The BNXT League, for sponsorship reasons the betFirst BNXT League, is a professional
basketball
Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular Basketball court, court, compete with the primary objective of #Shooting, shooting a basketball (ball), basketball (appr ...
league in Belgium and the Netherlands. The league is the first tier in both the Dutch and Belgian system, replacing the
DBL and
PBL. The inaugural season was the
2021–22 season, which started in September 2021.
The BNXT League plays national playoffs as well as a cross-border playoffs to determine a Dutch champion, Belgian champion and BNXT champion.
History
On 10 December 2020, it was announced that the Belgian
Pro Basketball League
The Pro Basketball League (PBL), was the highest tier level professional basketball league in Belgium for clubs. In 2021, the league was succeeded by the Belgian-Dutch BNXT League.
Through 2014, for sponsorship reasons, the league was previousl ...
and
Dutch Basketball League
The Dutch Basketball League (DBL), formerly the Eredivisie, was the highest professional basketball league in the Netherlands, run by the Federatie Eredivisie Basketball (FEB). Since 2021, the league has been replaced by the Belgian-Dutch BNXT Le ...
would merge to form a new multinational league.
All clubs from the Dutch DBL voted for, while 9 of 10 teams in Belgium voted in favor of the decision. Serious talks about the initiative had been ongoing since fall 2019. On 20 May 2021, the new name "BNXT League" and logo of the league were announced.
The league started its
inaugural season amidst an
ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and a great number of games had to be played behind locked doors as a result of national lockdowns. On 11 June 2022,
ZZ Leiden
ZZ Leiden Basketball, also known as Zorg en Zekerheid Leiden, is a basketball club based in Leiden, Netherlands. The club plays in the BNXT League, the domestic first tier league. Their home games are played at Vijf Meihal, which has 2,000 seats. ...
were crowned the inaugural BNXT champions.
Sponsorship
On 10 September 2021, the league announced its first name sponsorship when Belgian betting company betFirst signed to become naming sponsor for three seasons.
Competition formula
The league consists of different stages. In the first stage, teams play each other home and away in the national regular season. After this, the teams are divided in the Elite Gold and Elite Silver group for the cross-border season. Next, the teams from the Elite Gold and the best team from the Elite Silver play in the national playoffs to compete for the national championships. At the same time the BNXT Play-offs start to determine the league winner.
[
]
Teams
The following 20 teams will play in the 2022–23 season:
Stadiums and locations
:''Note: Table lists in alphabetical order.''
Former teams
BNXT champions
National champions
Netherlands
Belgium
Broadcasting partners
*BNXT.tv (online)
*NPO 1
NPO 1 (''NPO een'', formerly Nederland 1 until 2014) is the first national television station in the Netherlands. It launched on 2 October 1951. It provides public broadcasting and currently exists next to sister channels NPO 2 and NPO 3. Sever ...
*Ziggo Sport
Ziggo Sport is a sports television channel in the Netherlands, operated by Ziggo owned by VodafoneZiggo. It is only available for Ziggo subscribers and broadcasts a variety of sports with a focus on major sporting events, a weekly talk show called ...
*Sporza
Sporza is a multimedia brand of Belgian public-service radio and television
Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the ...
Notes
References
External links
Official website
{{Pro Basketball League
Basketball leagues in the Netherlands
Sports leagues established in 2020
2020 establishments in Europe