The National Basketball Association -NBA- has moved the NBA Europe project from receiving bids to negotiating directly with candidates. Following the Board of Governors meeting held on Tuesday in Las Vegas, commissioner Adam Silver announced that he and deputy commissioner Mark Tatum will hold several meetings in New York over the weekend with groups interested in the future franchises. Many of those investors will attend Sunday’s FIFA World Cup final at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, allowing the NBA to advance its selection of the initial owners and markets. “We’re hoping to wrap up some of those deals over the next several weeks, and then announcements will be forthcoming,” Silver said.
Tatum described the talks as the next step after the submission of final proposals. “We’re extremely encouraged by the final bids we received for permanent franchises in a new NBA and FIBA-backed league in Europe, which reflect the tremendous interest and momentum around this project,” he said. The deputy commissioner added that the operation would represent “the biggest influx of capital European basketball has ever seen” and confirmed that there are clear front-runners in each of the 12 selected cities, including existing basketball clubs, football organisations and new investment groups.
More than 20 candidates for 12 permanent franchises
The NBA has received more than 20 bids for the competition’s 12 permanent places, with viable proposals in Madrid, Barcelona, London, Manchester, Paris, Lyon, Rome, Milan, Berlin, Munich, Athens and Istanbul. Some bids are reported to have exceeded $1 billion, surpassing the initial preferred range of between $500 million and $1 billion. The candidates include established sports clubs, football organisations seeking to create basketball teams for the first time and groups led by investors such as Marc Lasry, the former owner of the Milwaukee Bucks. Silver said the NBA had also received interest from cities that had not initially been invited to submit bids.
The Board of Governors reviewed the status of the bids on Tuesday, but no franchise has yet been awarded. The NBA and FIBA must select the candidates, negotiate the long-term contracts and submit the agreements to their respective governing bodies. Franchises could be announced progressively as negotiations are completed, rather than presenting all 12 in a single announcement. “We will now work with the NBA and FIBA Boards to finalize the long-form agreements,” Tatum said.
Real Madrid, ASVEL and Fenerbahçe keep their NBA Europe options open
According to ‘Sports Business Journal’, Real Madrid, ASVEL and Fenerbahçe are seeking to join NBA Europe despite renewing their EuroLeague licences for 10 years. Those contracts are reported to contain exit clauses worth around €10 million, allowing the clubs to leave the competition if they reach an agreement with the NBA. Barcelona has also renewed its licence with a possible route out, although the available information does not place its bid at the same stage as those of the other three clubs.
The relationship with the EuroLeague remains the main unresolved institutional issue. Silver has expressed a preference for coordinating the two projects, but the NBA intends to proceed even if no agreement is reached. The central disagreement concerns the valuation of historic clubs. The NBA believes that any organisation seeking a permanent franchise must participate in the investment process, while EuroLeague chief executive Chus Bueno argues that those clubs already contribute assets that should be assigned an economic value. “A team like Real Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern, or Olympiacos is bringing the IP, the fan base, the 100 years of history, the tradition and the city,” he told ‘Eurohoops’. “They already ‘own’ their cities, and that needs to be taken into account.”
A 16-team league with four places awarded on sporting merit
The sporting model envisages a 16-team competition comprising 12 permanent franchises and four clubs qualifying each season on sporting merit. The Basketball Champions League -BCL- and a pathway linked to domestic championships would be used to allocate those open places, although the final system has yet to be approved. The first qualifiers would emerge from results during the 2026-27 season. The schedule would include a round-robin regular season, several playoff rounds and an NBA Europe Finals series.
The financial forecasts presented to investors suggest that franchises could break even around their third season. The NBA estimates that the project could distribute more than $10 billion across the European basketball ecosystem during its first decade through future franchise sales, outside investment, media rights, ticketing and merchandise. It also plans to commit more than $3 billion to investment and potential early-stage losses and estimates that between 85% and 90% of the generated economy would remain in Europe. These are projections produced by the organisation rather than guaranteed revenues.
New York meetings set the next deadline
The prospective owners’ presence in New York will allow Silver and Tatum to negotiate the financial terms, ownership structures and agreements for each market directly. “We’ve had tremendous interest from multiple cities in Europe, including cities that we didn’t even ask for bids from,” the commissioner said. The NBA expects to complete an initial group of deals before announcing the franchises on a rolling basis, while continuing its discussions with FIBA and the EuroLeague.
The timetable envisages using the 2026-27 season to determine the first four participants qualifying on sporting merit and complete the commercial and operational organisation of the 12 permanent franchises. The target remains to launch NBA Europe in October 2027. “Things are where I hope they would be,” Silver said after the Board of Governors meeting.
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