The NBA is planning to launch an independent European league under the working title of NBA Europe.<\/p>\n
Talks remain ongoing, but plans lead towards it starting as a league of 12-16 teams that could include a merit-based qualification system as well as promotion and relegation.<\/p>\n
London, Manchester, Paris and Berlin are expected to have teams in NBA Europe.<\/p>\n
The league is expected to consist of existing teams, new sides and football clubs that currently do not have associated basketball teams.<\/p>\n
Talks are in preliminary stages, but there is optimism around the plans and, under the NBA’s running, they have the potential to transform European basketball’s landscape.<\/p>\n
London is being tipped to be among the key cities for the NBA’s European hopes, despite its lack of basketball presence.<\/p>\n
It is unlikely that London will be a franchise that is part of a football team, with the city earmarked to become a model city to be emulated at other NBA Europe locations.<\/p>\n
This is also in part because of London’s global appeal to US audiences, and infrastructure that includes the O2 and a reported new indoor arena in the process of being built.<\/p>\n
“We know that here in London in particular, in many ways we think this market is tastemakers for much of Europe,” said NBA commissioner Adam Silver.<\/p>\n
“The last I looked, I think the O2 is the leading arena throughout Europe and, from a revenue standpoint, exceeds most arenas around the United States.<\/p>\n
“Culturally, all the top acts come through there. There is this New York-London connection from a fashion and music standpoint.”<\/p>\n
An increasing number of international players in the NBA, a growing viewership in the league across Europe, and the fact that five of the NBA’s past seven Most Valuable Player (MVP) awards have been won by Europeans point towards a prime opportunity for the NBA to capitalise.<\/p>\n
The NBA has worked on European plans in collaboration with the International Basketball Federation (Fiba), the sport’s international governing body.<\/p>\n
As well as Silver describing interest from potential investors and sponsors as “significant”, current and former players have been showing their support for a European NBA league.<\/p>\n
“The NBA has been such a successful brand and they have talked about expansion for 20 years ever since I was in the league, so I’m excited that this next step is finally here,” Dirk Nowitzki, the first European to win the MVP award, told BBC Sport.<\/p>\n
“If the NBA normally does something, they do it right. Hopefully it is going to be good for European basketball and exciting.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The NBA is planning to launch an independent European league under the working title of NBA Europe. Talks…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":421535,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,459,82],"class_list":["post-421534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=421534"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421534\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/421535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=421534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=421534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=421534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}