NBA Seeks Soccer Money After EuroLeague Clubs Refused

Five European soccer clubs will meet NBA officials on October 27, and three of them already own a piece of the basketball league the NBA failed to buy. Executives from AC Milan, Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Paris Saint-Germain and Real Madrid are due in London around Monday’s Ballon d’Or ceremony, with the basketball session set for Tuesday, in the room or on a screen.

City editor Mark Kleinman said the talks in London next week are meant to move NBA Europe’s franchise sales after more than six months of bidding. The complication is not the award show. It is the vote those multi-sport clubs already took as basketball owners.

Tuesday’s Guest List Already Voted No

On October 6, the 13 shareholder clubs of EuroLeague Commercial Assets met in Cernobbio, on Lake Como, and rejected the NBA’s offer to fold EuroLeague into NBA Europe. Barcelona confirmed the rebuff and said the clubs would look again only if the proposal changed. People close to the meeting named Barcelona, Fenerbahçe and Olympiacos among the no votes and said it was not clear how every club voted.

Barcelona president Joan Laporta was in that room. Real Madrid and Bayern Munich were there as shareholders too. Three weeks later, the soccer sides of those same institutions are on the NBA’s London list, alongside two clubs that do not run basketball teams at all.

This is not a first conversation. On September 29, NBA deputy commissioner Mark Tatum and George Aivazoglou, the league’s managing director for Europe and the Middle East, met leaders from the same five clubs at the European Football Clubs gathering in Copenhagen, hosted by PSG president Nasser Al-Khelaïfi. Tuesday is a second pass, staged on a football calendar, at a moment when the basketball file is still stuck.

THE FIVE CLUBS IN THE ROOM

• Barcelona: Soccer giant and EuroLeague shareholder; Laporta attended the October 6 meeting that rejected the NBA’s current offer.
• Real Madrid: Soccer giant and EuroLeague shareholder, with a basketball section that already plays the league the NBA wanted to buy.
• Bayern Munich: Soccer giant and EuroLeague shareholder, in the same dual position as the two Spanish clubs.
• Paris Saint-Germain: Soccer giant with no basketball section, so a Paris bid would not start by unwinding an existing EuroLeague share.
• AC Milan: Soccer club owned by RedBird Capital, also with no basketball section; Olimpia Milano, the EuroLeague shareholder in the same city, is a separate Armani-backed club.

The split on that list is the whole meeting. Three invitees would be selling, or diluting, an asset they just voted to keep. Two would be buying a basketball club they do not yet own.

What the NBA Is Selling in London

NBA Europe is planned as a 16-team league: 12 franchises sold as permanent seats, plus four clubs that come in each year on results. The NBA is building it with FIBA, basketball’s global governing body, and still aims to open in October 2027. Tatum said on October 20 that the date is realistic and that team names should start to appear as contracts close.

He also said the NBA will go on without EuroLeague if it must. “We continue to be hopeful that we’ll reach an agreement, but we’re prepared to proceed regardless.”

We continue to target October 2027. We target that to begin rolling out this project. And we believe that the timing is realistic here.

Mark Tatum, NBA deputy commissioner, October 20 briefing

Commissioner Adam Silver has described a hybrid: enough locked-in clubs to justify arenas and payrolls, with a slice of promotion so fans of smaller clubs can still see a path up. Tatum went further on October 20, saying the average permanent team is projected to be in profit by year three and that NBA Europe’s payouts to clubs would triple the sums in EuroLeague’s own 10-year plan.

People briefed on the London round say franchise sales are unlikely to close while the EuroLeague file is open. That is the bind inside the Ballon d’Or week. The NBA wants soccer money and soccer brands. It also wants the basketball league those brands already sit on, and that league has already said no.

Three Invitees Already Own the Rival League

EuroLeague is not a contractor the NBA can hire. Its 13 shareholder clubs own it. They include Barcelona, Real Madrid and Bayern Munich, the three soccer-and-basketball clubs on Tuesday’s list, and they include clubs with no soccer parent at all: Olympiacos and Panathinaikos in Greece, Fenerbahçe and Anadolu Efes in Turkey, Zalgiris in Lithuania, Maccabi Tel Aviv, Baskonia, ASVEL in France, Olimpia Milano, and CSKA Moscow.

