NBA is considering European expansion. Real Madrid, PSG, Man City, team in Germany are on the list

[pepe1991]

Length of average nba game in real time often goes over 2 and half hours, with OTs even crossing near 3 hours. Off 150 min (2 and half hours) = only 48 min of actual product ( game). Basically 2/3 of a "game" isn't game but product placement.

Average length of football /soccer game is 2 hours. 15 min of no-sport in between.

NBA season goes forever, lasts for ages, and after everything is done "real" basketball starts.
Football teams play once a week and by the time it ends- it actually -ends.


As basketball product, FIBA rules/Euro basketball make product more watchable than nba. For start, game lasts less in real time and game isn't chopped up in million commercial breaks about mostly gambling now.

Silver said league is highlight reel league. But why? Maybe because watching actual game is terrible experience? No? NBA only cares about money, not about quality of it's product. That's why they allowed gambling to swarm them over.

As for rules itself, i hand defensive 3 sec rule because it only exists to make minions somewhat playable & to hurt defense for sake of more points ,because more points = more manufactured "stars". More stars = more money. But that's matter of personal taste.


But all this is irrelevant because one thing is here mentioned so many times, yet Silver & rest of company is so delusional about. Europe has no interest in basketball, at least nowhere near as they think. Vast majority of population in Europe only watches football and nothing else. And basically all of them have tribal connection with local team, as they are basically born to be fan of that team. Hardcore Real Madrid/Barca/ Liverpool/ Utd fans find Real Madrid/Barca/ Pool/ Utd fans outside of Madrid/Barca / Liverpool / Manchester- annoying & tourists. Same with all other fanbases.
Fangroups (fanatics) are heart of Euro football. People who travel with team as organized groups to support. Basketball simply never had that, nor ever will ,because soccer in Europe is bigger than life.

Croatia's capital, Zagreb, has 3 football schools with 500 kids signed in. Across 3 basketball schools, amount of kids that trains is below 100. That's true interest in basketball in Europe. Keep in mind there are so many countries like UK with zero interest in basketball, where national team plays qualifications in arena od 2000 seats and is half empty.

[dhsilv2]

This is comical. European fans have the vastly superior euroleague on their doorstep why would they pay more to attend the clownball show that is the NBA

They want to watch NBA basketball vs Fiba? Bigger courts, more emphasis on athletic ability, deeper 3's, and a significantly longer game?

Congrats on making me agree with MIrotic12 on a topic.
The NBA is a terrible product to watch. It is only saved by its talent. But other than that? I dont know who in their right mind has fun watching a sport with timeouts, ad breaks, commercials and foul calls every 30 seconds. There is 0 flow to an NBA game, its entire purpose is to generate ad revenue, not be a good sport.
And that's why the NBA struggles with ratings, because I genuinely dont know a single non-Basketball fan who enjoys watching NBA. I have heard so many times from friends that they never could watch NBA because they immediately get bored by all the constant interruptions and breaks.
On the other hand I have a lot of non-Basketball fans who enjoyed watching the Eurobasket or Fiba World Cup. Because you have pure Basketball there. Less talent, but no constant timeouts, no 2 minute timeouts, no constant commercials etc.

NBA Europe with NBA ruleset but Fiba talent would be an absolute disaster. You get the worst of both worlds.

Or lets say it like this: Some of the actual Basketball rules of the NBA I like. I prefer the bigger courts and 3-second defensive violation for example. Its the broadcasting rules and and broadcasting framework that I hate. The NBA could be a great product to watch if it simply had fewer timeouts, fewer ad breaks, if each timeout didnt take 2+ minutes, if each coaching challenge didnt take 5 minutes, if the last 2 minutes of the game didnt take 20 minutes, if a 48 minute game didnt take 3 hours to end etc.

The european TV viewer will not accept that. The biggest sprot in the world has 15 minutes of break in 90 minutes of action. Timeouts every 30 seconds, commercial breaks the whole time will not fly in Europe, even the FIBA ruleset is pushing it with the amount of timeouts. Americans enjoy watching Sports inbetween their ad breaks, Europeans want as much sport and as little ads as possible

If you don't like NBA basketball, don't watch it. Problem solved.

