Liga U Silences Initial Critics With Solid First Season

With a Final Six set to take place May 15-17 at El Plantío, Piratas del Basket reviews the first season of the U22 development league competition that has exceeded expectations.

Liga U was born under suspicion and faced critical scrutiny from media and fans. A year later, the facts demonstrate that the competition is a solid project that has silenced initial criticism. Critics pointed out that the competition had a clear disparity in level between teams. This was evident in the early matchdays, where Real Madrid and Barcelona dominated the league and won by large margins against the rest of the teams. With these first matchdays, many wrote off this league and closed the case without giving it a chance to develop, not only in its first year of existence, but after just two matchdays.

The current reality is that, yes, there are teams with much superiority, but not as much as was perceived at the beginning of the season. As the season progressed, the competition balanced itself out following the promotions and relegations of several teams. There were surprises in the promotion phase from Group B to Group A with Gran Canaria and Burgos Grupo de Santiago, who managed to advance after their strong performance in the regular season and promotion playoff phase. Following the narrative that dominated when the competition was born, despite advancing to the next group, these clubs were supposedly destined to lose against the rest of the teams in this new group due to their "superiority". However, in practice this has not been the case. In this second phase of the season we have seen how Burgos Grupo de Santiago has consolidated itself in Group A to now be the host team of the historic Final Six that will be held at El Plantío. The Canary Islands team, for its part, finished the season 6-8, maintaining its position in the group. The teams relegated to Group B have experienced two very different realities; on one hand, Valencia dominated the group with 12 wins. Unicaja, however, did not have the same luck and ended up being one of the bottom teams with a record of 5-7.

Let's talk now about the advantage of the big "powerhouses", Real Madrid and Barcelona. It is evident that both the white team and the blaugrana have been dominant, but have they been as dominant as it seemed at the beginning of the season? The answer is in the numbers: in the 28 games played by both teams, Real Madrid and Barcelona have won 23 matches and between them have disputed first place in the two phases in which this competition is divided. The number of wins is high, but this has not been reflected in the point differential. While at the beginning of the season both teams had won with very large margins, this has not been the case during the rest of the course. Real Madrid had a differential of +264 in the first phase and +211 in the second phase, while Barcelona's was +227 in the first phase and +133 in the second phase.

These numbers are similar, for example, to Real Madrid's 25-3 record in the Liga Endesa with +276 point differential or the 27-4 and 26-4 records of Leyma Coruña and Obradoiro respectively in Primera FEB with even wider differentials of +376 and +478 for the Galician teams. Looking at the numbers from other leading basketball competitions at the national level, we also see great superiority by some teams over the rest of the clubs. However, in these competitions we do not see any narrative against them as we saw at the beginning of the Liga U campaign. The problem was never the large difference on the scoreboard, but believing that these numbers were exclusive to this league. Similarly, these large point differentials also occurred last season in Tercera FEB against other development academies, so they are within the normal and expected range in a development league.

But the criticism did get one thing right: with Liga U you lose a point of experience. An experience that Tercera FEB gave you by playing against more veteran players with greater physicality, which forced young prospects to adapt to improve. In this way, they arrived more "seasoned" when making the jump to higher competitions. On the other hand, with the new development league you acquire something key that they didn't have before: prominence. Players now receive greater media attention that not only prepares them for exposure in higher leagues, but teaches them how to deal with it. All this, in the context of a development league aimed at developing talent.

With this greater exposure, we have to talk about how it was achieved despite, again, a rather critical reception. Initial criticism was not limited to the format and existence of the new league, but also to the content posted on social media, the jargon and spelling mistakes of the community manager who was criticized for being "not serious enough", too childish and having a tone "exclusive for young audiences". It is true that they have opted for an uncommon brand style that differs from what is maintained in other branches of the Spanish Basketball Federation, but this does not necessarily make it bad.

So, did they do well in betting on this innovative way of communicating and connecting with the public? The reality, however much it may not appeal to a certain sector that consumes basketball, is that it works. This first season Liga U and its players have had exposure never before seen in development competitions. On social media, the competition's main accounts accumulate more than 60,000 followers across TikTok, YouTube, X (Twitter) and Instagram platforms. In addition to having content with millions of views. The reach doesn't stop there; we must also mention television audience: the average online views per matchday are 450,000, while the average accumulated television audience in the first 10 matchdays was 706,633 viewers, with 4,873,781 contacts between live and delayed broadcasts.

Although exposure, views and "likes" have great importance, they are not everything. At the same time, it is essential to maintain a certain quality in the material shown, and this has been done this season. From Liga U's social media accounts, content has been provided that showed a behind-the-scenes perspective. They did this through the "la cámara u" series that accompanied several league players to show the day-to-day of their lives balancing studies with the new competition. This without abandoning those more "classic" publications such as summaries of each game, highlights and top plays. Added to the advanced statistics on the website that, along with the news section, has given viewers content that not only keeps them informed about league news, but does so in an entertaining way.

Liga U has not been perfect, but it is demonstrating its potential and solidity to dismantle initial criticism that didn't even give it time to grow. Hopefully it will continue to grow in the coming seasons to, once and for all, achieve a development league for the young talent that exists in Spain.