Advertising mogul Eyal Homsky is now the main man in charge of Hapoel Jerusalem after Ori Allon decided to step away from the club. In five years at the helm, Allon’s Reds won 2 championships and competed both domestically and in Europe admirably appending in the EuroCup semifinals in the 2016/17 campaign.

Together with CEO/GM Guy Harel, Homsky will take charge of the team in all aspects from player selection to selling season tickets and more. The pair held an evening where they unveiled the new ownership structure and discussed many of the changes that would take place over the upcoming year while also paying tribute to Ori Allon, “Ori Allon made a tremendous contribution to Israeli Basketball. We should hang up a banner in his honor. All of the partners received Ori’s shares and many have requested to remain anonymous. I along with Guy Harel will be making the decisions whereas beforehand Ori was involved.“

Homsky continued, “We’re entering a period of modesty and we made mistakes that we have to correct. I hope that in the coming years we will make less mistakes. The budget will be less than this year but it will be very close to this past season. Hapoel Jerusalem will still have the 2nd highest budget in the league by far. The drop will be no more than 10-15%. We will battle for all of the available titles. Jerusalem will battle in Europe and we will look into why we failed to do so this season. I received many offers from investors to join the team but at this point there is no interest to add any.”

The new managing partner concluded, “The Hapoel Jerusalem brand is the most important thing to me and my dream is to see the whole arena filled with season ticket holders. It will take a few years but we will get there. As for trying to get into the Euroleague, we were naive.”

Jerusalem CEO Guy Harel also spoke to the press about the various changes, “The budget cuts will be on the player side only. Oded Katash will remain as the coach coach as he has a contract through next season. We need to bring players who are hungry and we will do things a bit more intelligently than in the past.”

Harel summed up the European competition issue as well as the potential return of Stat, “We led the EuroCup in attendance and TV rights and we thought that would help us get into the Euroleague. FIBA is an option and we will make a decision over the next few days. As for Amare Stoudemire there is a chance that he will return to play for Jerusalem.”