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FIBA secretary general Andreas Zagklis, Adam Silver’s counterpart in Europe, said he has no doubt the NBA’s new league overseas will launch, and called October 2027 a “realistic target” for tipoff.
“It is also an ideal way of closing the curtain in Doha (Qatar) 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,” Zagklis said Tuesday.
Zagklis will oversee the quadrennial men’s World Cup in Qatar, which concludes in September 2027. One month later, FIBA — basketball’s international governing body — and the NBA would launch a new competition in Europe that Silver has considered for years. It would attract conglomerate-level, uber-rich investors for new and existing franchises in Europe’s major cities.
Last month, George Aivazoglou, managing director for the NBA’s European and Middle East offices, mentioned London, Paris, Rome, Milan, Berlin, Munich, Barcelona, Madrid, Athens, Istanbul, Manchester (U.K.) and Lyon (France) as the likely locales for 12 charter members of a new, NBA-backed league that could start as early as 2027.
In or near those cities are 10 clubs competing in the EuroLeague — the continent’s top basketball league — and this is one of Zagklis’ chief areas of concern, and, perhaps, influence when it comes to the new league FIBA and the NBA are creating. He’s trying to create as much unity as possible in Europe’s confusing maze of professional basketball leagues, making sure teams in the EuroLeague that do not transfer over to the NBA-sponsored league can still make money and compete at a high level, and also ensuring more teams across Europe have access to the NBA league than can currently reach the EuroLeague.
“There is no such thing as a ‘EuroLeague team’ because all of these teams are FIBA teams,” Zagklis said, “including the teams that are co-owners of … (the company that owns EuroLeague). We care a lot about them, we care a lot about them having a role, a position, making money, which hasn’t always been the case, and perhaps is at the heart of the problem.”
When an American basketball fan thinks about an NBA Europe, they should not imagine anything like the 30-team, 82-game season that plays out on this side of the Atlantic. The “European model” of competition, as Zagklis mentioned multiple times during his two-plus-hour-long news conference on Tuesday, is for teams to play in domestic leagues with access to intercontinental championship competitions based on their performances in those domestic leagues.
That’s how it currently works for basketball in Europe, to a point. There are 20 teams playing in the EuroLeague, but 13 are license holders, meaning they play regardless of how well they perform in their domestic leagues. According to the Sports Business Journal, approximately 90 percent of all European basketball teams do not have access to the EuroLeague, and roughly two-thirds of EuroLeague teams are losing money.
On Tuesday, Zagklis said the European basketball model loses money because fans of too many teams have lost “hope” that their squad can play for the biggest prizes. If, as NBA officials have previously said, the new league initially opens with 14-16 teams (a number that will surely grow), access to those wild-card spots would be broader.
“This is part of our job, as guardians of the ecosystem, to ensure league access,” Zagklis said. “And league access means the opportunity to play every year at the top. No more elevator element that you play once you invest. … From a fan perspective, it is also a question of respect to the fans of the clubs that until today have either no chance or any realistic chance to see their team reach the top by winning and winning and winning.”
Zagklis said FIBA would be “the last” arbiter to try to strike an agreement with EuroLeague owners and the NBA on a singular format, though that window seems to have mostly shut when EuroLeague officials rebuffed the NBA’s pitch of a merger in 2024. Short of an agreement that incorporates EuroLeague’s ownership structure into the NBA’s European model, the two sides will be in direct competition, with far more money and branding power on the NBA’s side.
“I prefer to look naive and try until the end for a solution,” Zagklis said.
He also said the new league’s champion would compete in FIBA’s International Cup, a summer tournament of champions from regional competitions across the world (including a roster of G League stars). Zagklis said FIBA has not yet participated in discussions about how a European champion might play against NBA teams in the U.S., such as through a spot in the NBA Cup, which concludes next week in Las Vegas.
“I do not consider this a serious approach by anyone (to discuss European teams playing against NBA teams) when we have such a big topic on the table now,” Zagklis said.
The NBA will hold two games between the Memphis Grizzlies and Orlando Magic in Europe next month in Berlin on Jan. 15, 2026, and in London on Jan. 18, 2026. The meetings between the NBA, FIBA, potential new investors and owners of existing clubs will continue during the NBA’s Europe trip as this new league takes shape.