{"id":768174,"date":"2026-06-29T05:00:30","date_gmt":"2026-06-29T05:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/768174\/"},"modified":"2026-06-29T05:00:30","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T05:00:30","slug":"nba-europe-structure-equity-breakdown-revenue-plan-bidders-deadline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/768174\/","title":{"rendered":"NBA Europe Structure: Equity Breakdown, Revenue Plan, Bidders Deadline"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThe latest bids for NBA<\/a> Europe franchises are due Monday afternoon, the next step in the league\u2019s plan to raise billions to launch a new circuit in the Old World.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs the NBA and its bankers have engaged with dozens of potential buyers from around the globe\u2014including sovereign funds, major soccer teams and wealthy individuals\u2014they\u2019ve also worked to build the internal framework of the league.<\/p>\n

\n\tBorrowing elements from traditional U.S. leagues (salary cap, local media rights), and pieces more common in global soccer (performance-based revenue payouts, team-specific jersey deals), the NBA seeks to create a new enterprise to capitalize on what it views as a significantly underserved and undervalued market for basketball players, fans, investors and partners.<\/p>\n

\n\tSportico spoke recently with multiple people involved in building NBA Europe<\/a>. Under the condition of anonymity, they broke down the economic structure of the league, which is planning to launch in October 2027. At the outset, league equity will be split 50\/50 between the NBA and the owners of the 12 initial permanent franchises. League revenue, however, will flow overwhelmingly to the teams themselves, largely in the form of fixed distributions and performance payments, the people said.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe NBA is still finalizing how exactly to allocate the billions raised in the initial team sales, but much of it will be placed on the NBA Europe balance sheet for initial operating capital and reserves. As a result, the NBA is committed to funding all of the new league\u2019s losses as it gets off the ground, the people said, insulating franchise owners from capital calls as the new entity tries to scale into a profitable, standalone operation. The NBA will take a cut of league revenue once there is positive net revenue, the people said.<\/p>\n

\n\tReps for the NBA, as well as JPMorgan Chase and Raine, the two banks it retained to help with the process, declined to comment.<\/p>\n

\n\tGeorge Aivazoglou, the managing director of NBA Europe, was at the Cannes Lions festival last week in France meeting with potential sponsors and agencies, and updating others on the league\u2019s process. While he declined to comment on specific bidders, he said the interest from prospective buyers has been \u201ctremendous.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere are a lot of existing teams from the ecosystem, some of the world\u2019s biggest brands, some of them are multisport organizations\u2014some are basketball only, some are football only\u2014and all of them want to be a part of NBA Europe,\u201d Aivazoglou said in an interview<\/a>. \u201cAnd the other component is professional investors\u2014sovereign wealth funds, private equity, wealthy individuals, many from Europe [who] want to be a part of this process.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\n\tThe current plan is to launch NBA Europe next year with 12 permanent franchises and four clubs that secure rotating slots via competition in other FIBA circuits. For those first dozen teams, the group is speaking with bidders in Athens, Barcelona, Berlin, Istanbul, London, Lyon, Madrid, Manchester, Milan, Munich, Paris and Rome. That\u2019s a footprint that intentionally indexes heavily on Western Europe, which has wealthier markets even if it might be further removed from the continent\u2019s more ardent basketball markets.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe permanent franchise sales will produce billions in capital, with some bids involving London and Paris already topping $1 billion, sources said. While the NBA hasn\u2019t finalized exactly how that money will be divvied up, the majority of it will be used to fund the league\u2019s upfront costs and early operations, the people said. That includes team distributions, reserves, marketing capital and staffing. A portion could also be distributed to existing NBA owners as a dividend of sorts.<\/p>\n

\n\tEquity in the new league will be evenly split at the start, with NBA owners holding 50% and the 12 permanent team owners holding the other 50%. That\u2019s similar to how the WNBA was structured from an equity perspective back in 1996, but there are big differences in how those two leagues handle expansion and revenue distributions. For one, if NBA Europe were to add more permanent teams in the future, it would dilute both groups on a pro rata basis, meaning that the NBA would eventually own less than 50% if the league were to grow.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAs part of the NBA\u2019s push to make NBA Europe a hybrid of business practices in both the U.S. and abroad, teams will also have a slightly different set of commercial opportunities, the people said. There will be local media packages for teams to sell, they said, but also team-specific jersey deals not currently allowed in the NBA, which has a 12-year, league-wide deal with Nike. Teams will also keep the vast majority of ticket sales.<\/p>\n

\n\tNBA Europe\u2019s central revenue will include bigger media packages, league-wide sponsorships, merchandise and licensing opportunities, and perhaps some infrastructure projects. Those revenues will be largely transferred back to the teams, essentially via a preferred distribution, the sources said. Initially, more than 80% will go to teams via a fixed payment made to all clubs (similar to the NFL<\/a>\u2019s annual distributions) and a performance pool, which will filter more money to teams based on their on-court success.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat\u2019s an example of league economics modeled more on traditional European soccer than the NBA or other U.S. circuits. In the first six years the league is planning more than $1.5 billion in fixed and performance distributions to its clubs, one source said. The rotating clubs will share equally in those payments, per sources.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe NBA and its bankers have told prospective buyers that they expect the league to be profitable within its first decade, sources said. Once there is positive net income, that leftover money will be distributed on a pro rata basis relative to the equity structure, the people said.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat means that if the league sees a $200 million profit in its fifth season, and the equity structure is still 50-50, NBA owners and NBA Europe owners will each see $100 million of those equity dividends. If the league has $400 million in net income in its seventh season, but the league has expanded to 16 permanent clubs, then the NBA will see about 43% of that money, or $171.4 million.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe bids due Monday afternoon are being evaluated on the expansion fees, of course, but also on each group\u2019s overall plan. Principal in that is its arena strategy. Even the biggest European markets are vastly behind the U.S. in arena infrastructure, so new owners will likely either heavily renovate existing buildings, stand up new ones, or both. The NBA could conceivably partner in some of those projects, the people said, though nothing has been decided.<\/p>\n

\n\tThere\u2019s also the possibility that some bidders will look to purchase existing teams as part of their push for NBA Europe inclusion. Given the fact that bid complexity (and number of bidders) will vary widely by market, the league is expecting to announce winning groups in a staggered manner as they\u2019re finalized, the source said.<\/p>\n

\n\tSome successful bidders could be announced as early as the coming weeks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The latest bids for NBA Europe franchises are due Monday afternoon, the next step in the league\u2019s plan…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":768175,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,12546,459,72493,514,566,564,82],"class_list":["post-768174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-fc-barcelona","tag-nba","tag-nba-europe","tag-nfl","tag-paris-saint-germain","tag-real-madrid","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/768174","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=768174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/768174\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/768175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=768174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=768174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=768174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}