Spor Toto

Beşiktaş had owned the Turkish men's handball title for so long that its end, in 2021, was the story: Spor Toto broke the run and took the Super League for the first time, then backed it up with the Super Cup the same year. The club that did it had spent most of its life under a different name and a different master.

It started in 1995 as Maliye Gençlik ve Spor Kulübü, a club run under the Ministry of Finance. In 2008 it became Maliye Milli Piyango Spor Kulübü, and the women's handball side used that decade well, taking four straight league titles from 2007 to 2010 along with a national cup. In 2019 the ministry link was cut and the state betting body Spor Toto took the club over, giving it the name it carries now.

The volleyball section has done its own share of the work: a men's cup win in 2021 and a run to third place in the CEV Challenge Cup in 2018, a rare European result for a Turkish club outside Halkbank or Fenerbahçe. Both sections play out of the Selim Sırrı Tarcan Sport Hall in Ankara, a 2,500-seat hall named after the man regarded as the founder of Turkish physical education.

None of it carries the weight of a fixed local rivalry — the club's matches against Beşiktaş, Fenerbahçe and Halkbank are competitive rather than personal, contests for titles rather than grudges. What holds the club's history together is less a rival than the ledger of names it has worn: a finance ministry side that became a lottery club, and then, four years ago, took the name of the organisation that runs the state's bets.