Current season, competition or edition: 2017 Italian LNP Cup |
|
Sport | Basketball |
---|---|
Inaugural season | 1998 |
No. of teams | 8 (Serie A2), 8 (Serie B) |
Country | Italy |
Confederation | FIBA Europe |
Most recent champion(s) |
Segafredo Virtus Bologna (Serie A2) Cuore Napoli Basket (Serie B) |
Most titles |
Veroli Basket (3 titles) |
TV partner(s) | Sky Italia |
Related competitions |
Serie A2 Basket |
Official website | RnBBasketFestival.com |
The Italian LNP Cup (Italian: Coppa Italia LNP), known as Turkish Airlines Cup for sponsorship reasons, is an annual cup competition for Italian basketball teams organized by Italy's second league in the Italian basketball league system, the Serie A2 Basket. The tournament is organised by the Lega Nazionale Pallacanestro (LNP), the organisation responsible for running the national second division Serie A2, third division Serie B, and fourth division Serie C championships.
A different cup is awarded for each of these respective divisions, though the event has been organised at the same date and place (under the name Rhythm'n'Basket Festival) from 2014, up to the current 2016 edition.
For the 2015 edition, the Serie A2 Final Six was composed of the four best ranked teams in Serie A2 Gold and the two best ranked teams in Serie A2 Silver at the end of the league first stage. The Serie B Final Four was preceded by a preliminary phase that saw the first-ranked teams of each league group (A, B, C, D) play against the second-ranked team of another group for a place in the cup. The Serie C Final Eight was also preceded by a prelimany phase, in which teams from different regions were pitted against each other for spots in the final phase.
The Rhythm'n'Basket (RnB) festival, organised since 2014 in association with Rimini Fiera, sees the games take place in the Rimini Expo Centre halls, one of which is converted for the occasion into two basketball courts (named Parigi 1999 and Atene 2004 in reference to the titles of the Italian national team) complete with two stands for a capacity of 5,000.
The 2017 edition, sees the games take place in Unipol Arena in Bologna for a record capacity of 9,513. Since 2017 Turkish Airlines become new title sponsor of the tournament for Serie A2 and Serie B.