Global basketball governing body FIBA has further outlined plans for its collaborative NBA Europe project, with secretary general Andreas Zagklis reaffirming his belief in the project and pointing to October 2027 as a potential launch date.
Speaking at a FIBA-organized press conference attended by Sportcal (GlobalData Sport), Zagklis said that while consensus and approval will be required from the boards of both FIBA and US basketball’s elite NBA (which is FIBA’s partner in the project), he believes that NBA Europe “will happen”, and that he has “no doubt about it.”
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He continued: “I do believe that October 2027 is a realistic target and that it is also an ideal way of closing the curtain in Doha with tremendous confidence about the FIBA Basketball World Cup and moving into a new project that shapes the European club basketball landscape in a positive way.”
October 2027 was also a date put forward by the NBA’s managing director for Europe and the Middle East, George Aivazoglu, when quizzed on the subject in early November.
Zagklis also revealed that the NBA Europe project will not be a completely closed league, as many had expected, but rather emphasized that external teams will also be able to qualify for participation in the competition.
This, he said, will include both the FIBA Basketball Champions League, its top-level competition for European club teams, and others.
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By GlobalData“We are also looking at a model that not only goes through the second-tier league, through the BCL in this case, but also in parallel through a qualification tournament and an end-of-season qualification tournament, collecting champions [of domestic leagues], collecting the next best [ranked teams] from the BCL, we can qualify teams to the top-tier leagues in Europe,” Zagklis explained.
“As guardians of the ecosystem, it's our job to ensure league access. League access means the opportunity to play at the top every year.
“This is a clear pathway to hundreds of clubs around Europe. And this is part of our job, to ensure that this hope is there, and then it is translated into investment into basketball, which is spread out over the hundreds of clubs that participate in European national leagues."
He continued: “This is for us one of the fundamental pieces of the puzzle because, as you know, in these conversations, FIBA does not only represent the national teams and the national federations, FIBA also represents our domestic leagues. And the domestic leagues are a very important piece of the fiber of not only Europe but also across the globe.
“When we are at the table, we represent both our members as well as the national championships. Some of them have 100-year histories and incredible traditions, and also very sound business models.
“This is the engine that produces players, and from a fan perspective, it is also a question of respect to the fans of the clubs that, until today, [did not] have either no chance or any realistic chance to see their team reach the top by winning,” he said, potentially referencing the semi-closed nature of the rival EuroLeague competition.
The EuroLeague has railed against the NBA Europe project from the outset, stating that it stands “as a threat to the long-standing traditions of European basketball” and that it may “risk fragmentation and confusion within the sport.”
Nonetheless, with qualification entry to NBA Europe now on the cards through BCL and domestic league participation, more teams may defect from the EuroLeague to FIBA competition as the increased financial incentives that will come with the NBA brand may be too much for teams to pass up.
Already in 2025, Alba Berlin, a former EuroLeague stalwart, defected to enter FIBA’s BCL instead.
The clubs most affected will be the EuroLeague’s 12 permanent member clubs, all of which are shareholders in the competition, meaning their financial security is tied to the EuroLeague’s success in a way that non-permanent members are not.
