The NBA has its sights set on a European league, and it plans to use soccer, the continent’s most popular sport, to its advantage.
Proposed to start in the next couple of years, NBA Europe is in its advanced stages. First revealed this March, the latest plans are for a 16-team league, with 12 of those being permanent members.
Speaking earlier this month from a Front Office Sports summit in New York, NBA commissioner Adam Silver called a 2027 start “ambitious” but added, “I don’t think I’d want to go much longer than 2028. The opportunity is now to do something like this.”
The NBA, which is partnering with FIBA — the international governing body for basketball — hopes that the teams can represent a variety of demographics, from the basketball heartlands of eastern Europe to new markets and soccer teams in a multi-club model, all helping to capture some of what the NBA says is a $20 billion (£15bn) sports media market.
The Athletic spoke to George Aivazoglou, the head of NBA Europe, to learn more about the plans, basketball “Cinderella stories,” commercializing the game in Europe and creating streams for “sneakerheads.”
When it comes to sports in Europe, soccer is king, so it is no wonder the NBA is looking to tap into that game’s strong fan base.
Aivazoglou, who grew up in Greece and was appointed general manager for Europe and the Middle East last November, said three types of teams would be able to join the new European league: established teams, soccer clubs that want to expand into another sport and new teams.
Speaking ahead of the preseason gathering of the NBA’s board of governors in New York on Sep. 10, he said: “Existing basketball teams on the continent are very interested in participating and, in many cases, those basketball teams represent a multi-sport organization.”
This first type of club could include the likes of Real Madrid and Galatasaray, with whom Silver and his chief deputies met in July. Real Madrid play in the EuroLeague, Europe’s existing top-tier competition, but the team’s EuroLeague “A” license expires in 2026.
Existing soccer clubs that want to expand into other sports are the second type of teams that could be part of the league, Aivazoglou said.
“It’s a great opportunity for them to diversify and build a multi-sport proposition, which is very common in some countries of Europe, like Spain, Greece or Turkey and less common in others like the United Kingdom, but I think there’s genuine appetite there for us,” he said.
“What’s really interesting is that those clubs come with centuries of tradition over many decades, so they have built strong brands. Those brands are, in many cases, global brands and have appeal and fans all over the world.
“On the practical side, those (clubs) are run by operators who know how to fill arenas and build high-performing teams. In addition to the fan bases they’ve built, that is tremendous value they can offer to this league from day one.”
Olympiacos and Real Madrid compete in the EuroLeague. (Thomas COEX / AFP via Getty Images)
Publicly known discussions include those with Qatar Sports Investments, which owns soccer giant Paris Saint-Germain, about starting a new Parisian basketball team.
The French capital is already home to Paris Basketball, which plays in the EuroLeague and, as reported by The Athletic in February, has exclusive rights to play in Paris’ two arenas. Western European cities such as Paris, London, Manchester, Berlin and Rome bring great commercial appeal, according to Aivazoglou.
The UK, especially, home of the Premier League, is an untapped market. Despite basketball being the second-most popular team sport in the UK, with more than 1.5 million people playing weekly, according to public body Sport England, there has been no club from the UK in the EuroLeague since the 2001-02 season.
But it is unclear how easily soccer fans would associate with their club’s new basketball team and how much of a priority basketball teams would be within a multi-club setup.
“We could also see a scenario where in some cities, some completely new brands are created as part of this league, but I think the majority will be from a type-one or type-two program,” Aivazoglou said.
One downfall in the current European basketball system is the inability to qualify for its major competitions (EuroLeague, EuroCup) through strong domestic performance, Aivazoglou said.
The recently expanded 20-team EuroLeague is semi-closed with 12 permanent members (A-license holders), and other teams are handed wild cards to join based on past performance, financial standing or strategic importance to the league. EuroCup finalists are also granted EuroLeague qualification for the following year.
The NBA wants to include transparent routes of qualification, said Aivazoglou. Soccer — which has relegation and promotion in its European leagues and qualification to major European cup competitions via league placings — is never far from their thoughts, though Silver warned recently that “we don’t want a top-heavy league.”
“What you have in football is a very lean, singular pyramid that’s very easy to explain and understand to funds, media investors, prospective partners, and players,” Aivazoglou said.
