The NBA will be playing a competitive game in Germany for the first time on Thursday. The NBA Europe is scheduled to start in 2027 and Germany will be represented with two locations. There are still many questions unanswered.
Come to stay: The big NBA show is taking place in Berlin this week. For the first time ever, a competitive game in the best basketball league in the world will take place in Germany. Franz and Moritz Wagner will meet the Memphis Grizzlies with their Orlando Magic on Thursday (8 p.m., Amazon Prime). The game in the capital promises to be a great spectacle, especially since there should be at least one German world champion on the floor in Moritz Wagner.
If NBA boss Adam Silver has his way, games in which points are really at stake will soon become the norm in Europe. The NBA Europe is scheduled to start in October 2027 and fundamentally change the landscape of European basketball competitions. “Europe continues to produce some of the best players in the world, but the commercial success there does not match the growth of our game,” said Silver about the ambitious plans.
Together with the world association Fiba, the Americans have been pushing the project forward behind the scenes for quite a while. “Our discussions with various stakeholders in Europe have reinforced our belief that the creation of a new league on the continent offers a tremendous opportunity,” it said.
The Euroleague is currently the best sporting league in Europe. Clubs like Olympiacos Piraeus, Panathinaikos Athens, Fenerbahce Istanbul and Hapoel Tel Aviv have put together star ensembles worth millions that could compete with many NBA teams.
However, the Euroleague, which also organizes the Eurocup, is privately organized and therefore decides for itself who plays and who doesn’t. From the Bundesliga, only Bayern Munich is still taking part in this Euroleague season. The German champion is also a shareholder in the league.
“The NBA Europe will come”
Alba Berlin, on the other hand, withdrew from the European premier class last summer after many years. The people of the capital can no longer and do not want to take part in the financial arms race. Instead, Alba has joined the Champions League hosted by Fiba and hopes to take this step to be there when the NBA Europe starts in a year and a half.
“The NBA Europe is coming and we want to be there,” Alba’s managing director Marco Baldi said at the start of the season. And in fact, the chances of Berlin being there as an established basketball brand and global metropolis don’t seem bad.
In November of last year, George Aivazoglou, the NBA’s managing director for Europe, fleshed out the plans for the first time. Accordingly, the league should consist of 16 representatives, twelve of whom should be there permanently. Aivazoglou named, among others, Munich, Berlin, Madrid and Barcelona, where there are already ambitious basketball clubs. However, the list also includes cities like Rome, London and Manchester, where basketball has not yet gained a foothold at the top level.
What seems to take some getting used to for European sports fans is no problem for the NBA makers. After all, the sports system in the USA is completely different and is based on franchises instead of clubs. This means that teams can be created even in cities without a basketball tradition – as long as the money is right.
In the past there had been repeated speculation about the NBA’s involvement in Europe. Even going it alone didn’t seem out of the question. Thanks to the cooperation with the world association and the European leagues, this is no longer an issue. Instead, the cooperation ensures that there is a mix of American and European sports systems.
Football as a role model
From the point of view of Fiba and the European leagues, it is particularly important that, unlike in the US leagues, promotion and relegation are also possible. “The league concept respects the principles of the European sports model by giving every ambitious club on the continent a fair path to the top,” said Fiba General Secretary Andreas Zagklis, referring to four spots in NBA Europe, which are awarded across European leagues and competitions.
It is still completely unclear how the Euroleague will be integrated in the future. Everyone involved actually agrees that NBA Europe should not be an additional competition. The European Cup landscape is already far too fragmented with five to six competitions. “The ideal would be a structure like in football. Champions League, Europa League, European Conference League – that works. Every sports fan knows when which competition will be played. We have to fight for that in basketball too,” said the President of the European leagues, Tomas Van Den Spiegel, to the dpa.
jb/dpa
