On May 11, 2015, Euroleague Basketball announced that the 2016 Final Four would be played at the Mercedes-Benz Arena, in Berlin, Germany. With a seating capacity of 14,500 people for basketball games, it is home to the Alba Berlin basketball team, and is used for ice hockey, basketball, and handball games, as well as concerts. The area surrounding the arena is filled with various entertainment venues, including a cinema, a casino, a hotel, and various bars and restaurants. The arena previously hosted the 2009 Euroleague Final Four. The arena was one of the most prominent elements of the Mediaspree urban redevelopment project, and it quickly gained emblematic status in the debates surrounding the project's impact.
The LED construction grid on the facade of the arena was equipped with more than 300,000 LED clusters on a 12 m (39 ft) high, and approximately 120 m (390 ft) wide section of the semicircular 105° glass facade, with a total area of more than 1,440 m2 (15,500 sq ft). Light pixels, consisting of two groups of 19 LEDs (colour palette: 16.7 million RGB colours), were attached to the vertical bracing of the facade. The vertical distances were 0.20 m (7.9 in), and the horizontal distances between the axes were 0.90 m (2 ft 11 in).
The Final was the second Final Four meeting between the two teams. In the 2015 Euroleague Final Four, CSKA Moscow beat Fenerbahçe 86–80, in the third-place game.[2] It was the first European final for Fenerbahçe, while CSKA played in its 13th championship game.
In the Final, it seemed early on that CSKA was destined to win its seventh EuroLeague title. After a strong first half, the Russian side led 30–50 at halftime, and had a lead of as many as 21 points in the third quarter. However, in the fourth quarter, Fenerbahçe surged back, and CSKA player, Victor Khryapa, had to score a tip-in with 1.9 seconds remaining on the game clock, to tie the game.[3] It was the third Final in EuroLeague history that went to overtime. In overtime, CSKA, led by Nando De Colo, took the lead, and finally claimed its seventh EuroLeague title, and its first one in eight years.[3]