“(In European basketball) success in the domestic league doesn’t necessarily mean qualification or opportunity to perform at a very high level across the continent in a pan-European way, and I think that’s a big miss because it diminishes the value of those domestic leagues, but it also doesn’t allow the multitude of teams from around the ecosystem to dream, to have their own Cinderella story. Leicester winning the Premier League a few years back was a fantastic story.”
Star players, such as LeBron James and Steph Curry, help the NBA’s marketability. Europe’s NBA league is unlikely to have such recognizable names, as top talent will still filter to the NBA, but it could keep emerging stars in Europe for longer.
European basketball is widely regarded as a strong product, with passionate fan bases and physical, unselfish basketball. This past season, more than three million spectators attended EuroLeague games, with an average of 10,589 fans per game, marking the fourth-straight season of record-breaking attendance.
Luka Dončić played for Real Madrid in the EuroLeague and was named MVP in 2018. (Andrej Isakovic / AFP via Getty Images)
“This is not about changing the tradition of how the game is being played. It needs to remain very native and authentic, but it needs to be thought through some new lenses to ensure that we attract an audience that’s beyond the hardcore basketball fan, but also the new generations whose behavior and consumption patterns change drastically around the world,” Aivazoglou said.
“When you get into the broadcast or the distribution of the game, we would go very deep into personalization. I can imagine a world where there’s multiple streams in multiple languages. Maybe there are some streams for those who like the pure side of the game, another for those who like placing bets, a third for sneakerheads. You could have avatars of players, a very gamified version. These are some high-level examples.”
The NBA estimates that, despite basketball being the second-most popular sport in Europe, with 270 million fans, the sport captures less than one percent of Europe’s $20 billion-plus sports media market, data provided to the league by SportsBusiness and ratified by the Financial Times and Insider Sport.
“The current European landscape doesn’t monetize basketball fandom very well,” said Aivazoglou. “This results in clubs not being able to incentivise their top talents to stay.”
So much so, they are being outdone by not just the NBA, but American colleges, which since 2021 can offer name, image, and likeness (NIL) packages. The EuroLeague’s youngest scorer at 15 years, 10 months and six days, Neoklis Avdalas, who is now 19, left Panathinaikos and committed to the Virginia Tech Hokies this summer.
Nick Nurse played and coached in England. (Alex Goodlett / Getty Images)
Nick Nurse, head coach of the Philadelphia 76ers, spent time in England as a head coach and player in the 1990s and 2000s, winning two British championships and coaching the now-defunct London Towers in the EuroLeague.
While at Manchester’s Basketball Without Borders camp in August, Nurse told The Athletic: “With the NBA behind it, it gives them (Europe) an instant level of super-high credibility. A lot of leagues around the world struggle to get advertising, media, fans, etc., but the NBA has that marketing machine that creates a lot of that stuff, and it will give people something really solid to believe in.”
Despite NFL and NBA games in Europe being regular sell-outs, the name alone is not a guarantee of a successful league on the continent, as shown by the NFL’s failed NFL Europe league that ceased in 2007.
With the EuroLeague already established in the region, the NBA will have to go head-to-head with it or find a resolution. This could unsettle the existing EuroLeague fanbase.
In conversation with The Athletic’s Mike Vorkunov, EuroLeague CEO Paulius Motiejūnas said they were keeping their options open for an investment from the NBA. The league organization has sought private equity investment through the sale of a minority stake.
“I repeat it and I said it before: We don’t need a new league. We are doing really good. The league is growing,” Motiejūnas said. “We’re happy to go and do it together with NBA and continuously use their power to grow the basketball in Europe. So we’re open to that.”
However, the NBA successfully runs the biggest basketball league in the world, as well as the WNBA, G League and NBA Africa.
Aivazoglou said: “I hope we establish European basketball from a sporting competitive level at the top, almost on par, in terms of interest as European football.
“We want to create a new era, an innovative product that would attract audiences from all over the world and across all demographics, not just hardcore basketball fans, who would also be very happy watching it. And (we hope) to ensure that the development of the talent grows even stronger, and ensure that the value that gets created gets redistributed to the European basketball ecosystem so that it continues to improve.”
(Top photo of George Aivazoglou courtesy of the NBA)