The NBA and FIBA, basketball’s international governing body, announced Thursday they will explore the creation of a new professional league in Europe.
‘The response we’ve gotten from the marketplace is very positive, whether it’s from media partners, whether it’s from fan research that we’ve done, discussions directly with FIBA, advertising agencies, and other clubs in Europe, several of them who have also been enthusiastic about the potential opportunity to better serve basketball fans in Europe,” Silver said.
“Basketball is the No. 2 sport in Europe. It’s widely popular. Hundreds of millions of fans. Roughly 15% of the players in the NBA right now are from Europe. Five out of the last six of our MVPs have been European. But there’s a huge gap, I think, between the amount of interest in the sport and the development in terms of how we operate a league here in North America. … we feel now is the time to move to the next stage.”
Said Zagklis: “We have come to the conclusion that the popularity of the sport and the success that we’ve had with the national team competitions is not matched by fan interest and a commercial impact commensurate to that success.”
The two sides clearly envision room for financial growth that is unrealized. While Silver and Zagklis were not in position to share too many specific details, Silver said the initial idea is to have a 16-team league comprised of Europeans teams – some that already exist and some expansion teams.
“We want to better test the level of interest of existing clubs,” Silver said. “In some cases what comes with those existing clubs are huge global brands, in some cases those brands built through global soccer, not basketball, but we recognize there’s a tremendous depth of interest in people rooting for those clubs, so that becomes very relevant, as well.
“We also want to test the marketplace because I think there we’re in virtually every major European city you have basketball ecosystems, but then the question is there may be others who, given the opportunity to participate, may raise their hands and say I would be interested in potentially owning a club in that market. So, we want to look at that, as well.”