NBA Europe Will Live Or Die By These 5 Questions
The NBA's planning to launch a European league. Here's what I'm paying attention to.
Ever since I started writing on Substack last year, people have encouraged me to try publishing my essays in video form. Well, here’s the first attempt.
I break down the NBA’s plans to launch a European league, and the 5 questions that I think will determine the league’s success.
Let me know what you think of the format, and if you’re bullish or bearish on NBA Europe!
Transcript:
The NBA is planning to launch a new league in Europe. I worked on the NBA’s international business, now I invest in the sports industry at Will Ventures, and I think five questions will determine whether NBA Europe succeeds.
At the league office, I worked on the NBA’s growth in Latin America. Our team helped put a G League franchise in Mexico City, brought games to Mexico, Brazil and Uruguay, and signed media and sponsorship deals across the region. I saw how the NBA thinks about monetizing fans internationally – and I’m excited the league’s taking its biggest swing yet. NBA Europe could launch as soon as October 2027, combining existing EuroLeague clubs (like Real Madrid), new teams under major soccer clubs (like ManCity) and brand-new franchises in markets like London.
In my opinion, NBA Europe makes strategic sense. The NBA has a huge fanbase in Europe, but games air in the middle of the night. And the EuroLeague has a solid fanbase, but it’s been poorly managed for decades. The NBA sees an opportunity: The fan demand is there, and the NBA can monetize it better.
The NBA’s also tapping out on domestic growth levers – it just signed an 11-year media rights deal – and they think Europe can be a new vertical. Today, 18 EuroLeague clubs each average around $20 million in revenue, and the EuroLeague brings in around $140 million at the league level. Together, that’s a $500 million annual business. The NBA today brings in $14 billion a year. So if they can grow NBA Europe into even a billion-dollar business, that’s meaningful to their bottom line.
But I’d caveat that the NBA’s name alone doesn’t guarantee success. The NBA 2K League launched in 2018 but went on hiatus in 2024. The Basketball Africa League launched in 2019, but six years later the league’s still losing $20 million a year and playing games in empty arenas. The G-League Ignite launched in 2020, but folded in 2024 with the rise of NIL. Not to mention - the NFL spent decades trying to build a European league. NFL Europe lost around $30 million in its final season 2007.
So will NBA Europe become a multi-billion-dollar business — or another short-lived experiment? I think it comes down to five questions.
1. STADIUMS
Can NBA Europe build modern stadiums across Europe?
The NBA drives around 30% of revenues from ticketing and suites.
But EuroLeague stadiums are a lot smaller – they’re around a third of the size of NBA arenas – and most lack the premium hospitality options and infrastructure of US stadiums.
Take FC Barcelona’s basketball arena. It opened back in 1971, seats 7,500 fans, and the entire stadium experience is outdated.
I don’t think capital will be the bottleneck; private equity firms will line up to finance these projects. The challenge is navigating European politics: zoning, labor, permitting, and environmental reviews.
When MSG tried bringing a Sphere to London, the city killed the deal because of concerns like light pollution and skyline disruption. Or look at RedBird - they just got the approvals to buy San Siro stadium from the city after years of AC and Inter Milan’s team owners trying to renovate it.
I bet the NBA will use every political connection it has - because NBA Europe will need to build modern arenas quickly.
2. MEDIA
How will NBA Europe approach its media strategy?
Every new league faces the same tradeoff: Does your content optimize for reach or revenue. That’s because the media companies with the largest audiences, like YouTube, can also help you reach the most fans, so they have leverage to pay the smallest rights fees.
Kings League, for example, prioritized reach — they stream games for free on YouTube and Twitch, which is great for reaching new fans but means less media revenue.
On the other hand, look at Unrivaled – they partnered with TNT, who have a big media rights budget, but also reach fewer fans because they sit behind a paywall.
This gets more complicated when you consider NBA Europe has to deal with multiple countries, which all have their own local broadcasters.
My bet is they’ll prioritize reach early on and partner with a global streamer like Netflix instead of local broadcasters. This league is a long-term play, and if they can build the fanbase, the revenue will come. That said, media rights make up about half of NBA revenues today, so eventually NBA Europe will need to drive major media revenues.
3. PLAYER RETENTION
How will the league retain players?
Deputy Commissioner Mark Tatum said: “It will be the best basketball in Europe. … If the NBA is players one through 450, [NBA] Europe is 451 through 900..”
The challenge is: Fans don’t want to feel like they’re watching a second-tier product, and they’ll be annoyed if every time a European player plays well, he leaves for the NBA.
Take Geurschon Yabusele. He played for Real Madrid. Then at the Paris Olympics, he dominated for France. And the next season he went to play for the Sixers.
The salary gap makes this tough to prevent. The average EuroLeague player makes around $600K, and the average NBA player makes around $10 million a year.
NBA Europe will have to think up creative contract structures to incentivize great players to stay in Europe and to keep fans happy.
4. Soccer
Can NBA Europe leverage the brands of major European soccer clubs?
When I worked at the NBA, some of our biggest marketing wins came when we crossed over basketball and soccer — like Kobe visiting the Barcelona training center, or Neymar sitting courtside at the Finals. These moments always exploded on social media.
Let’s say Paris St Germain launched a basketball team. They could bundle soccer and basketball season ticket packages, cross-sell sponsors, tap into their existing fan CRM, and run joint marketing campaigns. The question is how much support PSG’s soccer team would lend its basketball team.
If NBA Europe does leverage the brands of soccer clubs, it could build a fanbase faster than any new league in history. But if the soccer clubs don’t cooperate, basketball risks becoming a second priority in large soccer organizations.
5. Structuring
Last question: How does NBA Europe structure financing and economics?
NBA Europe could finance itself in multiple ways:
They could raise capital at the league level,
have teams raise independently,
or even create a separate media entity that raises capital.
Each structure has different implications for incentives.
Then the league also has to define how revenue flows through the system. For example: if NBA Europe signs a pan-regional media deal with Netflix, what percent flows back to Real Madrid vs Maccabi Tel Aviv? And what portion flows back to NBA headquarters?
This gets complicated fast, because the NBA has to align:
30 NBA owners who must vote to approve the plan
EuroLeague incumbents they want to recruit
New franchises they’ll create from scratch
Outside capital — sovereign funds, private equity, wealthy families — who will finance it
Aligning this many powerful stakeholders all together is really difficult.
I’ll close with this: the NBA is one of the best-run leagues in the world, and I’m genuinely excited to see how this plays out.
Let me know in the comments – are you bullish or bearish on NBA Europe?
Im definitely all in favor for this, I think thats could be a great move, opening up both business potential in EU (Imagine how NIL Italy looks like), but also encouraging more young athletes to pursue professional careers, by starting in Europe and then continuing development around the world. This will bring closer the in justified title of NBA champions as the “World’s best”. Yokic will surely be happier playing for Partizan then Denver, and if he could make the same money, I guess he’d go for it. Anyway thanks for bringing that up, great points, I enjoy your writing.