Way-too-early betting favourites to win the 2026/27 EuroLeague

By Eurohoops team / info@eurohoops.net

A sweep of Monaco in the quarterfinals gave way to a 79-61 demolition of defending champions Fenerbahce in the Final Four semifinal at the Telekom Center in Athens, and two days later came the coronation itself. 

Evan Fournier scored 20 points and was named Final Four MVP as the Thrylos beat Real Madrid 92-85 in the championship game, with Alec Peters adding 16, Vezenkov 12, and Thomas Walkup 10, while Los Blancos were made to rue Andres Feliz’s missed three that would have tied it. 

Olympiacos have carried three lost finals — 2015, 2017 and 2023 — for a long time, but they finally exorcised that history in the most emphatic way possible, becoming the first-ever regular-season top seed to win the EuroLeague since the round-robin format was introduced in 2016-17. 

Georgios Bartzokas, who also coached the club to its 2013 crown, picked up his second championship, but what do the bookies think of his side’s hopes of becoming the first champion in five years to successfully go back-to-back? Here are the four way-too-early favourites to win the EuroLeague next season. 

Panathinaikos – 3/1 

Panathinaikos are the most decorated club in EuroLeague history, and as such, it should come as no surprise to see online betting sites list them as the favourites to reign supreme next term. The early basketball betting at Bovada odds ahead of the 2026/27 season make the Trifýlli a narrow 3/1 frontrunner to claim a second title in four seasons. 

Last season had the Greek giants believing once again — until a 0-2 series lead over Valencia shockingly evaporated, and a 22-16 seventh-place finish ended in an 81-64 no-show in Game 5, the kind of collapse that makes a fanbase start asking uncomfortable questions. The answer, apparently, was to blow the whole thing up and bring home Zeljko Obradovic. 

Fourteen years after the Serbian last coached in Athens, the most decorated coach the competition has ever seen is back on the bench, and just the announcement changed the temperature around the club overnight. Guerschon Yabusele walked away from an NBA rotation spot to play for him. Isaac Bonga won a recruitment battle that reportedly had half the league calling him. Sylvain Francisco lasted less than a month at ASVEL before Panathinaikos paid his buyout. 

Panathinaikos have made a statement, and in the green half of Athens, anything less than a title now reads as failure.

Olympiacos — 13/4

Thirteen years is a long time to wait, but Olympiacos finally ended their lengthy title drought in the most emphatic way possible, first beating defending champions Fenerbahçe, then record champions Real Madrid to finally rule over Europe. Fast forward three months and most of the rotation returns, with Jean Montero added to the backcourt after his standout campaign carried Valencia to its first-ever Final Four, alongside Codi Miller-McIntyre. 

There have been departures too — Alec Peters moved on to Milan, and Shaquielle McKissic left after six and a half seasons. Coach Bartzokas has been rewarded with a contract extension through 2029, giving this group rare continuity in a league defined by turnover. Champions or bust is the only realistic standard now for a club that has genuinely reignited its glory days.

Fenerbahce — 7/1

Fenerbahce enter the season having missed out on back-to-back titles by a single round, beaten 79-61 by Olympiacos in last May’s semifinal — a step back from the summit but still Sarunas Jasikevicius’s sixth Final Four as a head coach and third straight with the club. Domestically, the season was a triple crown of sorts, with Sarı Kanaryalar sweeping the Turkish League, Turkish Cup, and President’s Cup, even as the European trophy slipped away.

The response has been the most aggressive rebuild in the league. Shane Larkin, the cornerstone of rival Anadolu Efes since 2018 and a two-time EuroLeague champion there, has switched allegiances to Istanbul’s other giant. Is there a more startling transfer anywhere in Europe than that? Nine-plus new faces is an enormous amount to integrate, but with Jasikevicius still building around a core that knows how to win in May, anything less than a Final Four return will sting.

Real Madrid — 7/1

And then there’s Real Madrid, where leading the most storied club on the continent to yet another championship game wasn’t enough to save Sergio Scariolo’s job. A trophyless domestic season — runner-up in the Copa del Rey, runner-up everywhere that mattered outside Europe — did what a Final Four run couldn’t undo. The man replacing him is almost too good a story to be true: Pedro Martinez, whose Valencia side fell to Los Blancos on Finals weekend, now sits in Madrid’s chair. 

Trey Lyles is gone. Mario Hezonja’s future is genuinely uncertain. Finnish forward Mikael Jantunen arrives from Fenerbahce to help fill the frontcourt hole. Whether Martinez’s up-tempo, defense-first system survives first contact with a roster built for someone else entirely is the single most interesting coaching question in Europe this offseason.