NBA delays NBA Europe launch to 2028 with $10bn investment and pre-qualifying competition planned for next year
On 8 October 2026 the NBA confirmed that NBA Europe will be launched in 2028 after a 12-month delay and that a pre-qualifying competition will take place next year to determine four temporary members for the 16-team inaugural season.
The league is built around a 10-year plan in which the NBA intends to invest about $10bn, a figure described by sources as the sporting world’s biggest-ever startup competition, and will combine 12 permanent franchises with four annually admitted temporary clubs. Multiple offers for the 12 permanent slots are said to have exceeded the NBA’s targets, with franchise prices for London expected to fall between $500m and more than $1bn. Deputy commissioner Mark Tatum held talks last week with senior executives from Barcelona, Real Madrid, Paris Saint-Germain, Bayern Munich and Milan as part of the recruitment process. The permanent cities already identified include London, Manchester, Rome, Athens, Istanbul and Lyon, with the league to be topped up by four qualifiers from within European basketball’s existing structure.
Several high-profile bidders have been linked to individual franchises: the London licence has attracted offers reportedly exceeding $1bn from investors including the former Chelsea chair Todd Boehly, a consortium involving the former Tottenham chair Daniel Levy and MSP Sports Capital, and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. Buss Sports Capital is understood to have submitted a bid for the Manchester franchise after selling their 17.8% stake in the Los Angeles Lakers to Joshua Kushner earlier this year. City Football Group has not put in a bid. The NBA has agreed a $300m partnership that includes establishing a new global academy in Abu Dhabi.
It is understood the NBA hopes to announce the identities of the new franchise owners later this year, with the pre-qualifying competition supplying four temporary members to join the 12 permanent clubs in the inaugural campaign. “We’ve got people who are well-capitalised investors who don’t own any basketball franchise, but they want to get into basketball,” Tatem said at last week’s general assembly of European Football Clubs. “We’ve got existing basketball clubs in the ecosystem that have submitted bids, and we have football clubs, some that have their own basketball teams today, and some that don’t and want to get involved in basketball.”
Not all parts of the European basketball establishment have welcomed the proposal: at a meeting in Lake Como this week EuroLeague clubs voted to reject the NBA’s initial offer of investment and instead pursue their own plan to expand from 20 to 24 clubs, although NBA sources say discussions will continue. “Our vision for basketball is to bring everybody with us – EuroLeague, the governing body, Fiba, and the clubs – to revamp the European basketball scene,” Tatem said. “One of the things that we’ve learned from European football is the power of the pyramid. In football every single club understands the clear pathway to play at the top level. That doesn’t exist in basketball.”
The NBA’s chosen hybrid structure will feature 12 permanent members alongside four temporary members admitted each season, with two proposed entry routes: the top two ranked sides from a new second-tier competition called the Basketball Champions League, and two finalists in a separate tournament for Europe’s domestic champions. Under the model being discussed, the highest-ranked non-franchise club to reach the end-of-season playoffs would retain its place in NBA Europe for the following season, while the other three temporary entrants would return to the play-in competition.
Sources involved in the discussions said Real Madrid’s president Florentino Pérez has been particularly active in pushing for NBA Europe and may see the semi-closed model as useful should the prospect of a breakaway football league re-emerge; Real formally withdrew from the European Super League last year and their commercial partners A22 continue legal action against Fifa and Uefa. “Florentino has been very involved in NBA Europe,” a senior source at a EuroLeague club said. “The Super League may be dead for now, but it’s not difficult to imagine a world where the biggest Champions League clubs demand permanent qualification and look to restrict access. A semi-closed Champions League would protect them from domestic failure, so NBA Europe could be very useful.”
City Football Group’s absence from the bidding process is a potential complication because CFG and Oak View Group are 50% owners of the Co-op Live arena — described in reports as the likely Manchester venue — and a regular-season NBA game between the San Antonio Spurs and the New Orleans Pelicans is scheduled to be staged there in January. Tatum has said the NBA seeks partners who will invest in basketball development, academies and indoor arenas, arguing that Europe has relatively few world-class indoor venues and that arena investment provides an economic engine to cities. Khaldoon al-Mubarak has played a role in the NBA’s relationship with Abu Dhabi, culminating in a nine-year partnership that for the last four years has led to NBA preseason games in Abu Dhabi; the partnership remains in place despite fallout from Manchester City being found guilty by an independent commission of over 100 charges.
The next confirmed steps are the pre-qualifying competition planned for next year to supply four temporary members and the delayed inaugural season in 2028, with the NBA aiming to finalise and announce the permanent franchise owners later this year.