Euroleague announced the seeds for 2009/2010 season draw which will be held in Barcelona on July 8. Twenty two teams with guaranteed places in the group stage and two team that will eanr their places through qualifying rounds have been put in six seeds with four teams in each of them.
The seeds are as follows:
| 1st seed | Panathinaikos | CSKA Moscow | Barcelona | Olympiacos |
| 2nd seed | Real Madrid | TAU Ceramica | Partizan | Montepaschi |
| 3rd seed | AJ Milano | Maccabi | Unicaja | Cibona |
| 4th seed | Asseco Prokom | Lottomatica | Fenerbahce | Efes Pilsen |
| 5th seed | Zalgiris | Lietuvos Rytas | Olimpija | Khimki |
| 6th seed | Oldenburg | ASVEL | QR Winner | QR Winner |
The rules of the draw are explained on www.euroleague.net :
REGULAR SEASON DRAW CRITERIA & PROCEDURE
GROUP DRAW
The draw will be held according to seeds.
* The 22 directly qualified teams will be divided into six seeds with four teams in each, in accordance with the final standings in the 2008-09 season in: Euroleague, Eurocup, National Competitions as follows.
* Starting with the 1 Seeds, teams who are repeating their participation in Euroleague are placed first, according to the team ranking in the 2008-09 Euroleague season.
* Next are the teams that have participated in the 2008-09 Eurocup season, according to the team ranking in this competition.
* Finally the teams that did not participate in any ULEB competition in 2008-09 are placed. The order in which they appear is based upon the team ranking in Euroleague of the team from their country that did not qualify to participate in 2009-10.
* Slots for Qualifying Rounds will be placed in the 6 Seeds.
GROUP DRAW RESTRICTIONS
The restriction when drawing the teams into groups is the following:
* 2 teams from the same country cannot coincide in the same Regular Season group.
* If after the Qualifying Rounds, a team qualified is from a country where there is already a representative in the same group, it will trade places with the other qualified team as long as this does not produce the same scenario.
GROUP DRAW PROCEDURE
* Teams will be drawn one by one from an urn containing only those in the same Seed, from the 1 Seeds through to the 6 Seeds, until all 24 have been selected.
* For each spot drawn, the urn will be emptied and refilled with only those teams from the level drawn, taking into consideration any restrictions.
* In the Regular Season, teams from the same country may not coincide in the same group, except the case of teams coming from the Qualifying Rounds.
Therefore, when drawing teams from the 2 Seeds through to the 6 Seeds, only those teams from a country different than the ones already drawn into the Group will be placed in the urn.
* e.g.1. If a spot is to be drawn into a Group where there is already a team from a specific country, the teams from the country in question will not be placed in the urn.
* e.g.2. If a spot is to be drawn into a Group and a certain team(s) cannot be drawn in a later Group, this team(s) will be the only ones placed in the urn.
* A team may be placed directly into a Group in order to follow the restrictions mentioned above.
Drawing the teams as explained above, will allow all restrictions to be respected and will eliminate all possibilities of a blocked situation.
CALENDAR DRAW
A random computer draw will determine the final position of teams within their group.
* The pairings calendar for the Regular Season will be drawn electronically by allocating numbers from 1 to 6 to the teams of each group. This will establish the match-ups for the entire Regular Season.
* The Regular Season games will be held according to the following chart:
1st Competition Date 6-3 4-2 5-1 6th Competition Date
2nd Competition Date 1-6 2-5 3-4 7th Competition Date
3rd Competition Date 6-4 5-3 1-2 8th Competition Date
4th Competition Date 6-2 3-1 4-5 9th Competition Date
5th Competition Date 5-6 1-4 2-3 10th Competition Date
Non-Coincidence Numbers: (when one team plays at home, the other plays away) 1 with 4; 2 with 6; 3 with 5.
CALENDAR DRAW RESTRICTIONS
* Specific numbers will be allocated to the teams participating in the Euroleague Opening Game, if necessary.
* Teams playing in the same city/arena: The non-coincidence numbers will be allocated to teams that play in the same city/arena, so that when one team plays at home the other will play away.
EUROLEAGUE QUALIFYING ROUNDS DRAW CRITERIA & PROCEDURE
The Qualifying Rounds will be divided in two phases, QR1 and QR2.
QUALIFYING ROUND 1
There will be a seeded draw. Seeded teams will play the second game at home.
The criteria used for assigning the seeded teams is based on the country ranking used for the allocation of teams with Lic. B and the four teams ranked higher will be the seeded teams.
PROCEDURE
* The draw will be conducted with two different urns. One of the urns will have the seeded teams and the other urn the unseeded teams. Seeded teams will be drawing first.
* As a team has been drawn, it will be placed directly in the next available spot in the bracket, starting with QR1A up to QR1D.
QUALIFYING ROUND 2
Teams with a higher seed position granting access to the QR1 will play the second game at home.
