BAL’s 2025 season will showcase north, south Africa

The fifth season of the BAL kicks off in April 2025, marking a double milestone: Morocco will host the tipoff games for the first time, while South Africa will take centre stage for the playoffs and finals.

Bonface Orucho, bird story agency

The Basketball Africa League (BAL) will showcase the length and breadth of Africa’s basketball landscape during the league’s fifth season, with Morocco set to host the tipoff games for the first time. The Prince Moulay Abdellah Sports Complex in Rabat will serve as the stage for the new season’s tipoff, underscoring the league’s commitment to broadening its footprint across the continent.

According to Anibal Manave, President of FIBA Africa, “The Kalahari Conference marks another expansion of the BAL into a new country on our continent, and we are more than satisfied.”

“Year after year, this competition grows, giving greater exposure to our sport and helping to elevate the level of basketball in Africa by making the league more and more competitive.”

Also, according to the latest announcement on November 21, the 2025 BAL Finals to be held on Saturday, June 14 will be hosted at the SunBet Arena in Pretoria, South Africa, the first BAL finals to be held in South Africa.

South Africa hosted BAL matches for the first time last season, with home side Cape Town Tigers impressing fans by advancing to the playoffs. The team’s performance highlighted the growing basketball talent in the region and the increasing enthusiasm for the sport among South African fans.

BAL President Amadou Gallo Fall explained that the BAL has seen tremendous growth over the BAL’s first four seasons in the level of on-court competition, attendance, and engagement with fans and partners in Africa and globally.

“Our milestone fifth season will build on that momentum and further showcase the level of talent and passion for basketball in Africa, including through the first BAL games in Morocco and the first BAL Finals in South Africa.”

The 2025 BAL season will bring together the top 12 club teams from 12 African countries to compete in 48 games across four cities: Rabat, Morocco between April 5 and 13; Dakar, Senegal between April 26 and May 4; Kigali, Rwanda between May 17 and 25; and Pretoria, South Africa on June 6 to 14th.

The 12 teams competing in the 2025 BAL season will be divided into three conferences, each consisting of four teams. During the group phase, each conference will play 12 games, with each team facing the other three teams in its conference twice.

From these conferences, the top eight teams will advance to the Playoffs, set to be held in Pretoria, South Africa, from June 6 to June 14. The season will culminate with the 2025 BAL Finals on Saturday, June 14.

In the upcoming season, the national league champions from seven countries – Angola, Egypt, Morocco, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, and Tunisia – will automatically qualify for the BAL. The other five teams will qualify through the Road to the BAL qualifying tournaments conducted by FIBA Africa across the continent from October – December 2024.

Nairobi is set to host the Road to BAL Elite 16 tournament from November 28 to December 3, 2024, at the Kasarani Indoor Arena and Nyayo Gymnasium. The home team, Nairobi City Thunder, will battle for a coveted qualifying spot in a highly competitive group featuring the City Oilers (Uganda), NBA Academy, Urunani BBC (Burundi), M.B.B (South Africa), Bravehearts Basketball (Zambia), Matero Magic (Malawi), and Fox Basketball Club (South Sudan).

In addition to the games, the BAL will once again collaborate with its partners to conduct youth development and social impact programming in all four markets, including Jr. NBA, coaching and referee clinics, environmental days of service, the fourth BAL Innovation Summit, networking sessions to engage with members of the media, and a series of camps and workshops for young women as part of BAL4HER, the league’s platform for advancing gender equality in the African sports ecosystem.

Rwanda Development Board, NIKE, Jordan Brand, and Wilson will return as BAL Foundational Partners. The league’s roster of marketing partners also includes Castle Lite, Hennessy, and RwandAir.

On June 1, Angola’s Petro de Luanda became the first sub-Saharan African team to win the BAL Finals after previous champions from Egypt and Tunisia. The 2024 BAL season reached fans in 214 countries and territories in 17 languages, set an attendance record of more than 120,000 fans across the four host countries, and generated more than 1.2 billion impressions across NBA and BAL social media channels.

bird story agency