Sad reality: hundreds of empty seats in EuroBasket 2022 final? / News - Basketnews.com

Hundreds of tickets are still available to be purchased for the EuroBasket 2022 final, with some of them being in the very best places of the arena. Some seats have even been reclassified, making them less expensive.

Credit: IMAGO/Eibner - Scanpix Credit IMAGO/Eibner - Scanpix

The eyes of the entire European basketball world will be focused on a game in Berlin between Spain and France. However, many more eyes could see this game live but apparently choose not to, at least so far.

EuroBasket 2022 final should be the biggest sporting event this offseason. In the minds of tens of thousands of basketball fans, it still is. At the same time, though, hundreds of empty seats are about to not be filled in the arena.

As of 11:30 AM CET, i.e. with exactly 9 hours to go until the final, several hundreds of seats in the Mercedes-Benz Arena in Berlin are still not booked. This includes tens of seats in one of the best spots to view the match from - the very center of the premium sectors in the middle.

In the semifinal between France and Poland, there were at least 2500 empty seats. Quarterfinal between France and Italy had only 6324 spectators, while Luka Doncic's last match in the tournament attracted not that many more - 7852.

Besides Germany's matches and the France-Poland semifinal, only Lithuania's Round of 16 match against Spain featured more than 10,000 people throughout the entire playoffs. All this happened in an arena that sits 14,073 people.

Before the playoffs, Ergin Ataman openly invited Turkish people in Berlin to come and support the team. After winning the semifinal, Evan Fournier also called for fans to travel to the German capital and help the team achieve the ultimate prize.

If you were to refresh the ticket purchasing page of the EuroBasket final, you would encounter a strange event - the seats that have been previously unavailable for purchase suddenly become available.

Since the making of the screenshot above, about 50 new tickets have become available in two of the main sectors - 103 and 104, some of them even very close to the court.

Some of the seats have been re-qualified, making them less expensive by changing their classification from Premium 1 to Premium 2.

With Luka Doncic being sensationally eliminated by Poland in the quarterfinal, Giannis Antetokounmpo losing against Germany, and Nikola Jokic's Serbia getting upset in the Round of 16, the biggest stars of the tournament are no longer here.

EuroBasket 2022 final will feature probably the fiercest rivalry in modern European basketball history. It seems that the Mercedes-Benz Arena will not be fully booked to witness it.

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