FIBA releases draw procedures for Olympic Qualifying Tournaments

BEIJING - FIBA has confirmed the procedures for the FIBA Olympic men's and women's Qualifying Tournaments 2020 draw which will take place on Wednesday at the FIBA headquarters.

Based on the FIBA women's world rankings, 16 participants in the four FIBA Women's Olympic Qualifying Tournaments have been divided into four pots of four teams each.

All sides will be placed into one of the four assigned host cities of Belgrade (Serbia), Bourges (France), Foshan (China) and Ostende (Belgium).

FIBA said that the draw procedure aims to produce four groups of similar quality, with teams from the same continents or geographical regions equally distributed across the groups.

Argentina, Australia, France, Iran, Nigeria, Spain and the United States have directly qualified for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games men's tournament, with Japan receiving automatic qualification as the hosts.

24 teams have qualified for the men's FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournaments in June 2020, and they have been distributed into six pots of four teams each based on the FIBA men's world rankings.

The host cities for the men's FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournaments are Belgrade (Serbia), Kaunas (Lithuania), Split (Croatia) and Victoria (Canada). Each tournament will host two groups of three teams.

In order to balance the quality of the tournaments and their respective groups, Pots 1, 4 and 5 will feed Groups A, and Pots 2, 3 and 6 will feed Groups B of each tournament.