More basketball, less meaning?

By Matevz Zupancic/ info@eurohoops.net

Another European basketball season is starting. Budgets of the giants are growing; some might even be dangerously bloated (You are looking at some Greek clubs, not me!).

Arenas are improving, and new investors “from space” are entering the game. EuroLeague keeps growing commercially; FIBA is still there – developing its competitions.

Two parallel universes closely monitored from above by the NBA. After the African BAL touchdown, the NBA is seriously looking towards Europe, talking to both local entities, and the NCAA has suddenly become one of the biggest forces in the European player market.

Meanwhile, smaller centers are getting slammed by not being able to deliver a commercially interesting product and losing manpower due to the NCAA NIL frenzy. And that is the bottom of the pyramid that should feed the vortex. Overall, there seems to be more money and interest in basketball than ever before, and yet, we keep coming back to a simple question:

What are we actually building?

The NBA understands its product extremely well. So does the NCAA. They are completely different models, but both have something new-age European basketball increasingly struggles with: a clear identity.

The NBA sells the world’s best basketball through stars, entertainment and storytelling. NCAA basketball sells universities, alumni, tradition, rivalries, community and (March) Madness. An average fan doesn’t even understand the complexity behind it (draft system, salary cap, NCAA divisions and player eligibility, just to name a few), but still buys and loves the story they sell him.

The numbers reflect that. The NBA’s 2025–26 regular season recorded its highest average TV viewership in 13 years, up 35%, while its social media channels generated 228 billion views. Behind that product now stands a media-rights agreement worth more than $76 billion over 11 years.

The arena attendance numbers are debatable. Who among the attendees actually watches the game and who enjoys (or wants to be seen enjoying) the side shows, food, drinks, boobs… The 2025 NCAA men’s championship game attracted 18.1 million viewers, with total March Madness attendance again exceeding 700,000.

The European basketball paradox aka back to the future

The above-mentioned complexity, brilliantly covered by storytelling, is something European basketball historically did not need. Because it was simple. As a player you grew in a club, played for the club, made it to international competition with some other club, won some, lost some, came back home and retired. These days Europeans have added bizarre complexity to it, but failed with the story cover-up of the mess.

Due to internal disputes, we have established several overlapping tiers of competitions under different regulations. I bet most of you readers can’t name all the competitions from the last 20 years. (You can start with Euro and add whatever ends with league or cup.) Political entities were falling apart, but the same hating nations came back to establish regional competitions that also run in different formats literally every season, and some of them (Adriatic League) are not even starting on time due to disputes… over referees.

The NBA has used roughly a dozen materially different playoff formats in almost 80 years, and the NCAA around ten in nearly 90. EuroLeague, Eurocup, Basketball Champions League and FIBA’s other competitions, and European basketball has compressed almost a century’s worth of American structural experimentation into just 25 years!

Since 2000, Europe’s major international club competitions have collectively operated under roughly 30–35 materially different competition formats. In just 25 years, fans have been asked to understand everything from Top 16s and Last 32s to Final Fours and Final Eights, two-legged aggregate series, single-game elimination, best-of-three and best-of-five playoffs, play-ins and full round-robin leagues.

Meanwhile, domestic leagues silently fight for space in an increasingly crowded calendar and might be winning the battle for the first time in, let’s say, a decade. At the same time, NCAA opportunities, NIL money, and changing eligibility rules are reshaping the European player market almost overnight.

What is a kid’s path nowadays? What is his dream? Make it to a competition that will probably not even exist when he exits his U18 team? Is it the NBA? Why, if he can make more money with NIL? There are increasingly many doors. What we are missing is the hallway connecting them.

Fans, investors and sponsors face the same confusion. Which competition really matters? Which tier to support? Where to invest? Why does one club qualify through sporting results while another has a long-term licence? Which games should feel special when everybody keeps playing more games? Which games do you even watch when there are 4 games televised at the same time? “Oh look, a travel! Ok, that’s not a travel – not in this competition! How did you not know that, grandma!”

Football has plenty of problems, but its basic pyramid remains understandable. Local and national competitions form the foundation, sporting success leads towards European competition and the Champions League sits at the top. You don’t need to understand sports politics to understand why Saturday’s game matters. Not to mention a pyramidal reward system for player development.

Nowadays, the NBA is working with FIBA on a possible European competition while discussions with EuroLeague continue. The NBA is a giant smelling the opportunity to end the European basketball confusion. And with the latest news that they have started flirting with European football giants, trying to bring them into the equation, should this give us reason for optimism—or even greater skepticism, as we recognize just how weak European basketball may be when left to stand on its own?

None of this is necessarily bad, but will we together build one new, sustainable, fan-friendly European basketball ecosystem, or simply create more basketball products competing for the same stakeholders? NBA Europe will enter arrogantly, with plenty of rookie mistakes while encountering the specifics of the European market and mindset, but the NBA has the time and resources to wait until the right formula comes up.

Today, a regular bystander still thinks Panathinaikos will play the Lakers. No, folks, Manchester will. And not the Lakers; they will play Galatasaray. So far, NBA Europe doesn’t seem to represent a “deus ex machine” unification of European club basketball, but just another competition of 12 (twelve!?) teams, some of them newly invented.

