Since 2020, the Accor Arena has hosted an NBA regular season game every year. The San Antonio Spurs of French prodigy Victor Wembanyama and the Indiana Pacers even face each other there twice this year.
The short or medium term irruption on the European market of the powerful NBA, clearly ambitious by its bosses present in Paris this week, is shaking up the Basketball microcosm of the Old Continent, although its contours are still very vague. And when the NBA, sitting from the 2025-2026 season on 76 billion television rights (until 2036), advances its pawns in Europe, it becomes agitated.
The league’s “commissioner”, Adam Silver, has rarely missed the opportunity for six months to underline his desire to set foot in Europe beyond the regular season matches that it has organized each year in Paris since 2020. Including two Thursday and Saturday in Bercy, between the San Antonio Spurs of Victor Wembanyama, already one of the stars of the League, and the Indiana Pacers.
The NBA has always sought to develop on a global scale by exporting to other continents. Since 2022, it has been organizing pre-season matches in Abu Dhabi and the NBA Cup, which began in mid-November, is now sponsored by the Emirates airline from Dubai. Some regular season matches have also been organized abroad for several years: in addition to the NBA Paris Game in January, Miami and Washington faced each other in Mexico at the beginning of November.
“No specific plan for the moment regarding Europe”
Present in Lille in August during the Olympic Games, Adam Silver spoke of “the appetite of franchise owners to invest more in world basketball”. “There is no specific plan at the moment regarding Europe, except that we agree to examine this opportunity closely,” he declared again in September. And the NBA boss added:
“I think there is a consensus that the level of interest in basketball in Europe is not proportional to its commercial activities.”
This is particularly the case of the Euroleague, a private and almost closed competition created in 2000 by the major European clubs, which left the fold of Fiba (International Federation) largely precisely to increase their income. A quarter of a century later, it shines for its sporting interest, but the vast majority of its participants lose money: for example 20.8 million euros for Real Madrid during the 2023-2024 season, according to specialized media. The fault in particular is almost non-existent television rights, despite the contract signed with the marketing agency IMG, renewed two weeks ago until the end of the 2035-2036 season, more than a year before its end.
Towards a new competition labeled NBA Europe?
The secretary general of Fiba, Andreas Zagklis, for his part, confirmed in December “ongoing discussions” with the NBA, with respect for “the selections and national championships”. In August, Adam Silver refuted wanting to “change the heart of European basketball”, very different from his American counterpart. “Whatever we do, it is important that it fits into the structure of European basketball.”
In what form, precisely, could the NBA, which sees the orange ball above all as a business and entertainment, arrive in Europe? A commercial partnership? Matches between its franchises and European teams? A competition, existing or not, labeled NBA Europe?
“Next month we will see where we are,” Andreas Zagklis said in December. We are there.
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The path to a “European week”
In any case, Adam Silver declared on Wednesday that it was not certain that the NBA would return next season in Paris. The commissioner of the North American League notably mentioned the marked interest of other European cities in hosting relocated NBA matches.
“On the one hand, it is very difficult to organize regular season matches outside the United States,” he said at a press conference. But on the other hand, explained the NBA commissioner, “many European cities are interested in hosting these meetings”, like Berlin and London.
In the longer term, he added to a small number of media, there is “no doubt” that NBA matches will again take place in Paris, which has hosted meetings since 2020.
Adam Silver also mentioned the idea of a “European week”: matches would be “paused” in the United States” and several NBA franchises would travel to Europe to play matches in several cities. “These are things under study,” he said, adding however: “Our current configuration, with 82 matches on a fixed schedule, does not allow us much flexibility at the moment.”
Finally, regarding the recurring question of an expansion of the NBA in Europe, the boss of the North American league instead mentioned “the possibility of creating a league independent of the NBA”, like the African Basketball League , even if “the form it could take is not yet clear”. “The reason we are moving cautiously is because we want to respect the current ecosystem of basketball,” he added.
“We want to be sure to have heard all parties to best understand the opportunity offered to us,” added the commissioner, who took advantage of his Parisian week to meet existing leagues and clubs, but also media groups and broadcasters.
Return to China after six years
In early December, the NBA announced that it would return to China this year with two pre-season matches between the Brooklyn Nets and the Phoenix Suns scheduled for October 10 and 12 in Macau. No match has been organized in China since 2019 and two pre-season meetings followed by a controversial publication on Twitter (now X) in favor of protests in Hong Kong by Daryl Morey, then manager of the Houston Rockets.
ESPN, citing anonymous sources, explained that relations between the North American basketball league and China, an important market with its many fans, have warmed up in particular thanks to the arrival in 2020 of Michael Ma, in charge of operations with the China for the NBA. According to the English-language daily South China Morning Post, the matches will be part of a multi-million dollar deal to host two annual NBA pre-season meetings over the next five years in Macau.
Basketball is extremely popular in China and the NBA has lost hundreds of millions of dollars due to its removal from Chinese television until 2022. From 2004 to 2019, 17 teams played a total of 28 pre-season games there. season. Commissioner Adam Silver had already indicated in October during a conference that he thought the NBA “would make its return to China at some point”.
