NBA Europe has been a hot topic and very present on my mind over the past few weeks. I won't rehash the entire timeline here, but the NBA recently presented EuroLeague with a proposal that the league's 13 shareholder clubs ultimately rejected, opting instead to move forward with plans to convert their existing licenses into permanent franchises and pursue further expansion.

Beyond the reasoning of both parties, I think it's worth highlighting the enormous financial gap between the two organizations.

According to Forbes' October 2025 valuations, the NBA's least valuable franchise, the Memphis Grizzlies, is worth an estimated $3.5 billion. Sportico's estimate is even higher, at $4 billion.

For comparison, EuroLeague announced in March that an independent valuation by JB Capital placed the combined enterprise value of the EuroLeague organization and its licensed clubs at €3.2 billion. The league operation itself was valued at just €1.41 billion, with the clubs collectively accounting for approximately €1.8 billion.

In other words, the NBA's least valuable franchise is worth more than the entire EuroLeague ecosystem, at least according to these estimates.

So the NBA can throw its money around, try to buy everyone off, and establish its own competing competition on another continent. But there's an aspect of this situation that I don't see many people talking about: the NBA isn't the only organization with a say in whether a new European basketball league can operate.

There's also FIBA and, more interestingly, FIBA Europe.

FIBA is the international governing body for basketball. FIBA Europe is its European regional organization, representing 50 national federations and exercising delegated authority over basketball within Europe. All signs point to FIBA being on board with NBA Europe. That's hardly speculation: the NBA and FIBA have already formally announced their partnership.

The organizations also have close institutional ties. NBA Deputy Commissioner and Chief Operating Officer Mark Tatum serves as the NBA's representative on FIBA's Central Board and is a member of FIBA's Executive Committee. But FIBA Europe is a separate governing organization with its own elected board, leadership and bylaws.

And those bylaws are fascinating.

Article 35 goes further, granting the FIBA Europe Board authority to recognize continental international leagues, impose conditions on their recognition, and withdraw that recognition.

This isn't just theoretical authority. At its May 2025 General Assembly, FIBA Europe approved the withdrawal of recognition from several competitions, including the Balkan Basketball League, Baltic Basketball League and European Youth Basketball League.

So, at least within FIBA's regulatory framework, a new pan-European professional basketball competition requires more than the blessing of FIBA's global leadership in Switzerland. FIBA Europe has an explicit role. Now, whether these provisions would survive a legal challenge is another question entirely.

One of the interesting parallels is LIV Golf, although the underlying governing structures differ.

When LIV Golf launched, the PGA Tour denied its members permission to participate in conflicting events and subsequently suspended players who joined the rival circuit. LIV also struggled to gain recognition from the Official World Golf Ranking, initially being denied ranking points before receiving limited recognition for its events in 2026.

The important distinction is that no overarching governing body simply prohibited LIV Golf from existing. Rather, the established golf organizations controlled things that mattered to players: tour membership, eligibility, rankings and access to existing competitions.

Basketball has similar regulatory mechanisms, but FIBA's authority over national federations and international player transfers is more centralized.

Under Article 3-64 of FIBA's Internal Regulations, international transfers generally require a letter of clearance issued by FIBA before the player's new national federation can license them. Article 3-7 also requires players participating in professional leagues to be registered with organizations affiliated with FIBA-recognized national federations if they want to remain eligible for FIBA competitions. Think about the implications.

A player currently playing professionally in Serbia might want to sign with a newly established NBA Europe club in France. Ordinarily, the French federation would need international clearance before registering that player.

However, FIBA's regulations also specify the grounds on which international transfer clearances can be refused, and joining an unauthorized competing league is not explicitly among them. FIBA also maintains separate transfer agreements with the NBA, WNBA and G League.

That doesn't mean FIBA Europe is powerless. While international transfer clearances are controlled by FIBA worldwide, FIBA Europe's authority over competition recognition, combined with national federations' control over club and player registration, creates potential regulatory obstacles for an unauthorized league. The distinction is important: FIBA Europe might not be able to prevent an individual player from transferring simply because of where he intends to play, but it could challenge the recognition of the competition or the eligibility of its participating clubs.

And now we get to the especially interesting part: who actually decides whether NBA Europe gets recognized?

FIBA Europe's Board includes 25 elected members, including its president and treasurer, along with co-opted representatives of European clubs or leagues and representatives of FIBA worldwide.

Under Article 13 of its bylaws, the board can have as many as 31 voting members. Its currently published roster contains 25 elected officials, two co-opted members and three FIBA representatives.

The board ordinarily decides matters by a simple majority of votes cast. Abstentions don't count, and the chairperson has a casting vote in the event of a tie.

This matters because Article 15(d) specifically gives the Board the authority to recognize or withdraw recognition from organizations operating within European basketball.

So a proposed new league could, under FIBA Europe's rules, present an actual governance question that its board is empowered to decide.

FIBA Europe has something called a Coordination Council, a six-member body designed to coordinate its decisions with FIBA worldwide.

The seats are divided evenly between the two organizations.

