NBA commissioner Adam Silver says he wants to “tap into” Europe’s football culture as part of the plans for a proposed European basketball league.<\/p>\n
Silver says he has spoken to Manchester City and Manchester United, though BBC Sport understands neither intends to have a team should the venture come to fruition.<\/p>\n
With a current working title of NBA Europe, the plan is to launch a permanent league across the continent that could start as soon as the 2027-28 season.<\/p>\n
As many as 16 teams across the continent could be involved, with a team from both London and Manchester expected to feature.<\/p>\n
The league is expected to be made up of new franchises, current basketball teams and football clubs who do and do not currently have associated basketball teams.<\/p>\n
“We’re having conversations with everyone, and it’s part of why this process has gone on so long,” Silver told BBC Sport.<\/p>\n
“I began speaking publicly around the Paris Olympics, and we wanted to make sure we’ve covered everybody. We’ve talked to all interested parties, we’re covering all areas and all opportunities.”<\/p>\n
Silver also confirmed that he has spoken to Real Madrid, Barcelona and Paris St-Germain as he looks to mix established European teams with new ones.<\/p>\n
However, reports say the existing EuroLeague – which features Real and Barcelona – has concerns about the new venture, threatening legal action against the NBA should clubs break existing agreements to take part in the new competition.<\/p>\n
But Silver, speaking before the NBA’s first regular season match in London since 2019 on Sunday, feels the already existing strong support of football clubs could play a major role in growing the game across Europe.<\/p>\n
“I want to be careful [of] those traditions,” he said. <\/p>\n
“That culture is so special, so unique, so long held, I don’t want to fool myself or anybody else potentially involved in this new league that they can be easily transferred.<\/p>\n
“At the same time, we want the benefits of that incredible wisdom and knowledge obtained over decades of operation. <\/p>\n
“As an American, I see that religious fervour around people’s football clubs here, and we could only be so lucky to tap into that. It’s more singularly focused here. To me, that represents opportunity.<\/p>\n
“We don’t come into the market thinking we’re going to take from football. What we see is a large opportunity and entertainment ecosystem, and we’re seeing that all over the world that people are turning to premium live sports.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NBA commissioner Adam Silver says he wants to “tap into” Europe’s football culture as part of the plans…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":420269,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-420268","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-basketball","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-basketball","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420268","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=420268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420268\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/420269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=420268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=420268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=420268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}