Italian basket, common sense success

League officials work with Sky TV for technical progress

Italian basket is going through one of its best periods in history. Following the beautiful silver medal conquered at the Athens Olympics, Italian basketball grew in popularity and won a larger audience. This was due, quite simply, to a couple of good ideas based in what has often been missing from Italian soccer: common sense.
Before the 2004 Olympic Games, TV broadcasting rights belonged to RAI, Italian state television. The public broadcaster served basketball very poorly: the only live broadcasting showed the second half of one game per week, often at inconvenient times. Therefore, the Serie A basket league decided to accept an offer from Sky, the private satellite broadcaster that already holds TV rights for Serie A, Serie B and Champions League soccer games. The effects of this change were not long in coming: at leasto two, often three games per week broadcast live. One of these in a time slot - Sunday at noon - refused by Serie A soccer. In addition, a weekly program with in-depth discussions, highlights and interviews. Finally, Euroleague: European basket's Champions League. For the whole season, Sky broadcast two live and two recorded games (the tournament included four Italian teams). Viewer ratings climbed at once. Right from the start, more spectators followed the games on Sky than had done so the previous year on a free channel.
The relation between Basket League and Sky TV went even further, though. Before the regular season, Sky offered the league to introduce instant replay. The league accepted, and it worked beautifully. "The proposal came from us, and had been first formulated last summer," tells Sky spokesperson Giovanni Bruno, "We developed a series of rules, gave them to league officials, and in September testing began."
The idea slowly grew, with everybody's involvement: Sky assembled Serie A referees, had them talk with TV directors, asked for tips on the positioning of cameras and monitors.
However, nobody thought this novelty would be so important. Actually, nobody could have dreamed the breath-taking ending of game 4 of the playoff series between Armani Jeans Milano and Climamio Bologna. With the Bologna team leading the series 2-1 (the series included a maximum of 5 games), game 4 was played in Milan, in an arena crowded with 12,000 fans. Milan was leading the game 65-64 with 30 seconds to go; they lost ball to the Bolognese team. With a handful of seconds remaining, Ruben Douglas shot from the midfield... and scored! Bologna fans were jubilant: the championship was theirs! Milan fans were also jubilant: the ball was dead, the series was tied! Who was right? Instant replay would settle the issue. The referees watched it, in front of 12,000 people holding their collective breath; then, TV images showed that the basket was valid. The Bolognese celebrated and the Milanese soberly accepted the verdict. Such a scene would be unthinkable in a Serie A soccer arena.
This is how referee Carmelo Paternicò tells the story. "The first images were too small. I told the Sky technician, 'This isn't helping.' So he zoomed on Douglas' hand, and the sequence was very clear. He was very good. While we were viewing the clip, Baldi - Milan's referee contact - kept repeating: 'It isn't good.' Puglisi, his Bolognese counterpart, was shouting the opposite. I sent them both away."
What if you hadn't had instant replay? "I would have called it good. I had my arms up, as had Lamonica (another referee), even though some people have claimed the opposite."
Did you think, 'I'm the first? Am I stripping Milan of its victory? Will the fans shred us?'
"Not at all. Role, consequences, context; you don't think of any of that. You only think of your technical call. You realize it later, when you head to the locker rooms. You see humanity, players jumping or crying, and think, "all that because of 24 hundredths of a second. And of that shot. Gosh, what a shot! Steven Spielberg could not have written such an ending."
So this championship was awarded thanks to technology, a slap in the face for soccer that continues to be oblivious to any kind of technical progress.

Publication Date: 2005-07-03
Story Location: http://www.tandemnews.com/viewstory.php?storyid=5341