The day after the NBA brought a regular-season game to the O2, a different room in London hosted a different kind of audience. 250 invite-only guests gathered at the Raffles Hotel for private briefings on the NBA’s plans for Europe.
In one sense, the event worked. Not because a league was announced, or because clubs signed up on the spot, but because the room was full of capital ready to participate.
Aris Barkas of Eurohoops captured the problem with a single line:
Funds can’t play basketball.
A league can be drawn up on paper. Cities can be selected, arenas mapped, formats modelled, and entry prices floated. You can fill a room with investors who want exposure to sport. But eventually someone has to run a club. Eventually someone has to play basketball.
Finding Twelve Clubs
The NBA and FIBA are developing a 16-team league, built around twelve permanent franchises plus four places determined through qualification.
Those twelve permanent places are the pitch. They offer investors stability, give broadcasters continuity, and let sponsors buy into something that does not change shape every season.
Speaking to La Gazzetta dello Sport, NBA Europe director Giorgos Aivazoglou laid out a set of target cities for the league:
| City | Country |
|---|---|
| London | United Kingdom |
| Manchester | United Kingdom |
| Paris | France |
| Lyon | France |
| Milan | Italy |
| Rome | Italy |
| Berlin | Germany |
| Munich | Germany |
| Madrid | Spain |
| Barcelona | Spain |
| Athens | Greece |
| Istanbul | Türkiye |
*Cities listed in the order mentioned by Aivazoglou
In his Ball in Europe breakdown, Emmet Ryan focuses on the economics. The shortlist favours spending power over basketball tradition.
Investors Are Already There
The NBA does not struggle to attract capital. Joe Vardon of The Athletic reported a room that included representatives from Lazard, Rothschild, Sixth Street, Blackstone, Artos, and BC Partners.
Representatives from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund were also present. Along with persistent rumours of interest from the UAE and Qatar, NBA Europe may become the next step in the league’s growing ties to the Middle East.
The bet is that European basketball has untapped commercial value. As NBA commissioner Adam Silver puts it:
If I thought that EuroLeague had reached the ceiling of its potential in terms of fan interest, I wouldn’t be devoting so much time to this project.
But money does not solve the hard part. It cannot replace history, and it cannot buy a fanbase.
The Real Madrid Shortcut
The NBA does not seem to be aiming for twelve new franchises built from scratch. It wants clubs that arrive with their own audience.
ALBA Berlin and ASVEL Lyon are established clubs in two of the cities the NBA wants. Both have been linked to NBA Europe. They help fill the league, but they do not change how it is perceived.
Real Madrid would. They would bring attention and relevance from day one. Whether they commit is one of the biggest open questions of the project.
Even in the best case, that is still only a handful of existing clubs, with the rest of the permanent twelve still to be found or built.
Who Actually Runs the Clubs?
Manchester Basketball’s owner Ben Pierson told City AM that the franchise question is not only who can pay, but who can run a club day-to-day.
There’s a lot of capital out there, people who are not operators themselves; they want to put the capital to work, but they don’t want to be on the front lines operating the sports franchise.
That is what NBA Europe needs in each market: someone who can turn investment into a club that can put a team on the floor.
How Many New Clubs Is Too Many?
The investors are interested. Now NBA Europe has to assemble the league itself — twelve permanent clubs with people behind them who can run them.
If too many of the permanent twelve are built from scratch, NBA Europe will spend its early years trying to persuade fans that it matters. Real Madrid makes that easier. So do established clubs that can put on games from day one.
Funds can’t play basketball. Someone still has to.
