Sports

Representatives from Europe's biggest basketball clubs gathered in Barcelona on Friday to see who they would be drawn with, for the regular season of the Euroleague.

Basque Country's Caja Laboral went to group C and will face reigning Turkish Airlines Euroleague champion Olympiacos, Emporio Armani, Anadolu Efes, Zalgiris Kaunas and Cedevita Zagreb.

Group A features Panathinaikos Athens, Real Madrid, the reigning Eurocup champion, BC Khimki Moscow Region, Fenerbahce Ulker, Union Olimpija Ljubljana and the winner of the qualifying round.

Group B features Maccabi Electra Tel Aviv, Montepaschi Siena, Alba Berlin, Unicaja Malaga, Asseco Prokom Gdynia and Elan Chalon-Sur-Saone.

Finally, Group D features FC Barcelona Regal, CSKA Moscow, Partizan Belgrade, Lietuvos Rytas, Brose Baskets Bamberg and Besiktas JK Istanbul.

Format

The first action will be the qualifying rounds, in which eight teams will clash for one available ticket to the 2012-13 regular season. The qualifying round will be played between September 25 and 28 at Desio, Italy.

The regular season, featuring four groups of six teams, will commence on October 11 and last through December 14, 2012. The top four teams from each group will advance to the new, longer Top 16, which allows for more games pitting the top teams in the competition against one another.

The Top 16 sees two groups of eight play out a 14-game schedule between December 27, 2012 and April 5, 2013, after which the best four in each group graduate into always-dramatic best-of-five playoffs series.

The playoffs, scheduled between April 9 to 25, set the stage for the 2013 Turkish Airlines Euroleague Final Four, which for the first time will take place at The O2 in the British capital from May 10 and 12.