These are decisive hours for the future of European basketball. EuroLeague shareholders are meeting in Barcelona, and in the next few hours they will sit down with FIBA and the NBA. What\u2019s going on? Let\u2019s take stock.<\/p>\n
Suddenly, the situation has heated up. In mid-September, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver was at best cautious about the league\u2019s plans for a European launch: \u201cStarting in 2027 would undoubtedly be ambitious, but I wouldn\u2019t want to go much beyond 2028. The opportunity for such a move is now.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n In short, everything and nothing. Yet the foundations are significant. One in six current NBA players is European; Serbian star Nikola Joki\u0107 and Greek forward Giannis Antetokounmpo have won five of the last seven MVP awards; Luka Don\u010di\u0107 and Victor Wembanyama dominate the headlines. As Silver noted: \u201cBasketball is probably the fastest-growing sport in the world right now, and it\u2019s the second most popular sport in Europe after football. So I think there\u2019s a real opportunity.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n By mid-September, though, the words were still ahead of the facts. Then, out of the blue, George Aivazoglou, the NBA\u2019s SVP and Managing Director for Europe and the Middle East, based in the league\u2019s London office, raised the stakes.<\/p>\n The 1980-born executive from Thessaloniki, who grew up idolizing Nikos Galis, gave a genuine scoop to L\u2019\u00c9quipe<\/strong>, dramatically upping the urgency of the moment: \u201cThe launch is set for October 2027. We are working on a league with 16 franchises, 12 permanent and 4 qualifying from other competitions, with the Basketball Champions League as the main pathway.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n To be clear, most of this had been rumored before \u2014 but moving from whispers on blogs to a major European daily is no small leap. \u201cWe take inspiration from football\u2019s Champions League and Europa League,\u201d<\/em> Aivazoglou said. \u201cIt\u2019s easy to understand and rewards performance on the court. We want to leave room for Cinderella stories, like Leicester\u2019s.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n A small caveat here: Claudio Ranieri\u2019s Leicester City famously won the Premier League<\/strong>, not the Champions League, where true Cinderella stories have been rare \u2014 perhaps Porto\u2019s triumph in 2004 was the last.<\/p>\n Still, the message is clear: the NBA wants to build, not simply transplant. \u201cWe are still exploring different options. The simplest idea is a round-robin format, where everyone plays everyone else, followed by playoffs and finals. It is likely we\u2019ll play under European rules, since teams will continue competing in their national leagues.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n That interview acted as a trigger \u2014 revealing and activating. For anyone who still didn\u2019t grasp it, Hapoel Tel Aviv\u2019s president Ofer Yannay spelled it out: \u201cI believe NBA Europe is now at the door, and that EuroLeague is not reacting quickly enough to adapt to the changes.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Beneath the surface, a lot is happening. Yesterday, EuroLeague shareholders met in Barcelona, and talks continued today. Tomorrow in Geneva comes the summit with the NBA at FIBA headquarters \u2014 as reported and confirmed by ROM<\/strong> and Sportando<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Three days of full-immersion meetings for Europe\u2019s basketball leaders, underlining how heated the moment has become. EuroLeague simply lacks the means to fend off an NBA incursion, especially given that Real Madrid, Barcelona, Fenerbah\u00e7e, and ASVEL already appear to have one foot out the door.<\/p>\n Strategies are being woven; choices must be made. Or rather, shareholders must decide which shoe to put their foot in \u2014 because there won\u2019t be enough shoes for everyone. As of today, according to our information, Greece, Serbia, and Lithuania are left out of the NBA Europe project by the league\u2019s own design, which prefers to focus on multisport clubs already tied to football \u2014 such as Real Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern Munich, and Maccabi Tel Aviv \u2014 and to create others in new markets like the UK (London, but also Manchester and Rome), while not forgetting Berlin, Paris, and Milan.<\/p>\n Olimpia Milano appears to be part of this picture, as reported in recent months by reputable US sources. Whether it will join under its current ownership or in partnership with RedBird\u2013Milan remains to be seen.<\/p>\n Will the cards be laid on the table tomorrow in Geneva? That\u2019s unclear. But you don\u2019t need to be a scientist to see that the NBA is holding the strong hand \u2014 one that could overturn the table, make EuroLeague disappear, and claim everything.<\/p>\n Consider the lucrative existing TV deal with Prime, the world\u2019s leading streaming company. Or the possibility of involving a couple of European clubs in the NBA\u2019s in-season Cup. And don\u2019t forget that EuroLeague Basketball has generated virtually zero financial return since launching its so-called \u201cNew Era\u201d in 2016 \u2014 which may soon become \u201cOld.\u201d We might find out as soon as tomorrow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" These are decisive hours for the future of European basketball. EuroLeague shareholders are meeting in Barcelona, and in the next few hours they will sit down with FIBA and the NBA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":146,"featured_media":463319,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_spbk_hide_featured":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[199,399],"tags":[],"rumors":[],"typology":[],"posizionamento":[],"class_list":["post-463321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-euroleague","category-nba"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2025\/10\/Nba-EuroLeague.png","digistream_id":0,"digistream":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/146"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=463321"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463321\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/463319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=463321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=463321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=463321"},{"taxonomy":"rumors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rumors?post=463321"},{"taxonomy":"typology","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/typology?post=463321"},{"taxonomy":"posizionamento","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posizionamento?post=463321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}