Serbian league meeting fails, federation doubts season plan

Eleven people in a room, one procedural item before all the others, and the whole thing stopped right there. The board of the clubs’ association of the Basketball League of Serbia (KLS) sat down on July 28, voted on the agenda put forward by association president Srecko Otovic, and that was the end of the session. There was no two-thirds majority, so nobody got to speak about anything else.

Seven of the eleven board members backed the agenda. That is short of two thirds, which in practice means four votes can kill a meeting before it starts.

What was on that agenda was everything a league needs settled before a season tips off:

• the 2025 financial report
• the financial plan for the coming season
• the competition calendar
• the competition rules
• the disciplinary code

Not one of those items was opened.

Why the session never got going

A day later, on July 29, KLS put out a statement naming the clubs it says brought the agenda down. FMP, Spartak and Zlatibor voted against, while Hercegovac abstained. The league calls it destabilisation driven by the private interests of a small group, and points out that Red Star and Partizan were in the majority that wanted the vote to go ahead.

The statement from the clubs’ association reads:

We will not allow a minority to toy with the will of the majority, which includes the strongest Serbian clubs.

The same statement insists the season itself is safe, even though the schedule still does not exist on paper.

The upcoming, 20th anniversary KLS season is not in question and we will not allow the public to be misled by information from unverified and malicious sources.

This is the league’s 20th season, and that anniversary is part of what the association is trying to defend.

What the federation is asking for

On the same day the Basketball Federation of Serbia (KSS) sent its own letter to KLS members, and it does not read like a note of support. The federation is asking for the competition calendar, the competition rules, the plan for running the league, the financing of the competition, the appointment of match officials, and the marketing and media rights. Along with them came the line that lit the fuse:

There are serious grounds to doubt that the organisational and managerial capacity of the KLS clubs’ association exists.

KSS notes that no calendar, no competition rules and no financial plan have been adopted so far. Competition director Aleksandar Grujin has been asked to hand over documentation on how the league is run and financed.

The fight started back in April

The date that explains this summer is April 28, 2026. That is when KSS adopted a draft of a new contract on running the competition, sent it to Otovic and invited the association to talks any time after May 4. Three months on, the league has no approved calendar, and the federation is still waiting on an answer to its draft. What looks from outside like a squabble over an agenda is really the next round of an argument about who controls the competition.

A new board meeting is set for Thursday at 1 p.m., with the same items that fell on Tuesday. If two thirds cannot be found then either, the anniversary season heads into August with no calendar, no competition rules and no approved budget, and clubs already in preseason will not know when they play their first game. None of the parties has named that deadline, but it is running anyway.