NBA Europe has entered a much more concrete phase. Final bids for the 12 permanent franchises in the project backed by the NBA and FIBA reached at least $500 million in each target city, with several proposals above $1 billion. The figure places the new league on a different level: it is no longer just a strategic idea for European basketball, but a large-scale capital play.
The plan still targets an October 2027 launch with 16 teams: 12 permanent franchises and four clubs with rotating places earned on sporting merit through competitions linked to the FIBA ecosystem. The target cities for those first franchises are Athens, Barcelona, Berlin, Istanbul, London, Lyon, Madrid, Manchester, Milan, Munich, Paris and Rome, a map that prioritises major western markets and sporting capitals with commercial potential.
A league designed to attract capital
The NBA presented the bids as a sign of momentum for the project. “We are very pleased with the final bids received for the permanent franchises,” said Mark Tatum, deputy commissioner of the NBA. “This will be the biggest influx of capital European basketball has ever seen, and we have clear front-runners in each of our 12 target cities, including many existing basketball and football clubs,” he added.
The process has brought together more than 20 basketball and football clubs, as well as investment groups, former NBA franchise owners and potential international financial partners. Several bids doubled the amounts submitted in the first round, whose deadline was 31 March, and some proposals in markets such as London and Paris are understood to have exceeded $1 billion. The NBA and its advisers will now take the bids to the Board of Governors to ratify the preferred partners and finalise the long-form agreements progressively.
The response to EuroLeague’s power
NBA Europe is moving forward while EuroLeague has consolidated its own path. Several of its leading clubs have signed ten-year renewals, including Real Madrid, Barça, Baskonia, Efes, Olympiacos, Panathinaikos, Maccabi, Zalgiris, Bayern and Villeurbanne. That move strengthens the continuity of the current European project, but it does not fully close the door to NBA Europe: some agreements reportedly include €10 million exit clauses that would allow certain clubs to opt for the new competition.
The tension reflects a clash of models. The NBA is proposing a structure of permanent franchises backed by a major injection of capital, while EuroLeague defends the value of brands already built within European basketball. Its CEO, Chus Bueno, has argued that clubs such as Real Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern or Olympiacos bring intellectual property, fan base, history, tradition and the city itself, and that this value should be taken into account before asking them to invest between $500 million and $1 billion to enter the new league.
A hybrid model between the NBA, European football and FIBA
NBA Europe is not trying to replicate the US model exactly. The structure combines elements associated with major North American leagues, such as a salary cap, local media rights and permanent franchises, with mechanisms more common in European football, including performance-based payments, team-specific jersey sponsorship deals and a partial access route based on sporting merit. The result points to a league with a closed foundation, but with a competitive window for clubs coming from other FIBA circuits.
The economic design is one of the main attractions for investors. At the start, the ownership of the new league would be split 50-50 between NBA owners and the owners of the 12 permanent franchises. The NBA would assume the project’s initial losses while the competition scales towards a profitable operation, protecting the owners of the new franchises from extraordinary capital contributions during the launch phase. Projections used in the process indicate that the permanent franchises could reach break-even in year three.
Money as a sporting argument
The model also aims to change the economic logic of European basketball. More than 80% of central revenue would initially be transferred to teams through fixed payments and a performance pool linked to sporting results. Over the first six years, the league projects more than $1.5 billion in fixed and variable distributions to clubs, while other estimates from the process put expected distributions over the first decade at more than $10 billion.
That structure allows the NBA to present NBA Europe as a financial alternative to an ecosystem in which many major clubs have historically sustained significant losses. The promise is not limited to the entry money for the franchises: it also includes revenue sharing, protection against early losses, broadcast packages, global sponsorships, merchandising, licensing, local media rights, ticketing revenue and potential infrastructure projects in markets where arenas still fall short of US standards.
The road to October 2027
The next step will be political and contractual. The NBA will take the bids to the Board of Governors while continuing to work with FIBA to finalise long-form agreements and define the final partners in each market. Winners could be announced on a rolling basis, because the complexity of each bid varies depending on the city, the investment group, the possible relationship with existing clubs and the arena strategy.
The fit with EuroLeague also remains unresolved. The NBA, FIBA and EuroLeague continue to hold talks, although all sides have indicated they are prepared to move forward without a global agreement. NBA Europe still has to finalise names, contracts, venues, the competition calendar and its relationship with the continent’s historic clubs, but the scale of the bids confirms that the project has entered a new dimension: a European league backed by billions, designed to compete for investment, brands, audiences and players from October 2027.
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