It's just before New Year 2025, and we're catching up with Geir Eikenes, one of the people behind the Bergen Basket Festival. The tournament is an overnight event with more than 250 teams and 2,200 players spread across two weekends. It used to be called simply “Hansacup”, but changed its name in 2019 to Bergen Basketfestival Hansacup.
It's an anniversary! For the 50th time, Ulriken Eagles Basketball Club is delighted to invite teams to the Bergen Basket Festival Hansacup in late April and early May 2025.
But first, a few things about basketball you might not have known.
Basketball was invented in 1891 by the Canadian James Naismith, and the original document defining the rules of the game sold for around 50 million in 2010. The first official game was played at the YMCA gymnasium on 20 January 1892, with nine players per team, on a court roughly half the size of today's. But enough about that.
Like most people from Bergen, Eikenes barely pauses for breath as he talks about how the sport of basketball has grown in recent years, and how that ties into the Bergen Basket Festival.
- Basketball itself has stayed largely the same since 1963, when the sport really took hold in Norway (it used to be called “korgboll”), but the conditions around it have changed a fair bit since the 2000s. It's become more global, more analytics-driven and star-focused, with a faster, more perimeter-oriented style of play.
- When it comes to participation from further afield, things have changed as travel options have improved and become more accessible to most people. That's just as important to think about when building a tournament that should be attractive to people from outside the Bergen area, says Eikenes.
We expect even higher international participation in the years ahead.
We now have registered teams from Spain (Club Bàsquet Torelló) — two of them — and there's interest from Italy in joining the tournament in 2025.
When it comes to our growth as a tournament, a lot of it comes down to things we started working on specifically in 2019. That's when we made a push to professionalize the tournament: better marketing, more volunteers, and switching to a professional tournament system. Simply put, tackling the things that clearly needed improving, says Eikenes.
From club-run to parent-run
Geir points out that there have been some changes around who actually decides which teams take part in a tournament.
The sport has become more parent-driven than club-driven, which used to be the case, and that's important to keep in mind when thinking about who you're dealing with. We've stayed aware of that in how we run the tournament. In the past it was the clubs that decided whether to take part or not, but now each team has more room to decide for itself — often led by a parent acting as team manager.
The tournament uses the following features in CupManager.
Participant cards
With participant cards, the tournament can easily keep track of who has which needs, and cards can be purchased in advance through CupManager.
Online payment
Online payment makes it easy to handle registration and participation fees instead of manual payments. We offer card payments and Klarna as options, so you can keep everything in one place.
Cup-Pass
With Cup-Pass, every team gets its own QR code giving access to pre-defined or purchased meals, transport and other tournament arrangements. The team manager always has full visibility into consumption and availability.
Live results
With Live results, both spectators on site and people who can't be there in person can follow scores and other match details in real time. See how it looked for the tournament here – https://hansacup.cups.nu/2024/result/
Tournament website
CupManager's tournament website is a full-featured site for the tournament that you manage yourselves with ease. Post articles, photos and, of course, all the practical details about the tournament here. You can see the tournament's website here – https://hansacup.cups.nu/start
Your own tournament app
With a dedicated app, the tournament gets its own unique app made just for it. It includes most features, such as live results, Cup-Pass management and more. If you want to see what it looks like, search for “Hansacup” in Google Play or the Apple App Store.
Tournament ratings
It can be valuable to see what participants think of the tournament and what could be improved. That's why this service is available to all tournaments through our tournament portal https://cupinvite.com/. There you'll also find an overview of most tournaments in Scandinavia.
The tournament sold out in 2024 long before the registration deadline.
Do you have any tips or inspiration for others who want their tournament to be just as attractive?
- We're really just an ordinary tournament aiming to grow, because we know Ulrikken Eagles (the club behind the Bergen Basket Festival) can develop through tournament revenue. That's the motivation behind it all — working to create growth that benefits children and young people.
- Achieving growth and profitability, as I said, comes down to professionalizing the conditions around the tournament itself. That mainly means areas like social media marketing, a tournament solution that takes care of the whole ecosystem, and working on volunteer recruitment, which we depend on completely. It's absolutely essential that the volunteers contribute.
“We came all the way from Tromsø and had a fantastic experience at Hansacup (Bergen Basket Festival). We'd love to come back!”
Eirik Vorland
Tromsø Storm Ungdom
Bergen Basket Festival received a 4.9 rating from participants in 2024.
On the subject of volunteers, Eikenes mentions that CupManager could use a good solution for managing volunteers during a tournament.
- There are probably around 150 volunteers helping out with the tournament — before, during and after. Organizing them in a simple, predictable way is something we're missing. I've mentioned this to CupManager too, and they've promised to look into it. Otherwise, I want to praise CupManager's support team, who are absolutely fantastic sparring partners for finding good solutions whenever we need them. Those Swedes really know their tournaments.
This year's anniversary tournament is going to be the biggest yet. Some age groups are already nearly full, so don't wait too long to register. If you think your team would like to take part in Bergen Basket Festival 2025, you can easily register your team through CupManager here.
Thanks for the chat, and happy new year to everyone!
PS: Want a demo of CupManager?