People who saw the October 6 paper said it undervalued EuroLeague, which has been seeking about $3 billion, and that it asked the competition to pause an expansion into some of the same cities the NBA wants. Owners who discussed the offer called it a power play. Some used the word colonialist. EuroLeague’s public note after Como did not name the NBA. It talked about strategy and about turning the current 10-year licenses into permanent seats.

WHO HOLDS WHICH HAT

PSG and Milan are the clean names in the room. Gerry Cardinale, who owns AC Milan through RedBird Capital, has already said a Milan NBA Europe team is on his list and has talked about a basketball arena. A Paris bid tied to Qatar Sports Investments, PSG’s owner, has been in circulation since spring. Neither club has to unwind a EuroLeague share before it writes a check.

Barcelona, Real Madrid and Bayern do. If they buy NBA Europe seats in their own cities, they either move their basketball sections across or put a second elite club into the same town. If they stay in EuroLeague, they are helping a rival league take Madrid, Barcelona and Munich, three of the 12 cities on the NBA map. Tuesday asks soccer presidents to pick a basketball future their basketball boards already voted on.

Twelve Cities and a $1 Billion Seat

The permanent map is London, Manchester, Paris, Lyon, Madrid, Barcelona, Milan, Rome, Berlin, Munich, Istanbul and Athens. Six of those cities already feed EuroLeague’s core. London, Manchester and Rome would be new money in markets the closed shop never fully turned into basketball capitals.

Kleinman said current talks are in the hundreds of millions of dollars per franchise, with a London seat priced as high as $1 billion. That sits on top of a June bid round in which offers came in at $500 million or higher in each of the 12 cities, with more than one bid above $1 billion. More than 120 groups had registered interest in the first round. The NBA has been advised on the process by JPMorgan Chase and the Raine Group.

NBA EUROPE BY THE NUMBERS

• League size: 12 sold seats and four merit places, 16 teams in all.
• Start date: October 2027, still the target Tatum set on October 20.
• London price: as much as $1 billion in the talks now under way.
• June floor: $500 million or higher in each of the 12 cities when final bids landed.

Athenians who follow Olympiacos and Panathinaikos will notice who is not on the soccer guest list. Basketball is a major sport in Greece, and both clubs are EuroLeague shareholders. Athens is still one of the 12 cities. The London meeting is built around football brands that can write large checks, not around the rooms that already fill for European basketball. Milan’s soccer owner can bid without stepping on Olimpia. A Greek soccer club cannot substitute for Piraeus or Athens in the same way.

The NBA is not waiting on Europe to discover the continent. It has already booked NBA regular-season games in Berlin, London, Manchester and Paris across 2026, 2027 and 2028. Tatum noted that 70 European players were on NBA rosters on opening night, that the last eight MVPs were born outside the United States, and that France led the league with 17 players. The London talks are about owning the week-to-week club product those players came from.

EuroLeague Put €3.4 Billion on the Table

EuroLeague did not leave Como empty-handed. On October 16 it published a 10-year business plan approved by all 13 shareholders, the same group that had rejected the NBA ten days earlier. The plan is the counter-offer in public: keep the club-owned league, turn licenses into permanent seats, and pay the existing owners to expand rather than to sell.

The 13 clubs have committed to convert 10-year licenses into franchises with no extra entry fee, on the grounds that they already built the competition. EuroLeague wants 24 teams by the 2027-28 season, the same window in which NBA Europe wants to open. It says it holds 15 binding expansion offers with a combined value of €1.2 billion, to be collected in windows in 2027 and 2031.

TWO 10-YEAR PITCHES

Xavi Puyada, EuroLeague’s chief financial officer, said about 40% of licensed clubs now run a sustainable operation and that the 10-year plan puts full sustainability at the center. The conversion is meant to lift club and league values by 25% from the 2026-27 season. Tatum’s reply on October 20 was that EuroLeague’s paper “doesn’t affect our plans” and that NBA Europe is the faster road to profit.

