In preparation for the upcoming 2024-25 EuroLeague Women season, FIBA has sorted the competing clubs into four regular-season groups. This highlights the first of several changes that will be made to the competition’s format this coming season, which FIBA promises will “raise the stakes” of its regular-season (or “group”) phase.
EuroLeague Women last had a four-group system for the entirety of the 2020-21 regular season. This time around, there will be two phases to group play. In the first phase, each club will play its group opponents twice (described by FIBA as “round-robin” fashion), after which the top three clubs from each group will advance to the second phase and be re-seeded into two new groups.
In the second phase of group play, competing clubs will once again play their group opponents in round-robin fashion. The winners of these second-phase groups will advance to the new EuroLeague Women Play-Ins, which will determine which clubs participate in the postseason; two clubs will make to the semifinals automatically, skipping the quarterfinals, while the remaining four will play for the right to make the semifinals. This takes what was previously known as the EuroLeague Women Final Four and creates a “Final Six” instead.
This may seem like a lot…
