Expansion!

[Clayman]

Reporter Hank McMullen VII

Expansion is coming to a city near you, two cities as of yet to be named will take part in the 2042 season of the UMEBA. The commissioners office announced today "We as an organisation believe that the UMEBA contains a strong group of franchises and that the league's solid footing will take the weight of two more franchises, the process of finding these franchises as already started within the BBA & UMEBA.

It had been rumoured since last year that expansion was on the horizon for the UMEBA, there were talks within the UMEBA ownership group that the Cairo Chariot Archers BC had sent an official letter to Commissioner Rectenwald asking for a meeting to discuss the UMEBA and specially the topic of future expansion.

From sources that wish to remain anonymous that meeting took place in December of last year, said meeting involved the Cairo ownership with his legal representatives, Commissioner Rectenwald along with Vice Commissioner Aaron Weiner, League Director Ron Collins, League Advisor Randy Weigand and the league's historian Mr Stephen Lane who was to document the historical meeting. Various topics were discussed but it was expansion and realignment of the UMEBA which brought at sometimes heated discussions between the gentlemen who were present, Cairo ownership stated that the UMEBA could take four expansion teams however the BBA representatives said a more cautious approach of two expansion teams would be better. Cairo did however win over their case that the UMEBA should if expansion took place be realigned into one league with two divisions of five teams, the play offs would still contain four teams with two division winners and two wild card teams contesting the play offs.

Although the commissioners office didn't elaborate on what process had taken place after the December meeting, one owner of a BBA franchise who wanted to remain anonymous explained to me letters had been sent to over twenty cities around the globe. These twenty cities were whittled down to 12 as some cities didn't reply and other cities who did send replies back were deemed not to be on a sound financial footing with their accounts that were sent to the commissioners office.

According to my source the cities in the running to obtain the golden tickets to the UMEBA are Athens, Tbilisi, Sofia, Damascus, Karachi, Tripoli, Sicily, Malta, Kuwait City, Tehran, Dushanbe, and Ramallah. Some within the shortlist seem to be more viable than others, a source within the Mumbai franchise stated they would look forward to facing a Karachi team. However one source from another franchise stated "We don't need franchises on our doorstep taking money away from us", only time will tell which cities get a franchise but I'm betting the general meeting between the BBA & UMEBA will get a bit warm at times.

[Fat Nige]

Cairo would like to point out that at no time did we ever suggest a four-team expansion for the UMEBA. We are fiscally responsible and wouldn’t suggest such an irresponsible move for a fledgling league. We believe that it was a young, headstrong GM of the BBA franchise Las Vegas (formally associated with Jerusalem) who first suggested a move to a 12-team league in response to an article written by Ron Collins on a website dedicated to the UMEBA which we believe was the first article to seriously mention expansion .
We do admit though that we were a major proponent of some form of expansion for the league and did not miss an opportunity to press claims for an enlarged league. We are a strong supporter of the hard working GM’s in the UMEBA and have always felt it is a good breeding ground for future BBA GM’s, a testament to that is the fact that in recent years there have been many UMEBA GM’s appointed by BBA franchises.

[lordtoffee]

There are a lot of UMEBA alums in the BBA, and they all seem to have hit the grown running. The curious thing is to see how the Governing Board is going to handle the expansion fees. I imagine that it will help out all of the teams.