Badalona (EFE) estimated for the city of approximately 5 million euros directly and up to 11 million indirectly.
“These are our forecasts, if we take as a reference those made in the last Copa del Rey in Granada,” said the mayor of Badalona, Rubén Guijarro, in a meeting with journalists on Tuesday.
The fee set by the ACB to host the Copa del Rey is 1.7 million euros. To which must be added the 1.2 million euros that it has cost to reform the Llefia Sports Center where the Mini Cup will be held.
In reality, the reform of this facility is included in an investment of 3.6 million euros -of which the Barcelona Provincial Council pays 1.5 million- to restore six sports halls in the city.
Therefore, Badalona only costs about 200,000 euros to organize an event that brings together, for four days, the eight best basketball teams in Spain and which it has not hosted for 38 years.
«We had been chasing it for decades and we are delighted to have achieved it. That the Cup returns from being held here, that basketball returns home, is a source of pride for the city,” Guijarro highlighted.
The epicenter of the Cup
The Olympic facility, with capacity for around 12,500 spectators and where the mythical ‘Dream Team’ won the gold medal in Barcelona’92, will be the sporting epicenter of the tournament.
But the city will have four different leisure areas (Gorg, Llefiá, Montigalá and Badalona Centro) so that basketball fans who are in Badalona on those days can enjoy exclusive restaurant services, different concerts and workshops and street basketball tournaments, among other activities.
The City Council estimates that, during those days, the Copa del Rey will attract some 30,000 people. “The Cup serves as an economic engine and a recovery of the pride of our city,” stressed Guijarro, who recalled that Badalona has won the pulse “of large cities in the State such as Barcelona, Malaga or Vitoria, who also wanted to host the tournament in this edition”.
A victory that, according to its mayor, Badalona has achieved “with a very inclusive project in which the entire social fabric of the city has participated” and which has ended up seducing the ACB.