Meanwhile are you going to claim FIBA doesn't have timeouts? And...maybe I'm looking at the wrong stuff. But Euroleaguebasketball.net indicates that there are more free throws there than the NBA on average. So...again not sure what you're even talking about.

The NBA is not having any rating issues. I don't know why so many on here both want to make that up and then talk so much about it.

And your anecdote is cute. It's rather meaningless and it's self contradicting. As they can't be non basketball fans, but watch because it's "pure basketball".

As for the rest...nobody has said anything about timeouts or TV breaks. That's not a requirement of NBA basketball. That's a TV requirement needed for TV deals. The NBA has 7 timeouts vs 5 in FIBA with 8 additional minutes. Essentially the NBA has 1 more timeout adjusted for length. The rest of this is nonsense. If a european consumer wouldn't like that and it would hurt the ratings and ad revenue, then they wouldn't do it. Not that complicated.

[Tukkerwolf]

Keep in mind there are so many countries like UK with zero interest in basketball, where national team plays qualifications in arena od 2000 seats and is half empty.

But I think that's what they want to change. With all due respect, the NBA is probably not trying to entertain Croatian people, but the British.

Like you said, basketball in countries like the UK, Netherlands and Belgium and to a lesser extend Germany is very marginal, but combined those four have an 11 Trillion dollar economy and are countries that always have an eye across the pond, have large betting markets and a pay for view sports channels culture (here in the Netherlands alone we have ESPN, ViaPlay, Ziggo Sport, all popular paid sports channels), etc. And again, with all due respect, but the economies of Croatia, Serbia, Greece and Lithuania combined is smaller than that of a single city like Amsterdam.

I can imagine the NBA is looking to get a small slice of that pie by trying to tap into that potential. I have no idea whether it will work, but I do see the logic. And although the NFL Europe experiment failed, it did get a decent amount of exposure at the time.

[Raps in 4]

Would Europeans even watch a sport with a salary cap? They love their oligarch-run sports leagues where the team with the richest owner automatically wins the league. I can see Madrid fans tuning out when they realize their team can't spend 10x as much money on player salaries as the Thunder. Or when they realize there is a draft for young players and they can't just spend hundreds of millions of dollars signing all the best prospects every year.

You realize 99% of Europe is NOT a Real Madrid or Liverpool fan, but just of a middling team spending a couple of million per year?

I don't know, I've discussed this with Europeans plenty of times on here and on Reddit, and always get told I don't understand the "European sports mentality". Even fans of poverty franchises will defend to the death the right of Madrid or PSG or Man City to buy their way to titles. I waa told winning isn't everything in sports and not every team deserves to compete for a title.

[Tukkerwolf]

Would Europeans even watch a sport with a salary cap? They love their oligarch-run sports leagues where the team with the richest owner automatically wins the league. I can see Madrid fans tuning out when they realize their team can't spend 10x as much money on player salaries as the Thunder. Or when they realize there is a draft for young players and they can't just spend hundreds of millions of dollars signing all the best prospects every year.

You realize 99% of Europe is NOT a Real Madrid or Liverpool fan, but just of a middling team spending a couple of million per year?

I don't know, I've discussed this with Europeans plenty of times on here and on Reddit, and always get told I don't understand the "European sports mentality". Even fans of poverty franchises will defend to the death the right of Madrid or PSG or Man City to buy their way to titles. Apparently trying to avoid relegation is exciting, or something.

First of all, a lot of fans don't like the way that money has taken over soccer, but the problem is that the way the system is set up, there is little that can be changed. People are allowed to change employers and closing of 300 leagues in an NBA-like CBA is impossible.

Secondly, yes, watching your team avoid relegation, or become the champion of a third tier league is just as gratifying as a championship. I find it pretty weird that you think otherwise or are so condescending about that. Sports can be fun at any level as long as there is something at stake even my sons junior league.

[jbk1234]

travel would be impossible.. unless they’re ending back to backs

Agreed. I don't think the union signs off. I don't think most players will want to play for a European team.

[LuDux1]

travel would be impossible.. unless they’re ending back to backs

Agreed. I don't think the union signs off. I don't think most players will want to play for a European team.

