Philippines to host one of the OQT

MANILA, PHILIPPINES – FIBA, the world governing body for basketball, confirmed that Philippines is one of the countries to host one of three Olympic Qualifying Tournaments (OQT) set next year for the men’s basketball competition.

Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, Iran, Israel, Italy, Mexico, Serbia, and Turkey, are the countries who made bids for the Qualifying tournament aside from the Philippines.

The 2016 Olympic Qualifying Tournament will run from July 4 to 10, and will be contested by six teams. The winners of the tournament will be competing in the 2016 Rio Olympics, and will join the U.S., Australia, Nigeria, Venezuela, Argentina, Spain, Lithuania, China, and the host nation, Brazil.

The 15 qualified teams who will compete in three tournaments are Angola, Canada, Czech Republic, France, Greece, Iran, Italy, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Philippines, Puerto Rico, Senegal, Serbia, and Tunisia.

The main evaluation criteria of the governing body that was used in selection of the hosts are:

1. Player welfare – best possible conditions for players

2. Stakeholder experience – first-class event for spectators, teams, media and broadcasters, commercial partners as well as all other stakeholders. This includes venues filled to capacity and the provision of appropriate promotional strategy to achieve this goal.

3. State-of-the-art facilities and infrastructure – FIBA aims at hosting events in high-level competition venues that meet or exceed its requirements.

4. Legacy – event must bring benefits for basketball in the country, prestige and credit to the host nation and FIBA, as well as being of support to the strategic ambitions of the entire basketball family.

5. Commercial model – the event must be based on sound commercial and promotional initiatives and be financially successful.

Other nations can still submit their bids to host until November 11.