By Aris Barkas/ barkas@eurohoops.net
The NBA Europe project is moving ahead at full steam, aiming for a 2027 tipoff and changing the landscape of European competitions.
That was the message sent by George Aivazoglou, Managing Director of Europe & the Middle East for the NBA, and Patrick Comninos, CEO of the Basketball Champions League, who met for a roundtable discussion with selected members of the Greek press in Athens to present the current status of the project.
No exact financial numbers were presented; the tentative 16-team format, which was already mentioned, is confirmed as a starting point, without excluding expansion sooner than later, and it was also confirmed that the new project is open to all interested European clubs, including those of EuroLeague, if they agree to join it and, depending on the case, qualify for it.
Even the discussion with the EuroLeague can continue, but as Aivazoglou put it, the NBA has a very clear idea about how things should be done in Europe, and if there’s no alignment with that, there’s no point in having talks.
However, what was openly said for the first time is that the NBA already has a shortlist of potential investors who want to be involved in the project, and the talks about how they will be involved in the project will start from January, as NBA commissioner Adam Silver has already said, and are expected to move fast.
This means that those investors can either be part of new ownership groups or just invest in existing teams, with the initial goal being the creation of 12 European “franchises”, which can also be existing clubs or new ones, mainly basketball sections of already established football clubs with global brands, that want to be part of the new league.
That’s one of the key aspects of the project, since out of the €50 billion European sports industry, basketball, despite being clearly by many metrics the second most popular sport of the continent, has just a 0,5% financial share of this pie, being roughly a €200 million business.
The new league will respect and help European domestic leagues, creating an ecosystem together with the Basketball Champions League, which will be the second continental tier, and intends to create mechanisms of a trickle-down economy to share the financial benefits, as Comninos underlined.
It will also respect the FIBA calendar and the national teams, and always keep 25% of the top-tier competition open for qualification, via the BCL and the domestic leagues, probably through some form of qualifiers that will be played at the end of each season, between the 15th and 30th of June.
And while the NBA Europe will be played under FIBA rules, it was confirmed that the NBA has already created a salary cap formula, which will be a key component of the league, even though clubs would come from different countries with different laws and taxation. “I don’t think that Financial Fair Play has really worked in any competition,” added Aivazoglou.
Last but not least, the NBA seems also to have figured out the television distribution of the new league, giving TV rights revenue to the project right away. Traditional cable and television providers are not excluded, but without mentioning any names, Aivazoglou referred to the “streaming partners” of the league that have the technology to reach local audiences and provide tailor-made experiences despite being centralized.
Considering that Amazon Prime is already the main NBA rightsholder in Europe, it’s easy to assume that this partnership may extend to NBA Europe.