It's not NBA Europe Conference or Division, so players won't be signing off anything, except maybe by investing in Europe like Durant
https://www.reuters.com/sports/soccer/nba-star-durant-invests-psg-french-club-plan-basketball-future-2025-06-20

[peZt]

They want to watch NBA basketball vs Fiba? Bigger courts, more emphasis on athletic ability, deeper 3's, and a significantly longer game?

Congrats on making me agree with MIrotic12 on a topic.
The NBA is a terrible product to watch. It is only saved by its talent. But other than that? I dont know who in their right mind has fun watching a sport with timeouts, ad breaks, commercials and foul calls every 30 seconds. There is 0 flow to an NBA game, its entire purpose is to generate ad revenue, not be a good sport.
And that's why the NBA struggles with ratings, because I genuinely dont know a single non-Basketball fan who enjoys watching NBA. I have heard so many times from friends that they never could watch NBA because they immediately get bored by all the constant interruptions and breaks.
On the other hand I have a lot of non-Basketball fans who enjoyed watching the Eurobasket or Fiba World Cup. Because you have pure Basketball there. Less talent, but no constant timeouts, no 2 minute timeouts, no constant commercials etc.

NBA Europe with NBA ruleset but Fiba talent would be an absolute disaster. You get the worst of both worlds.

Or lets say it like this: Some of the actual Basketball rules of the NBA I like. I prefer the bigger courts and 3-second defensive violation for example. Its the broadcasting rules and and broadcasting framework that I hate. The NBA could be a great product to watch if it simply had fewer timeouts, fewer ad breaks, if each timeout didnt take 2+ minutes, if each coaching challenge didnt take 5 minutes, if the last 2 minutes of the game didnt take 20 minutes, if a 48 minute game didnt take 3 hours to end etc.

The european TV viewer will not accept that. The biggest sprot in the world has 15 minutes of break in 90 minutes of action. Timeouts every 30 seconds, commercial breaks the whole time will not fly in Europe, even the FIBA ruleset is pushing it with the amount of timeouts. Americans enjoy watching Sports inbetween their ad breaks, Europeans want as much sport and as little ads as possible

If you don't like NBA basketball, don't watch it. Problem solved.

Meanwhile are you going to claim FIBA doesn't have timeouts? And...maybe I'm looking at the wrong stuff. But Euroleaguebasketball.net indicates that there are more free throws there than the NBA on average. So...again not sure what you're even talking about.

The NBA is not having any rating issues. I don't know why so many on here both want to make that up and then talk so much about it.

And your anecdote is cute. It's rather meaningless and it's self contradicting. As they can't be non basketball fans, but watch because it's "pure basketball".

As for the rest...nobody has said anything about timeouts or TV breaks. That's not a requirement of NBA basketball. That's a TV requirement needed for TV deals. The NBA has 7 timeouts vs 5 in FIBA with 8 additional minutes. Essentially the NBA has 1 more timeout adjusted for length. The rest of this is nonsense. If a european consumer wouldn't like that and it would hurt the ratings and ad revenue, then they wouldn't do it. Not that complicated.

You have 16 maximum possible timeouts in an NBA game vs. 10 possible timeouts in the Euroleague. The maximum possible duration of timeouts in the NBA is 20 minutes. In the Euroleague its 10 minutes. So double the amount of durations. And this calculated using the offical duration of a timeout which is 75. They usually are at least 2 minutes long so the difference would be even more than 2x
This also does not take into account how **** long challenges take.
Its not a comparison, there is much less flow to a NBA game compared to Euroleauge. Way more interruptions and breaks

And no, my anecdote is not self contradictory. How the hell do you think people become fans of something? Do you think people are born as Basketball fans? No they start as Non-Basketball fans and then at some point watch their first game. All of my non-Basketball friends who watched Fiba Eurobasket found it incredibly entertaining and thrilling. 2 of them I tried to make NBA fans in the past and they were bored when we watched a Sunday Evening match. You also have the anecdote of Realgm or Reddit or Twitter being always full of american fans being like "holy ****, this is so much more entertaining without the constnat interruptions and with the flow to the game".

