Olympics 2024 in Paris: why the basketball “blues” are guaranteed not to meet the USA in the first round

This is information that should reassure or frustrate Blues supporters, as the case may be. Unlike the Tokyo Olympics, where Vincent Collet’s team started with a prestigious victory over the US team; the French team will not meet the American cannibal in the first round of the Paris Olympics this summer.

However, both teams will not appear wearing the same hat during the draw for the Olympic tournament, which will take place on Tuesday, March 19, at the FIBA ​​headquarters in Mies, Switzerland (19:00).

Indeed, the Blues’ disastrous 18th-placed 2023 World Cup dropped them back to 9th in the world rankings, forcing France into a third-place finish at the Olympics. For their part, the four-time American title winners will obviously end up in the first pot. But then why don’t Tokyo’s two finalists meet in the group stage?

Satisfied broadcasters of two countries

In a video intended to explain the draw procedure, published this Friday, March 15, FIBA ​​clarifies that as defending champions, Team USA is already guaranteed to join Group C, while France, as the host nation, will be placed in Group C, one of the other two groups. However, the origins of this decision remain primarily related to television broadcasting issues.

The first round of the Olympic basketball tournament, organized in three groups of four teams, will take place at the Pierre-Mauroy stadium in Lille, with four matches per day. Matches in groups A and B will be held on the same day, in group C – in conjunction with pool A of the women’s tournament. Problem: If the French and Americans were put into the same group or groups that would play on the same day, the 8:00 pm prime time slot would pose a problem from a programming standpoint.

Because of the time difference, this schedule, corresponding to 3:00 p.m. on the East Coast and noon on the West Coast, is very popular among American television networks that wish to show the Gregg Popovich-led team’s games in a time suitable for large audiences. Thus, this distribution, already applied in Tokyo for the Japan-US matches in 2021, allows the IOC and FIBA ​​to meet the needs as broadcasters of the two countries.

Please note that this program will also apply to the women’s tournament, meaning Jean-Aimé Toupan’s Blues will not face the Americans in the first round.