AN NBA LEAGUE IS COMING TO EUROPE, COULD FOOTBALL HOLD THE KEY?
THe nba wants to expand its power & influence on the basketball world
Last week the NBA announced the latest series of games to be played in Europe across the next 3 seasons, starting with this writer’s Orlando Magic (yyeesss!!!) against the Memphis Grizzlies in Berlin and London next year, with games in Paris, Manchester and back to Berlin to follow. The games were announced in the same week as NBA Commissioner Adam Silver met with Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Mayor of London Sadiq Khan in London, as well as a host of potential partners for what’s increasingly making noise and building momentum in basketball circles, launching an NBA Europe league.
This could be a reality in the next few years and will shake up the existing European basketball structure. I think we could see some interesting partners enter the sport and I’d be watching some of Europe’s elite football teams to get involved.
Basketball is massive in Europe. It might not scale the heights of football but the EuroLeague is full of fanatics and ultra’s with a decent standard of competition. Three of the best players in the NBA are European with Nikola Jokić and Giannis Antetokounmpo winning 5 of the last 7 league MVPs. Luka Dončić will likely win at least one in his career. Beyond the MVP level, European players make an impact on their teams and 14% of rosters last season had one on them.
Europe offers the NBA a chance to grow the game further and ultimately, their power and revenue. For years the talk has been of expansion coming from potential teams in either Las Vegas, Mexico City or fixing previous wrongs with Seattle coming back. To do so means current teams have to give up a slice of the pie when it comes to the league’s commercial revenue. Despite each existing team receiving a portion of any expansion fee a new team has to pay for entry, this isn’t satisfying owners who have to split revenue with more teams at a time when the NBA has just signed its newest record breaking TV deal, worth a total of $75 billion over the next 11 years with Disney, Amazon and NBC.
In recent months talk has cooled on North American expansion and conversations with potential partners in Europe to get a league going have picked up momentum, causing all sorts of rumours and potential scenarios for what an already fragmented landscape could look like in Europe.
Last year the O2 hosted some Olympic warm up games including Team USA vs Team Germany
THE Game in Europe
FIBA governs the sport of basketball worldwide and runs their own competition called the Basketball Champions League, but that doesn’t include the calibre of teams you see in the privately owned EuroLeague’s tier 1 and tier 2 competitions where they can count on European heavyweights like Real Madrid, Olympiacos and Fenerbahçe. The EuroLeague stands to lose more if their marquee teams defect to NBA Europe.
In May, an openness to working together was declared after talks between all three parties, brokered by NBA legend Tony Parker, now owner of ASVEL, a French basketball club in the EuroLeague who would be a shoe-in for this new venture. Naturally the EuroLeague wants to keep its power, but there’s little incentive for Silver and the NBA to make all this noise, just to lend some support. They want control and don’t feel as if the current stakeholders in the European game are doing enough.
“We think that the commercial opportunity has not kept pace with the growth of the game” on the continent, and his goal was “to create a larger commercial opportunity, and not just because commercial opportunity suggests you can grow revenue but because we believe that with markets, if you can create proper incentives, you can get significant additional investment, and ultimately, that’s the way to grow the game at all levels.” Silver told The Athletic.
basketball x football
One of the potential partners who the NBA met with last week was Real Madrid, EuroLeague’s biggest club. If they sign up to this new NBA Europe League, the floodgates will open.
They fall under the same umbrella as the football team and the power of the Real Madrid brand means the basketball team has one of the biggest budgets. Other basketball teams like Barcelona, Olympiacos, Panathinaikos, Fenerbahçe and Bayern Munich are all part of the same umbrella as their equivalent football teams and would all be expected to join any NBA Europe League.
Other existing basketball teams will follow, while I’ll be watching closely how these multi-sport clubs could be the model and key to where some of the newer teams come from. Particularly with football having so many American and Middle East investors who also have involvement with basketball.
PSG made waves when they linked up with the Jordan brand
Red Bird Capital owns AC Milan and while there is a Milan basketball team, Olympic Milano, the American investment firm were one of the groups the NBA cohort met last week and would indicate a potential AC Milan basketball team. Basketball is big in Milan and it’s the only city in Europe that has a Jordan World of Flight store. The Jordan brand made waves with its first of a kind partnership with Paris St. Germain, so it would be a no-brainer for an eventual basketball team to be formed under the French team’s umbrella with Silver having already met with their owners, Qatar Sports Investments. In June this year, Kevin Durant increased his stake in PSG and would consult on future basketball plans.
Silver is keen for London and Manchester to be involved and NBA Europe was a key topic of discussion when he met Starmer and Khan. There are already existing teams in each city, but this doesn’t mean the London Lions or Manchester Giants would necessarily take those spots.
You can’t escape American investment in the Premier League and the majority owners of Arsenal (Kroenke Sports & Entertainment) and Chelsea (Todd Boehly) are both involved with a number of US sports franchises including NBA teams. The former with the 2023 NBA Champions Denver Nuggets and the latter with the LA Lakers.
Liverpool’s owners the Fenway Sports Group own the Boston Red Sox in baseball, but don’t appear to be interested in basketball given they weren’t an expected bidder when the Celtic’s were recently up for sale. But, they do have Lebron James involved in their Liverpool ownership. Along the M62 in Manchester, the owners of the blue side of the City are involved with basketball in Abu Dhabi and want to get more involved globally.
An Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool or Manchester City basketball team might seem too far fetched for more traditional fans, I can almost hear the talkSPORT rage now. We’ve never had the multi-sport club structure like a lot of European clubs have had for decades. However, as football continues its growth as a cultural lifestyle entity and continues to make links with the original cultural lifestyle sport basketball, don’t be surprised if interests start merging.
Basketball is the second most popular participation team sport in England with more than 1.5 million people playing at least twice a month, but the domestic game can often be found in a state of turmoil through investment issues and politics at the top. One can only imagine how the power of the NBA brand could help elevate the domestic game into the wider consciousness in the UK.
what the nba brings
Lebron James holds a small stake in Liverpool via FSG
With the power and influence of the NBA behind the league, you can expect bigger TV deals and commercial opportunities. Existing NBA teams in North America will have more opportunities for growing fanbases in Europe beyond the odd regular season visit, with games or tournaments between the respective league’s champions or top teams.
This new NBA Europe league is said to offer teams ownership of the league and could be where the more entrepreneurial players like Lebron James and Kevin Durant become involved. Could a marque name like that play in the league to really help launch it? That might be a stretch given the stage of their careers and the progress needed to be made to make this league a reality.
I would expect bigger salaries available than what the existing European league’s offer and attract a better calibre of NBA players than they do currently. Real Madrid just signed Chuma Okeke as their marquee signing, a player that was out of the regular NBA playing rotation. If the NBA Europe league was here this summer, I think current free agents like Russell Westbrook, Ben Simmons and Cam Thomas would all be considering offers and some players will start looking at multi-year deals in Europe, over a one year minimum in North America.
The bright lights and heavyweight status of the NBA is going to have real powers of persuasion with the existing elite European basketball teams and potential partners. In the last few weeks it’s become clear this is the flight of direction for any NBA expansion and the pace will soon pick up if they want to get something started in the next few years. Once the NBA decides they want to do something, there is no stopping them and while purists might not want the game in Europe touched, there’s no doubt in my mind that their involvement is only going to grow the game from participation to the general sports fan’s interest.