And here comes an interesting contradiction.

Back to the (grass)roots?

While international basketball becomes more complicated, national league basketball may actually be becoming more relevant again, as it is structurally the least confused. A 100+ year legacy doesn’t hurt that image. Nor does it in the case of UCLA or Kentucky.

Spain’s Liga Endesa attracted 2.08 million spectators during the 2025–26 regular season, the highest figure in its history. Average attendance reached 6,807, up 4.5%, and ACB clubs have now passed 110,000 season-ticket holders for the first time.

Let’s check the small ones. For instance, Lithuania offers another example from a much smaller market. The deciding 2025 LKL final between Žalgiris and Rytas reached 424,000 television viewers and a 41.1% audience share.

EuroLeague itself also proves there is demand: its 2025–26 regular season attracted a record 3.25 million spectators, 8% more than the previous season, while its reported TV audience passed 508 million. Not bad – knowing there are 3 more “Euroleagues” out there at the same time.

So perhaps European basketball does not have an interest problem. It obviously has a clarity problem.

This is also why I sometimes question our industry’s obsession with geographical expansion. Europe, Asia, Africa, Middle East, new markets, new competitions, more games. Of course basketball should grow internationally. The NBA and NCAA should be benchmarks for presentation, storytelling, media. But geographical reach and product strength are not the same thing when it comes to good old gladiators.

Before asking how many new markets basketball can enter, perhaps we should ask how deeply basketball matters in the markets where it already exists. A sold-out 3,000-seat (+ uncountable stands) arena for a meaningful domestic rivalry, with recognizable players, local sponsors, good production and a community that genuinely cares who wins, can be a very successful basketball product. Spain does not need to become the NBA.

Lithuania does not need to become Spain. Smaller countries don’t necessarily need their national leagues to become international products. Smaller leagues definitely never will, and should not. They need them to become good local products. Like a local food market gaining more and more value in 2026 compared to a shopping mall. Showtime, better broadcasting, stronger digital communication, and professional club structures matter and should be an obligatory wingman, accompanied by financial stability. But local players, rivalries, history, “devotion” and belonging should be the essence.

The national league, local club, and local rivalry are not outdated concepts. They may actually be the foundation European basketball needs more than ever. International basketball should be the top of that pyramid, a game of the week, not 10 games of the week.

Maybe one part of the problem is that we simply have too much of it. Basketball is on television almost every night. For the dedicated fan this sounds like paradise. But from a product perspective, more is not always better. When everything is available all the time, it becomes harder to understand what really matters.

Who will pay the bills?

National-team basketball should be one of the strongest emotional products our sport has. Instead, international windows collide with club obligations and overloaded schedules, and some of the biggest names are regularly unavailable. We have created more basketball, but in the process weakened the games that should mean the most. In Slovenia – no Dončić, no fans.

And there is another part of the pyramid we talk about far too little: the bottom. Small clubs, youth programmes and player development are where this entire industry actually begins. Yet this is the part of the system that receives the least attention and is increasingly under pressure.

The consequences may not be visible immediately. They might be ten years from now.

Because grassroots sport is not only about producing the next EuroLeague or NBA player. It is physical education, it is social responsibility, it is team spirit, it’s a way of life. It is teaching children teamwork, discipline, winning and losing. It is giving them a reason to move, compete, and belong somewhere. At a time when we are desperately trying to get children away from screens, perhaps basketball should actually be trying to get them back onto the streets — with a ball in their hands. That may ultimately be more important for the future of our sport than another international competition.

“I know the European game is a little bit better than the NBA game… guys over there, everybody plays hard. We got guys in the NBA, they kind of chill out until the All-Star Game or the playoffs or whatever.” — Shaquille O’Neal, Lithuania, September 2026

Perhaps European basketball is completing a circle. We started with national championships: clubs representing cities, communities and traditions, playing games people understood, and rivalries people genuinely cared about. Above that was the dream of competing against the best clubs from other countries. National-team games were special occasions when a country’s best players came together.

And underneath everything were thousands of small clubs producing players, coaches and, just as importantly, future basketball fans.
In our constant search for growth, perhaps we have confused bigger with better, more with stronger, and availability with relevance. Sport also needs scarcity. It needs anticipation. It needs games that people wait for; it needs keeping score.

Maybe the future of European basketball looks surprisingly similar to its past.

• Matevž Zupančič holds a Master’s degree in Sports Management and has been working in professional basketball since 2005. He began his career with Olimpija Ljubljana, where he held various roles related to the senior team before serving as the club’s General Manager from 2013 to 2017. During this period, he represented the club within major international basketball organizations and competitions, including the EuroLeague, EuroCup, and ABA League. In 2017, he joined Kansai Helios Domžale as General Manager. Zupančič also serves as President of the Slovenian First Division Clubs Association and as a member of the Executive Board of the Basketball Federation of Slovenia. In addition, he is involved in several advisory and consulting projects through his basketball consultancy, Blueprint Management (www.blueprintmgt.net). His key strength is an extensive understanding of the European basketball ecosystem, built through more than two decades of hands-on experience across club management, international competitions, and basketball governance.