And I also dont believe the NBA deviate from the timeout rules. It might be a TV requirement but it got engrained into the Basketball culture and NBA culture over there. If they apply NBA rules in NBA Europe, this will most likely include the timeout setup as well. The ultimate goal will probably be to have a World Championship game between the two champions. Can't have that if the ruleset differs, which includes Timeouts as well. They will want to have the exact same product. But like I said, NBA product without the talent will fail in Europe

[Mirotic12]

The world really needs to figure out what a continent is as I'd never consider south america and north america as the same but anyway.

But if I liked soccer I don't know or see why I'd care where the players are from. That concept is so foreign to me...I legit have never once even thought of such a thing. But while I suppose it might seem odd just from a geographic aspect. Would you call the NBA an American league? While the whole "national" thing dates back to wanting to make it clear that it wasn't a regional league. The NBA to me is a world league which happens to play today in the US due to geography and logistics. But it most certainly isn't a national league nor should the teams be seen as national teams as it expands.

For me, especially as an American, states matter more to our identity than the country in many aspects of day to day life. London vs New York City for example are both so foreign to me they both could be other countries. But given that, there's never an expectation the Ohio team, will have Ohio players. Our college teams often barely even have local kids from the state on them. That isn't to say it isn't sometimes cool when they do, see Lebron on the Cavs. But that was more novelty than something expected.

The EuroLeague is more of a world league than the NBA is. It's more international than the NBA is by every single criteria.

By teams, by countries represented, by coaches, by players, in every single way, the EuroLeague is far more of a world league than the NBA is.

That isn't going to mean anything in Europe for NBA Europe. The thing you are not understanding is the teams in Europe have to have a real connection to the local people where they play.

It's not about the league being international or not, it's about the connection to the locality.

Expansion teams very rarely ever work in Europe. It's way, way, way harder to make a successful expansion team in Europe than it is in the US.

You are so disingenuous. OP was clearly talking about global influence outside of their respective zones.

Go to Japan and China and you will see NBA merchandise. You won't see any EuroLeague.

What does that have to do with what we were talking about?

[dhsilv2]

Congrats on making me agree with MIrotic12 on a topic.
The NBA is a terrible product to watch. It is only saved by its talent. But other than that? I dont know who in their right mind has fun watching a sport with timeouts, ad breaks, commercials and foul calls every 30 seconds. There is 0 flow to an NBA game, its entire purpose is to generate ad revenue, not be a good sport.
And that's why the NBA struggles with ratings, because I genuinely dont know a single non-Basketball fan who enjoys watching NBA. I have heard so many times from friends that they never could watch NBA because they immediately get bored by all the constant interruptions and breaks.
On the other hand I have a lot of non-Basketball fans who enjoyed watching the Eurobasket or Fiba World Cup. Because you have pure Basketball there. Less talent, but no constant timeouts, no 2 minute timeouts, no constant commercials etc.

NBA Europe with NBA ruleset but Fiba talent would be an absolute disaster. You get the worst of both worlds.

Or lets say it like this: Some of the actual Basketball rules of the NBA I like. I prefer the bigger courts and 3-second defensive violation for example. Its the broadcasting rules and and broadcasting framework that I hate. The NBA could be a great product to watch if it simply had fewer timeouts, fewer ad breaks, if each timeout didnt take 2+ minutes, if each coaching challenge didnt take 5 minutes, if the last 2 minutes of the game didnt take 20 minutes, if a 48 minute game didnt take 3 hours to end etc.

The european TV viewer will not accept that. The biggest sprot in the world has 15 minutes of break in 90 minutes of action. Timeouts every 30 seconds, commercial breaks the whole time will not fly in Europe, even the FIBA ruleset is pushing it with the amount of timeouts. Americans enjoy watching Sports inbetween their ad breaks, Europeans want as much sport and as little ads as possible

If you don't like NBA basketball, don't watch it. Problem solved.

Meanwhile are you going to claim FIBA doesn't have timeouts? And...maybe I'm looking at the wrong stuff. But Euroleaguebasketball.net indicates that there are more free throws there than the NBA on average. So...again not sure what you're even talking about.

