamers Cup 2022, organized in collaboration with Spanish streaming star Ibai. The former G2 Esports content creator and co-owner of esports team KOI successfully leveraged his 12.5 million Twitch followers to bring about the most influential streamed FIBA event of the season. It showed famous Spanish content creators and former basketball players, including Ari Geli and Atiga. Moreover, the final match was a face-off between esports organizations KOI and Team Heretics. The latter emerged as the winner of the tournament. Ibai regularly streams sports content in addition to his gaming and chatting streams. At 487,000 Hours Watched, the FIBA Streamers Cup was another exceptionally entertaining spectacle for his community.
In second place sits the FIBA U16 Americas Championship 2021 broadcast on YouTube and Facebook. Eight teams played for the championship title and a chance to qualify for the FIBA U17 Basketball World Cup 2022. Unfortunately, the hosting country, Mexico, didn’t qualify, as their journey ended with a sixth-place finish in the Quarterfinals. USA, Argentina, and Canada took place one, two, and three, respectively. With over 14,000 Peak Viewers, the event received significant recognition among basketball fans.
The FIBA U16 Women’s Americas Championship 2021 wasn’t quite as popular as its men’s iteration. However, it still reached a decently-sized audience. 4,800 Peak Viewers watched eight women’s teams play on the basketball court for a total of 57,000 hours. Like the U16 Americas Championship, the top four teams qualified for the FIBA U17 Women’s Basketball World Cup 2022. Those teams were Argentina, Mexico, Canada, and the USA. Once again, the USA won the trophy.
By Peak Viewers, the FIBA 3x3 AmeriCup 2022 is in third place, a slightly smaller event with strong performances from USA and Puerto Rico. The final spot in terms of PV takes the FIBA 3x3 World Tour Debrecen Masters 2021. The tournament gained nearly 3,000 PV and ended with team Ub winning their first FIBA 3x3 World Tour Masters. In contrast, The Abu Dabi World Tour is fifth by Hours Watched. Fans watched for a total of 17,000 hours and witnessed Ub achieve yet another victory. The FIBA 3x3 World Tour in Jeddah nearly made it into the ranking, and so did the FIBA 3x3 U23 Nations League 2021 Europe 2. Each of them accumulated about 15,000 HW.
The FIBA Europe Cup will continue until April 4, and it will be interesting to discover the number of fans tuning in from YouTube during its later stages. Furthermore, we might experience more joint events between FIBA and creators thanks to Ibai’s success.
