LYON, France (FIBA Central Board) – Great Britain’s Men’s and Women’s national teams will compete in the Olympic Basketball Tournament at the 2012 London Games after FIBA granted them automatic places at the Central Board on Sunday.

The other major decision on the agenda saw Turkey awarded the next FIBA World Championship for Women, the biggest international women’s basketball tournament, to be held in 2014.

FIBA recognised that Great Britain had met the requirements set out for them – proving their competitiveness on the court with both senior teams qualifying for this summer’s EuroBasket tournaments, while also providing a solid legacy plan for the sport in the country beyond the Games of the XXX Olympiad.

The Central Board voted 17-3 in favour of Great Britain taking their place in the field of basketball teams at next year’s Olympics, but re-iterated the need for British Basketball and the home nations' (England, Scotland and Wales) federations to work towards proving their commitment to grow the game by figuring out the best governance model going forward.

“The Central Board took a vote on the following proposal: yes, both men’s and women’s teams should play at the Olympic Games, but by 30th June 2012 British Basketball and the home nations must figure out the best way for the future governance of the sport," said FIBA Secretary General Patrick Baumann.

“They have until that date to decide what governance they want to go forward with after the Olympic Games end.”

Meanwhile, Turkey will host the 2014 FIBA World Championship for Women after getting the nod over Australia for the honour.

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“We had two outstanding bids, with both countries doing an amazing job of giving the board very good reasons to believe they were very capable of hosting the event and having it be a great success,” said Baumann.

“The quality of the two bids is testament to the growth of women’s basketball.”

Turkey hosted last summer’s FIBA World Championship for Men.

A road map for the development of FIBA33 – the International Basketball Federation’s sanctioned format of 3on3 – was agreed upon.

FIBA is working to develop 3on3 basketball so that it is played in top-level competitions, with players rewarded for their participation through the creation of an innovative individual ranking system.

The ultimate goal is to see this format of basketball receive Olympic status one day and, to that end, FIBA looks to showcase it as early as 2016.

Lithuania and the Netherlands were selected as hosts of the 2012 FIBA U17 World Championships for Men and Women respectively.

Photographs of the FIBA Central Board are available for editorial use free of charge at flickr.com/fibaworld.

Video News Releases (VNR) of broadcast quality are available for download as of 21:30 CET on Sunday from the following ftp server:
ftp.htroffice.ch
Username: htr_ftp_3
Password: Acc377-3

The first VNR will be the one on Great Britain and the second on Turkey will follow thereafter.

The files to download will be available in the following folder: /data/2011_FIBA_CENTRAL- BOARD-Press Conference. The video format will be 16x9 - mpeg4 (H264) - 720x576.

The VNRs are available for worldwide use, for all media and free of any rights fees.

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About FIBA and the FIBA Central Board

The FIBA Central Board is comprised of 23 members hailing from 22 different countries from all five FIBA Continental Zones. The board is FIBA’s highest executive body and meets twice a year. It has, among other competences, the power to establish the FIBA Internal Regulations. It also assigns the organisation of all FIBA World Championships.

FIBA (www.fiba.com) – the world governing body for basketball – is an independent association formed by 213 National Basketball Federations throughout the world. It is recognised as the sole competent authority in basketball by the International Olympic Committee (IOC). For further information about FIBA and FIBA Championships visit facebook.com/fibaworld and twitter.com/fibaworld or youtube.com/fibaworld.