Olympiacos brings the atmosphere to the FanZone Press Conference

The 2023 Turkish Airlines EuroLeague Final Four Press Conference took place at the FanZone on Thursday lunchtime, and one team's presence stood out more than the rest. While there were representatives of the Final Four teams on the stage, there was already a sizeable contingent of Olympiacos's supporters both inside and outside the venue.

In fact, the chants from the Reds fans' outside on the street could be heard inside the venue, leading to a funny question from one reporter, who asked AS Monaco's Mike James what he thought. "It's fun. It's nice to have fans, I guess," James responded with a grin on his face.

In this new format for the press conference, which also featured questions posed by fans on social media and saw a surprise reveal for the MVP award, some specially selected supporters were also able to attend the event and watch on from an elevated stand. Speaking after the event, one Olympiacos fan gave his thoughts on the experience:

"We found it by luck. We were roaming the EuroLeague website and we found that we could register for this one. It's amazing," he said. "It's really nice that the EuroLeague this year set a whole bunch of seats for fans in order to experience the whole thing and get into the spirit of the press conference. Of course, it was very good to see Sasha [Vezenkov] win the MVP award, Coach [Georgios] Bartzokas to win the Best Coach Award this year, because we are from Greece and we've come here for Olympiacos. We're season ticket holders in Greece, so I would say that we're very enthusiastic about the sport. It's really nice, the setting. We see it happening in the next years, of course. Since it's our first touch with the whole organization and the Final Four this year, we expect it to be really, really well produced and the experience to be shared with our kids, our grandkids and whoever comes our way."

Outside, a group of Olympiacos supporters were there waiting for Coach Bartzokas, Papanikolaou and Vezenkov to leave, and Bartzokas even posed for a photo with the fans before heading back to the team's hotel. The atmosphere provided by the travelling Olympiacos supporters is likely to be a sign of things to come, as the Reds are expected to have the largest group of fans at the 2023 Final Four.