VTB United League President Sergey Kushchenko became MLBL All-Star Game 2025 guest and played in Friends’ Game.
On March 22, Irkutsk hosted MLBL All-Star Game 2025, in which the Irkutsk Region team and the Russian national team (88:99) played at Dvorets Sporta Trud.
The MLBL is the largest amateur basketball organization in Russia. MLBL covers the whole country – more than 40 thousand participants in almost all regions.
Sergey Kushchenko took part in the Friends’ Game. The “Sarma” and “Barguzin” teams clash ended in a friendly draw (50:50). Alexander Kushchenko was recognized as the MVP of the game.
Sergey Kushchenko, VTB United League President :
– The MLBL is a long-time partner of the VTB League, a very systematic league that has united more than 2 thousand teams across Russia at the amateur level. The MLBL successfully fulfills its task to increase the number of basketball players across the country and the game in Irkutsk was a good example.
The small but cozy Dvorets Sporta was filled to capacity today – whole families came and enjoyed the event. The game was at a very high level, there was a lot of talk about the fact that the All-Star Game system, which was once proposed by the VTB League, is ideal as a platform for discussing basketball and sports projects in a particular region.
There were events with attendance of the head of the Irkutsk Region Basketball Federation Sergey Yakovlev, and All-Star Weekend was opened by President of MLBL Alexander Novozhilov together with the Minister of Sports of the Irkutsk Region Pavel Bogatyrev.
I would like to note separately that there are a lot of basketball fans in the region, and the recently published VTB League book “The History of the USSR Basketball Championships” was inspired by the project and the authors who published a volume on the history of basketball in the Irkutsk region. It turns out that we continued the work of popularizing our favorite game, which we started in Irkutsk, and very soon the League will publish a women’s volume.
