From the earlier proposed big venue MOA Arena, the crowd-drawing basketball competition of the 30th Southeast Asian Games that the country will host in November will now be played at the FilOil Flying V Centre.

Philippine Southeast Asian Games Organizing Committee Chief Operation Officer Tats Suzara in a radio interview on DZSR Sports Radio said that the San Juan venue is part of their contingency plan.

“In any multi-sport event talagang ganyan ang proseso especially when the venues are private owned. The challenge here is in Metro Manila kasi alam mo naman ang mga venues dito sa Manila ay Smart Araneta and MOA Arena are big venues na mahirap kuhanin,” said Suzara. “Again sanay naman tayo sa sports sa backup plan so we were able to find solutions.”

“As an update basketball will now be in FilOil Arena,” Suzara added.

The 5,500-capacity arena will host the 5-on-5 basketball tournament for men’s and women’s divisions. It has been the venue of UAAP, NCAA, PBA and other basketball leagues and serves as an arena for volleyball tournaments.

The Philippines copped the last 12 men’s basketball gold medals in the biennial meet. The Filipinos won 17 of the 19 editions of the event.

The PHI women’s team is still looking to capture the elusive gold medal.

The venue for the 3x3 tournament is yet to be finalized after it was initially proposed to be held at the SM MOA Activity center.

The PhilSports Arena in Pasig will host volleyball, another crowd-drawing sport.

Aside from basketball and volleyball, Suzara also gave an update on venue changes in other sports.

“The gymnastics will be in Rizal Coliseum sa gymnastics area nila. We will also request to use the badminton area sa gymnastics,” said Suzara.

The World Trade Center and PICC were the initially venues for the sport.

“For E-sports we were supposed to have the venue at Marriot Pasay but apparently the proposal Marriot gave us is impossible medyo tsina-charge ng napakamahal eh alam nyo naman ang SEA Games kailangan limited din ang budget natin. Now ang E-sports will now be looking for a venue that the organizing committee or PHISGOC can afford,” Suzara added.

Billiards will be played at the Manila Hotel tent while construction is ongoing for the venues for skateboard and cycling in Tagaytay.

“But despite of these delays we will continue to move forward and make sure that all of the venues are ready and confirmed," said Suzara.

The Congress’s bicameral committee slashed the SEA Games hosting budget, under the Philippine Sports Committee, from P7.5 billion to P5 billion but has yet to be released pending the approval of Senate and President Rodrigo Duterte.

This story originally appeared on the ABS-CBN Sports website.