A fruitful collaboration entering its third year

Basketball in Italy boasts a great tradition and a large number of fans towards a sport that has offered entertainment and beautiful rivalries for decades. Among the ‘top’ teams in the top division there is Pallacanestro Reggiana, which has a long history and a militancy of memorable talents and great champions (names like those of Gianluca Basile and Mike Mitchell are an almost obligatory mention) and has just played the tenth consecutive year of the sought-after return to Legabasket. The last part of this journey, the one inaugurated with the 2020-2021 season, sees the UNAHOTELS brand alongside Pallacanestro Reggiana in the role of title sponsor of  Reggio Emilia team.

The successes of UNAHOTELS Reggio Emilia

The 2020/2021 season sees several changes in the Reggiana house to reverse the trend that had seen it in difficulty in the previous two years. The club is then re-founded in the summer of 2020 by an executive of 5 entrepreneurs who choose UNAHOTELS as the main sponsor: the season of the reborn Pallacanestro Reggiana starts off very well, with the team even making it to the Final Eight of the Italian Cup as the eighth seed. Unfortunately, as the year went on, something went wrong and in January, Attilio Caja took over on the bench, with ex-NBA player Henry Sims arriving at the court: the situation improved and thanks to convincing victories over Brindisi, Pesaro and Cantù, the team was saved before the end of the championship and improved their record from the previous season.

In the 100th edition of Series A, UNAHOTELS Reggio Emilia opens its year with a purchasing session that immediately clarifies the intentions of the club and the parties involved: to return among the most in-form teams in Italian basketball. In fact, two names arrive from the summer market that will prove fundamental in what will be the team’s best season in years: Andrea Cinciarini and Mikael Hopkins. Attilio Caja guided the team to seventh place in the standings and to the playoffs for the Scudetto fight that had been missing for the Reggians for five years. But the most notable achievement of this good moment is reaching the final of the FIBA Europe Cup, the second European basketball competition in terms of prestige, losing to Bahçeşehir Basketball after a heart-stopping first game.

Sports partnerships: not just basketball

The foundations for the future prove to be solid as UNAHOTELS Reggio Emilia’s gaze turns to the 2022/2023 season, which already sees the partnership with its title sponsor renewed, involving not only the first team but also the youth sector, in which to build the talents of the future. A collaboration that is now in its third year thanks to the understanding between the parties and the sharing of values such as passion, tenacity and ambition: at the centre, as always, is the closeness to the local territory and the desire to represent the Italian spirit at its best.

But the UNAHOTELS brand’s sporting partnerships are not limited to basketball and in the last few months of 2022 alone saw its participation in various initiatives: in June it was Hospitality Partner of the Milano Jumping Cup and in spring it joined the running world in the Acea Run Rome The Marathon and the Telepass Milano Marathon. From 31 March to 2 April, on the other hand, the fascinating Coppa Milano-Sanremo found a home for the second year running at Milano Verticale | UNA Esperienze, underlining the link between the group’s various brands and the spirit of Italian sport.