The NBA is not having any rating issues. I don't know why so many on here both want to make that up and then talk so much about it.

And your anecdote is cute. It's rather meaningless and it's self contradicting. As they can't be non basketball fans, but watch because it's "pure basketball".

As for the rest...nobody has said anything about timeouts or TV breaks. That's not a requirement of NBA basketball. That's a TV requirement needed for TV deals. The NBA has 7 timeouts vs 5 in FIBA with 8 additional minutes. Essentially the NBA has 1 more timeout adjusted for length. The rest of this is nonsense. If a european consumer wouldn't like that and it would hurt the ratings and ad revenue, then they wouldn't do it. Not that complicated.

You have 16 maximum possible timeouts in an NBA game vs. 10 possible timeouts in the Euroleague. The maximum possible duration of timeouts in the NBA is 20 minutes. In the Euroleague its 10 minutes. So double the amount of durations. And this calculated using the offical duration of a timeout which is 75. They usually are at least 2 minutes long so the difference would be even more than 2x
This also does not take into account how **** long challenges take.
Its not a comparison, there is much less flow to a NBA game compared to Euroleauge. Way more interruptions and breaks

And no, my anecdote is not self contradictory. How the hell do you think people become fans of something? Do you think people are born as Basketball fans? No they start as Non-Basketball fans and then at some point watch their first game. All of my non-Basketball friends who watched Fiba Eurobasket found it incredibly entertaining and thrilling. 2 of them I tried to make NBA fans in the past and they were bored when we watched a Sunday Evening match. You also have the anecdote of Realgm or Reddit or Twitter being always full of american fans being like "holy ****, this is so much more entertaining without the constnat interruptions and with the flow to the game".

And I also dont believe the NBA deviate from the timeout rules. It might be a TV requirement but it got engrained into the Basketball culture and NBA culture over there. If they apply NBA rules in NBA Europe, this will most likely include the timeout setup as well. The ultimate goal will probably be to have a World Championship game between the two champions. Can't have that if the ruleset differs, which includes Timeouts as well. They will want to have the exact same product. But like I said, NBA product without the talent will fail in Europe

Nobody is defending the excessive commercials. But that is not a function of the NBA rules. If you can't understand that, I'm not sure what more can be done to help you.

[Mirotic12]

They want to watch NBA basketball vs Fiba? Bigger courts, more emphasis on athletic ability, deeper 3's, and a significantly longer game?

Congrats on making me agree with MIrotic12 on a topic.
The NBA is a terrible product to watch. It is only saved by its talent. But other than that? I dont know who in their right mind has fun watching a sport with timeouts, ad breaks, commercials and foul calls every 30 seconds. There is 0 flow to an NBA game, its entire purpose is to generate ad revenue, not be a good sport.
And that's why the NBA struggles with ratings, because I genuinely dont know a single non-Basketball fan who enjoys watching NBA. I have heard so many times from friends that they never could watch NBA because they immediately get bored by all the constant interruptions and breaks.
On the other hand I have a lot of non-Basketball fans who enjoyed watching the Eurobasket or Fiba World Cup. Because you have pure Basketball there. Less talent, but no constant timeouts, no 2 minute timeouts, no constant commercials etc.

NBA Europe with NBA ruleset but Fiba talent would be an absolute disaster. You get the worst of both worlds.

Or lets say it like this: Some of the actual Basketball rules of the NBA I like. I prefer the bigger courts and 3-second defensive violation for example. Its the broadcasting rules and and broadcasting framework that I hate. The NBA could be a great product to watch if it simply had fewer timeouts, fewer ad breaks, if each timeout didnt take 2+ minutes, if each coaching challenge didnt take 5 minutes, if the last 2 minutes of the game didnt take 20 minutes, if a 48 minute game didnt take 3 hours to end etc.

The european TV viewer will not accept that. The biggest sprot in the world has 15 minutes of break in 90 minutes of action. Timeouts every 30 seconds, commercial breaks the whole time will not fly in Europe, even the FIBA ruleset is pushing it with the amount of timeouts. Americans enjoy watching Sports inbetween their ad breaks, Europeans want as much sport and as little ads as possible

If you don't like NBA basketball, don't watch it. Problem solved.

