Last Monday, George Aivazoglou, the NBA’s managing director for Europe and the Middle East, revealed that the league has a goal of launching a European league by October 2027.[i]
At a conference organized by an Italian news outlet, Aivazoglou named 12 “big European cities” the league is eyeing: London, Manchester, Paris, Lyon, Madrid, Barcelona, Milan, Rome, Berlin, Munich, Athens, and Istanbul. Deputy commissioner Mark Tatum said that the goal is to launch this league in two years and that the league will consist of existing clubs, new clubs, and soccer organizations creating a basketball program.
Given these statements, many have speculated that the NBA could target existing EuroLeague clubs to join this new NBA league. The EuroLeague is a conglomeration of the top basketball clubs in Europe and is widely seen as the second-best basketball competition in the world after the NBA.[ii] It consists of standalone basketball clubs like Olimpia Milano and Saski Baskonia, and the basketball divisions of major European football clubs like Real Madrid and FC Barcelona.
The timing of such rumors surrounding the NBA’s European expansion is interesting, as the EuroLeague signed a 10-year extension with IMG, the league’s business partner, at the beginning of the year.[iii] IMG sources and facilitates sponsorships, media rights fees, and other commercial deals for the league. With many of the EuroLeague clubs’ licenses set to expire at the end of this season, the clubs would have been free to leave the EuroLeague to pursue other more lucrative competitions had the deal with IMG fallen through. However, the ten-year extension should now wall-off the most prominent teams like Real Madrid from the NBA’s European League, as they seem committed to the EuroLeague at least for the next ten years. Therefore, it is likely that the NBA will need to target other existing clubs, at least for now.
With a seemingly realistic timeline for the NBA’s European expansion and the NFL’s last International Series game in Madrid taking place this past weekend, an obvious question is when will the NFL go to Europe? Over the summer, Mike Florio, an NFL insider, published a story that the NFLPA, the players’ union, was doing their due diligence on a possible four-team European division.[iv] The NFL does not have a plan to put one or more teams in Europe in the foreseeable future, as their goal right now is to grow their brand globally by playing international games and through their Global Markets program. Currently the goal right now is to expand the number of permissible international games under the CBA from 10 to 16, or at least one per week outside of the first week.
Adding only one new four-team division is in stark contrast to the NBA’s approach. With the NBA’s plan, there will essentially be two separate leagues, the winners of which will then play each other in an NBA Cup. The NFL, on the other hand, will only add a four-team division, meaning that teams on both sides of the pond will have to trek to and from to play games. Since the NFL does play fewer games than the NBA, having a separate league for the NBA makes sense from a scheduling and logistical standpoint. However, many of the concerns from NFL players are regarding health and safety, specifically how such long-distance travel will impact recovery from injuries. There are currently no talks about having a completely separate NFL European league, and unlike the NBA, the few American football teams in Europe do not pose as much competition as the EuroLeague does with the NBA.
It will be interesting to see how both strategies to conquer Europe unfold in the coming years, but for now, all eyes, including the NFL’s, will be on the NBA as October 2027 approaches.
[i] https://frontofficesports.com/nba-europe-start-date-cities/
[ii] https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6042164/2025/01/07/euroleague-img-deal-nba-basketball/
[iii] https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6042164/2025/01/07/euroleague-img-deal-nba-basketball/
[iv] https://www.nbcsports.com/nfl/profootballtalk/rumor-mill/news/nflpa-ponders-eventual-nfl-push-for-european-division
Photo Credit: @NBA
Stacy Walker is a third-year law student at the University at Buffalo School of Law. Her areas of interest lie at the intersection of sports and corporate transactions, with prior research done on private equity investments in youth sports and professional stadium development projects.
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