By Joe Vardon, Adam Crafton and Mike Vorkunov
NEW YORK — The NBA will explore starting a new pro basketball league in Europe with FIBA — the international governing body for basketball — as its partner, NBA commissioner Adam Silver said Thursday.
The Athletic reported Wednesday that Silver planned to pitch the NBA board of governors his early sketches of building a new European league as early as 2026. On Thursday, Silver further detailed those plans and said he anticipates the new league would have 16 teams, with 12 of them permanent clubs. The league is also expected to include deep-pocketed investors, some defectors from the established EuroLeague and new franchises in major markets like Paris and London.
Silver’s presentation in New York came after months of preliminary talks with existing European club teams, potential investors — including owners of mega soccer franchises on the continent — and FIBA.
“We feel now is the time to move to that next stage,” Silver said Thursday. “At our board meeting today, there was enthusiastic support from our club owners about continuing to explore this opportunity.”
Silver said he would want a salary cap system in place for the new league and that current NBA owners would own equity in the league but not in individual clubs.
There are no deals yet between the NBA and, well, anyone, two high-placed league officials told The Athletic. Silver is, essentially, looking for permission from his bosses (the NBA’s 30 owners) to move forward in making a new league happen.
“It’s early days,” Silver said Thursday. “So literally nothing has been agreed upon yet. We’re still in the modeling, exploratory stage. One thing I know is important is we want to honor the tradition of European sport.”
“The process is just beginning,” one high-ranking NBA official said.
Though planning is still in its early stages, Silver’s effort has advanced enough for Andreas Zagklis, secretary general of FIBA, who is based just outside of Geneva, to travel to New York for the board of governors’ meeting. Zagklis was not part of Silver’s initial presentation, but was able to answer governors’ questions.
Silver outlined what the contours of the league could look like if it comes to fruition. Aside from a combination of an open and closed system that will have permanent franchises and teams that can play their way in, the commissioner said he believes the games themselves would hue to European basketball, not the NBA. He anticipates 40-minute games and a FIBA style of play.
“To the extent we have the ability to do a league from scratch, how would we do things differently?”
Silver and the NBA have been building up to this for months. He spent several days in Paris in January meeting with potential stakeholders in the league and people across European basketball. Afterward, he said the league’s March board meeting would prove decisive in the league’s path forward.
No vote is expected Thursday, but if Silver gets approval to continue, his new European league would include a mix of rights-holding franchises and slots for teams to play their way in by performing well in their national league or FIBA’s Basketball Champions League.
The league’s funding model would be expected to include league ownership stakes for team investors, sources involved in the discussions said, but a high-ranking NBA official called recent reports of a $500 million buy-in to the new league “pure speculation.”
Sources on both sides of the Atlantic with knowledge of the NBA’s early talks are watching four existing EuroLeague franchises — Real Madrid, Barca Barcelona, ASVEL Basket of Villeurbanne, of which former NBA superstar Tony Parker is team president, and Fenerbahçe Istanbul — as potential defectors to Silver’s league. Two EuroLeague sources say that no clubs have yet told the EuroLeague of their intent to leave. ASVEL, through Parker, has been speaking to the NBA as a conduit between the two sides. Parker did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.
Adam Silver talks with then-San Antonio Spurs point guard Tony Parker in 2014. (Soobum Im / USA Today via Imagn Images)
Silver and Zagklis were both asked if current EuroLeague teams could potentially be a part of the league and they did not deny it could be a possibility.
“All clubs that play in Europe are FIBA clubs,” Zagklis said. “They play in their national championships, they play in their national clubs and some of them play in that competition and some of them own a piece of that. Our role … is to unite the basketball ecosystem. We have tried it in the past, we are trying it now, and we will continue trying it… FIBA is here for everyone. We want our top tier clubs to make more money, to be sustainable, because the majority of them are not.”
A new team could emerge in the Paris market, owned by Qatar Sports Investments, which owns soccer giant Paris Saint-Germain. The 2024 Olympic host city already counts as its own Paris Basketball, which plays in the French national league and the EuroLeague, and has home games at both of the city’s large basketball arenas.
“QSI has been approached with regards to a basketball franchise in Paris in relation to which we have expressed an interest,” a spokesman for QSI said.
The NBA is considering placing franchises in other major markets across Europe, including in cities where current pro franchises already exist, like London, Manchester, Berlin and Munich.
The London market, or more broadly, the United Kingdom, is another place where the NBA could attract big soccer dollars from Middle Eastern sovereign funds. Manchester City’s multibillion-dollar soccer franchise is owned by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, through the Abu Dhabi United Group out of the United Arab Emirates. The chairman of Manchester City is another Emirati, Khaldoon Al Mubarak, whose brother, Mohamed Khalifa Al Mubarak, runs the Abu Dhabi Department of Culture and Tourism.
The Al Mubarak family has expressed interest in NBA ownership, though sovereign wealth funds currently cannot own more than 20 percent of any NBA franchise.
A new basketball league in Europe would face immediate competition from the EuroLeague, widely considered the second-best basketball competition in the world after the NBA. The NBA tried to partner with the EuroLeague in the past, but the EuroLeague rejected those advances, according to multiple NBA and EuroLeague sources briefed on the conversations. The EuroLeague is in a state of uncertainty as European basketball executives wonder how the NBA would impact its future.
For years, FIBA and the existing EuroLeague have clashed over issues ranging from the scheduling of national team events during EuroLeague seasons to how the continental league is run. Silver, meanwhile, has long been interested in European soccer and has cited an untapped marketing potential for basketball on the continent. Though the economics of European basketball are not considered to be strong, and the NBA could enter a potentially fragmented marketplace, Silver has been bullish about its chances.
“I recognize there’s enormous history and tradition here in European basketball, and we want to respect those traditions,” Silver said in Paris in January. “Obviously, the United States is used to closed leagues; Europe is used to open leagues with promotion, relegation, etc. So we’re looking at all those facets.
“But having had this long history from our operation of sports leagues, largely in the United States and a little bit elsewhere, seeing what’s happened in Europe, not just in basketball but in soccer, as well, it gives us the opportunity to say, all right, let’s take a fresh look; what are the most effective practices for creating a commercially viable league.”
(Top photo: Stephanie Lecocq / Reuters via USA Today Network via Imagn Images)