Jordi Bertomeu, who used to run EuroLeague, warned the clubs against trading that paper for NBA control. The terms on the table, he said, were not a collaboration as he understood the word. “In exchange, they would give up control over their own future. And if, three years from now, what they have been promised does not happen, they will not be able to change anything.”

Leaving Now Would Cost the Shares

Chus Bueno, EuroLeague’s chief executive, spent October 19 telling anyone who asked that the telephone is still on the hook. He also set a price on walking away. All 13 shareholders have signed 10-year deals tied to the expansion plan. A club that leaves pays a penalty, can face claims from the others, and gives up shareholdings he put at more than €80 million.

If they decide to enter into the market, it’s going to be a disaster. And they know, we know, and we don’t want that.

Chus Bueno, EuroLeague chief executive, October 19 interview

“If they want to leave, they have a penalty they can pay, and then the clubs can also ask for individual damages. They will lose the €80 million-plus that they have in shares,” Bueno said. “But if they ever want to come back, they will have to pay whatever number it is when they ask to come back.” He said he does not believe the groups will split, because “if you are divided, you lose value, and then some third party benefits.”

That third party, in this construction, is the NBA. The clubs and executives after Lake Como are being asked, in London, to test Bueno’s threat. A soccer president who green-lights an NBA Europe team in Madrid, Barcelona or Munich is not only buying a franchise. He is putting a 10-year basketball contract, and those shares, into conflict with a new American-backed league in the same city.

Bueno said only 40% of current licence holders are financially sustainable, and he argued that the expansion can lift that share within five years. Tatum used the same 40% figure as an opening. The NBA’s pitch to soccer money is that EuroLeague’s own books show a club-owned league that still cannot pay most of its members, and that a sold franchise in London, Paris or Milan would.

Fragmentation Is the Word Both Camps Use

On October 8, two days after Como, the NBA and FIBA put out a joint statement saying they still wanted EuroLeague in a single structure and would launch without it if they had to. Aivazoglou, speaking the same day in London, said there is “a serious value gap for European basketball” and that the new league would start with 16 teams and reward clubs on results more than EuroLeague does. The three-way track is older than this month. Representatives of FIBA, the NBA and EuroLeague Basketball already held talks at FIBA headquarters in Mies in June and scheduled another meeting for July.

THE MONTH THAT SPLIT THE FILE

1. September 29, 2026: Tatum and Aivazoglou meet PSG, Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Real Madrid and AC Milan at the European Football Clubs gathering in Copenhagen.
2. October 6, 2026: The 13 EuroLeague shareholders reject the NBA’s merger offer in Cernobbio and move to turn licenses into franchises.
3. October 8, 2026: The NBA and FIBA say they will still open a European league in 2027, with or without EuroLeague.
4. October 16, 2026: EuroLeague publishes the 10-year plan: €3.4 billion to teams, 24 clubs by 2027-28, 15 binding offers worth €1.2 billion.
5. October 20, 2026: Tatum repeats the October 2027 target and says NBA Europe payouts would triple EuroLeague’s figures.
6. October 23, 2026: Kleinman reports the five soccer clubs will talk with the NBA on October 27 in London.
7. October 26, 2026: Ballon d’Or ceremony in London brings the soccer executives into the same city.
8. October 27, 2026: NBA Europe talks, in person or remote.

If Tuesday produces soccer-backed bids in Madrid, Barcelona and Munich, EuroLeague loses the multi-sport brands that make its Friday nights look like Champions League. If those three stay put, the NBA still has PSG, Milan, and the London seat at as much as $1 billion, and it still has FIBA. Two top leagues in the same 12 cities would split players, sponsors and dates. Bueno calls that a disaster. Tatum calls it a plan he will run if he must.

Monday’s ceremony is a football night. Tuesday’s call is about whether those same clubs want to own European basketball as a franchise, or keep owning the league they just refused to sell.