The men’s tournament will be joined by a total of 12 teams – Montenegro will celebrate their debut in the competition – divided into three groups of four teams each; four round-robin tournaments per Pool will be played in June and early July with the first-ranked team of each prelim Pool plus the organizer (Turkey) eventually making it to the final four. If the organizer of the final four is one of the first-ranked teams at the end of the prelims, the second-ranked side with the best score across all Pools will qualify for the final four.
The composition of the Pools for the men’s competition – determined by taking into account the European ranking as well as the way teams were assigned to the prelims in the past seasons – reads as follows:
Pool A: Slovakia, Belgium, Austria, Denmark
Pool B: Spain, Czech Republic, Montenegro, Hungary
Pool C: Turkey, Portugal, Israel, Belarus
The calendar of the League Round reads as follows:
June 13-16: tournaments in AUT, HUN, and BLR
June 20-23: tournaments in DEN, ESP, and ISR
June 27-30: tournaments in BEL, MNE, and TUR
July 4-7: tournaments in SVK, CZE, and POR
The final four – to be played in Bursa, Turkey – is scheduled for July 13-14, 2013.