EASL chief sheds light on Bay Area Dragons, upcoming season

East Asia Super League (EASL) co-founder and chief executive officer Matt Beyer has been in Asia for sometime now, developing the EASL, which will bring together the top teams in the region to play each other for the title of the best team in this part of the world.

He was also responsible for the Bay Area Dragons, a team out of Hong Kong that participated in the PBA last season. They played eventual champion Barangay Ginebra in a thrilling final, with Game 7 attracting 54,589 patrons to the Philippine Arena in Bulacan, over 1 million viewers in China, and millions more here in the country.

The Dragons were in the news lately because they were recently disbanded, weeks before the opening of the new PBA season, where they were supposed to compete as a guest team once again.

Matt sat down with us to clarify matters on the Dragons and discuss the upcoming EASL season.

First of all, what happened to the Bay Area Dragons?

Beyer: We have decided at the EASL, with a variety of stakeholders, as we are going into our home-and-away season, running a league and operating a team that was owned by the league had serious conflict of issues concerns.

It was a decision by our corporate board how to move forward as a company, and it was more important to focus on the long-term growth of the EASL and to disband the Dragons in the interest of fairness to all the participating teams.

So there won’t be a team from China in the EASL?

Beyer: Chinese Taipei is part of China so we will have two teams coming from there… there just won’t be a Bay Area Dragon team from Hong Kong, China.

Let’s discuss the opening of the EASL this October.

Beyer: It’s making history! It’s the first time there’s going to be a “Champions League” of Asian basketball that’s covering all these well-established leagues in the region, and I think the fans are in for a real treat. 

We’ve been operating on an invitational style tournament since 2017, and now we’re in the process of the transition into a home and away season that goes on for a six month period of time. 

So that’s been the original purpose of the EASL since our founding of the corporation in December 2015 and it’s taken a long time to get to this point, 18 trips to go visit FIBA in Switzerland, and then Beirut for FIBA Asia to get the license to do this, and we’re very happy and empowered with our license with the global regulator. 

It also took a ton of work to build trust and get people excited about having their domestic leagues involved, including the PBA and the other leagues, it’s taken a tremendous amount of work to go from concept to execution, and also surviving things like Covid and the large economic downturn.

For confirmation, Meralco is now taking the place of Ginebra?

Beyer: Yes, that is correct. We will now have TNT and Meralco. TNT has such a great legacy, I’m excited to see Rondae Hollis-Jefferson after he represented Jordan in the World Cup. You know, nine Championships, 22 Finals appearances, players like Mikey Williams, Roger Pogoy, they’re a stacked team.

Meralco also has a great legacy. They’re definitely gonna bring their all. I’m excited to see guys like Chris Newsome, Aaron Black playing against the best in Asia.

What can the Filipino fans expect this season, with foreign teams visiting the country?

Beyer: I think some of the highlights, just a few days ago, Jeremy Lin signed to be on the same team as his brother with the New Taipei Kings, and they’re going to be playing against Meralco. That’s should be awesome!

Jeremy is the first major performing Asian guard ever in the NBA, definitely the most recognizable Asian player playing in the last decade, so having him in our ecosystem is a huge boost in terms of visibility and excitement. 

But you also have the defending champions of the EASL Champions Week, Anyang KGC, which is now rebranded with a new owner, the Japanese teams Chiba Jets and Ryukyu have both won championships in the EASL events in the past. 

You’re gonna see a lot of excitement as we continue to build the format from 8 teams to 12 next season, to our final iteration of 16 teams and add new geographies.

How can the basketball fans get more information on the EASL?

Beyer: We have tons of social media! You can find us on Facebook, Instagram, we have over 25 social media accounts in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and English. There’s a lot of EASL content on the internet. 

We encourage the fans to interact with our platform, we will be doing a lot of giveaways for tickets, merchandise, autographed items, and memorabilia as we go through the season, so it’s a good base for the fans to build a community. 

We’d like to hear from the fans, “how can we do better?”, and I just think that the future is very exciting for us and we want to make sure we do a great job for the Filipino fans because we know how much they love basketball, we encourage feedback and we take it to heart as we continue to develop this special league.