FIBA Europe:

FIBA worldwide:

Under Articles 22 and 23 of FIBA Europe's bylaws, a Coordination Council member can request a review of certain proposed board decisions. When the review procedure is properly invoked, decisions concerning recognition under Article 15(d) require prior approval from the Coordination Council. Article 25 provides that the council decides by a simple majority of votes cast and that a tied vote results in rejection.

Hypothetically, if all three FIBA Europe representatives opposed a recognition proposal while all three worldwide FIBA representatives supported it, a 3–3 tie would prevent approval through that procedure.

That's an extraordinary governance detail for anyone assuming that an agreement between Adam Silver and FIBA's leadership automatically settles every regulatory question in Europe. Of course, the hypothetical assumes the European representatives would oppose the NBA. And that assumption deserves some scrutiny.

The most relevant figure is probably Jorge Garbajosa.

Garbajosa is a former NBA player, former Real Madrid player, former president of the Spanish Basketball Federation and current president of FIBA Europe.

He is also a vice president of FIBA worldwide and a member of its Executive Committee. In other words, the supposedly separate European and global governing structures overlap substantially at the leadership level.

More importantly, Garbajosa has already publicly welcomed NBA Europe.

In an August 2025 interview with Spanish newspaper AS, he described the NBA's arrival as a positive development and said FIBA Europe wanted to work alongside the NBA to establish a competition that combined the NBA's commercial mentality with European basketball's sporting traditions. That's not exactly the position of someone preparing to obstruct the project.

There are also some interesting relationships with EuroLeague.

Consider Tomas Van Den Spiegel.

He's a co-opted member of the FIBA Europe Board and Executive Committee, but he's also president of European Basketball Leagues, formerly known as ULEB.

That organization represents domestic professional leagues across Europe and, remarkably, owns a minority stake in Euroleague Commercial Assets, the company operating EuroLeague.

So someone who heads an organization with a financial interest in EuroLeague also has a vote on the FIBA Europe Board and serves on its Executive Committee.

That's a direct institutional overlap, not merely an individual having played for a club years ago.

However, even this connection isn't necessarily favorable to EuroLeague. In 2020, ULEB filed a competition complaint against EuroLeague's operator, accusing it of undermining domestic leagues' sporting pathways. More recently, Van Den Spiegel's organization has welcomed the NBA Europe project.

And then there's Dejan Bodiroga, the current president of EuroLeague Basketball.

Before assuming that position in 2022, Bodiroga served on the FIBA Europe Board and chaired its Competitions Commission. EuroLeague's own announcement of his appointment emphasized his experience working with FIBA and national federations.

Bodiroga no longer serves on the FIBA Europe Board, but he certainly understands the organization and its decision-making process.

These relationships point to something more complex than a straightforward fight between the NBA and EuroLeague, with FIBA simply refereeing from the sidelines. European basketball's commercial entities, domestic leagues, national federations and governing bodies are interconnected. Some of those connections favor EuroLeague, while others appear to favor the NBA.

In December 2023, the European Court of Justice ruled in the European Superleague case that FIFA and UEFA's prior-approval and sanctioning systems violated EU competition-law requirements because their discretionary powers lacked adequate transparent, objective, nondiscriminatory and proportionate safeguards.

The ruling didn't eliminate sports governing bodies' ability to authorize competitions. But it substantially constrained the circumstances in which they could use that authority to exclude a competitor.

FIBA Europe would likely face similar legal scrutiny if it attempted to block NBA Europe without legitimate, consistently applied sporting justifications.

There's also an obvious complication: EuroLeague itself is an independently operated commercial competition. FIBA Europe would need to explain why it was willing to tolerate or accommodate EuroLeague while refusing recognition to a new entrant.

So a FIBA Europe refusal might not ultimately prevent the NBA from establishing its own league. But it could introduce regulatory uncertainty, administrative disputes, delayed player registrations and litigation.

Those are hardly irrelevant considerations when investors are contemplating hundreds of millions of dollars in franchise fees and substantial infrastructure investments.

And crucially, recognition isn't necessarily an all-or-nothing proposition. FIBA Europe can grant recognition subject to agreed conditions, which could give its leadership an opportunity to negotiate scheduling, national-team availability, domestic-league participation and other operational matters.

My initial suspicion was that EuroLeague might have a substantial bargaining chip through its relationships with FIBA Europe.

After looking at the governing documents and the individuals involved, I think that proposition needs some qualification.

FIBA Europe has meaningful authority within basketball's regulatory structure, but there's little public evidence that its current leadership intends to use that authority against NBA Europe.

Nevertheless, the institutional structure itself is worth understanding. The NBA can't simply purchase EuroLeague's shareholder clubs and automatically acquire control over European basketball's regulatory framework. To me their approach seems to be about trying to do this in the way that’s most favorable to them, and then working backwards only as much as they need to. Ultimately their actions are purely business oriented.

There are national federations, domestic leagues, FIBA's global leadership, FIBA Europe's elected board and a formal process for recognizing continental competitions, and although money can buy franchises, broadcasting rights and commercial partnerships, it doesn't directly purchase votes on the FIBA Europe Board.

So perhaps the more interesting question isn't whether the NBA can afford to establish a rival competition. It obviously can. It's whether the NBA can persuade all the relevant stakeholders that allowing it to reshape European basketball is in their interests and what those stakeholders might demand in return.