The NBA plans to finalize franchise fees in the next few months with a goal of launching NBA Europe \u201cin the next two years,\u201d the league\u2019s deputy commissioner and COO Mark Tatum said Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Speaking with international media, Tatum said, \u201cYes, our goal is to launch in the next two years. Obviously, that\u2019s pending NBA and FIBA Board approval.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to the Sports Business Journal, the NBA is eyeing franchise fees in the range of $500 million to $1 billion and has hired JP Morgan and The Raine Group to \u201crefine\u201d the business plan.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the near, immediate future we\u2019re going to start engaging in a meaningful way with potential investors in the league,\u201d Tatum said Tuesday, per TalkSport.com. \u201cWe\u2019re sort of going to the next step. And I think over the next, call it eight weeks or so, we\u2019ll have a really good sense of where we are in terms of the level of interest.\u201d<\/p>\n
The SBJ reported that while it\u2019s considered unlikely, the NBA could walk away from the project if it does not receive the market value it believes is warranted. In the meantime, the business template includes determining potential team locations.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe think that this league will include a combination of existing clubs, potential new clubs that don\u2019t exist today, and maybe there\u2019s some football clubs who don\u2019t have a basketball team but who want to invest in a basketball team,\u201d Tatum said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn phase one, our initial plan is to go 10 to 12 cities. Primarily (the) UK, Spain, Italy, France, Germany, maybe Turkey, maybe Greece for franchises.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tatum said the NBA would run the \u201ctop-tier\u201d league.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur plan would be for FIBA\u2019s Basketball Champions League to be the second- tier division,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd then at the launch of this league, there will be four open spots that teams across the continent would qualify for on an annual basis through a transparent merit-based process, either by winning their respective domestic leagues and then playing into the Basketball Champions League, or you can create one big play-in tournament of the domestic champions.<\/p>\n
\u201cDown the road, you could see things like having the winners or the top-two finishers in the European League come enter into the NBA Cup and get injected to the NBA Cup.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd then really down the road, once supersonic travel happens, you could see a division of the NBA in Europe.\u201d<\/p>\n
London will host its 10th regular-season NBA game when the Memphis Grizzlies play the Orlando Magic on Jan. 18, 2026. There are plans for the league to play games in Manchester, England, and Paris in 2027, and in Berlin and Paris in 2028.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are no top-tier teams in the UK,\u201d Tatum said, per TalkSport.com. \u201cWe think that there has to be, because we know that the demand \u2013 that the number of fans in the UK, that the size of the market \u2013 that we have to service those fans.\u201d [Reuters]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The NBA plans to finalize franchise fees in the next few months with a goal of launching NBA…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":231875,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,726,590,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-231874","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-basketball","11":"tag-nba","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231874"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231874\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/231875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}