Meanwhile are you going to claim FIBA doesn't have timeouts? And...maybe I'm looking at the wrong stuff. But Euroleaguebasketball.net indicates that there are more free throws there than the NBA on average. So...again not sure what you're even talking about.

The NBA is not having any rating issues. I don't know why so many on here both want to make that up and then talk so much about it.

And your anecdote is cute. It's rather meaningless and it's self contradicting. As they can't be non basketball fans, but watch because it's "pure basketball".

As for the rest...nobody has said anything about timeouts or TV breaks. That's not a requirement of NBA basketball. That's a TV requirement needed for TV deals. The NBA has 7 timeouts vs 5 in FIBA with 8 additional minutes. Essentially the NBA has 1 more timeout adjusted for length. The rest of this is nonsense. If a european consumer wouldn't like that and it would hurt the ratings and ad revenue, then they wouldn't do it. Not that complicated.

I asked three basketball fans if they would watch NBA Europe with NBA rules, and they all said not a chance they would watch that.

They all had same reasons for it. They hate NBA rules, NBA regular season games are incredibly boring, too long, and way too commercialiezd, and if they don't care to watch the actual NBA because of that, they won't be watching NBA Europe either.

[Mirotic12]

travel would be impossible.. unless they’re ending back to backs

Agreed. I don't think the union signs off. I don't think most players will want to play for a European team.

It's an entirely separate league from the NBA.

[Tobin Tax]

From a European point of view:

New NBA Europe's teams are supposed to be:


Real Madrid

Barcelona

Bayer Munich

Asvel Lyon-Villerbaunne ( Tony Parker)

Milan (actual Armani or CF Milan?)

Roma "Bears"

París SG

London "Towers" ( Chelsea?)

Manchester City

Galatasaray?

AEK?


To be honest, competitive teams are just a few ones, actually just the Real Madrid. Obviosuly, the new teams ( supposely with a lot of money to) will pay to get good players. Anyway, most of this teams have NOT any basketball background. They will unlikely be atractive for the local cities, and what to say for the rest of us...( europeans not from this cities)


I will absolutely rather want to see a competition with this other basketball teams in Europe:

Panathinaikos

Olympiakos

Efes

Fenerbahce

Zalgiris

Estrella Roja

Partizan

Milano

Virtus Bolonia

Maccabi

Hapoel

Dubai

Mónaco

Paris Basket

CSKA

Valencia

Baskonia

[Blame Rasho]

The EuroLeague is more of a world league than the NBA is. It's more international than the NBA is by every single criteria.

By teams, by countries represented, by coaches, by players, in every single way, the EuroLeague is far more of a world league than the NBA is.

That isn't going to mean anything in Europe for NBA Europe. The thing you are not understanding is the teams in Europe have to have a real connection to the local people where they play.

It's not about the league being international or not, it's about the connection to the locality.

Expansion teams very rarely ever work in Europe. It's way, way, way harder to make a successful expansion team in Europe than it is in the US.

You are so disingenuous. OP was clearly talking about global influence outside of their respective zones.

Go to Japan and China and you will see NBA merchandise. You won't see any EuroLeague.

What does that have to do with what we were talking about?

Still with the trash posts I see…

[pepe1991]

Keep in mind there are so many countries like UK with zero interest in basketball, where national team plays qualifications in arena od 2000 seats and is half empty.

But I think that's what they want to change. With all due respect, the NBA is probably not trying to entertain Croatian people, but the British.

Like you said, basketball in countries like the UK, Netherlands and Belgium and to a lesser extend Germany is very marginal, but combined those four have an 11 Trillion dollar economy and are countries that always have an eye across the pond, have large betting markets and a pay for view sports channels culture (here in the Netherlands alone we have ESPN, ViaPlay, Ziggo Sport, all popular paid sports channels), etc. And again, with all due respect, but the economies of Croatia, Serbia, Greece and Lithuania combined is smaller than that of a single city like Amsterdam.

I can imagine the NBA is looking to get a small slice of that pie by trying to tap into that potential. I have no idea whether it will work, but I do see the logic. And although the NFL Europe experiment failed, it did get a decent amount of exposure at the time.

I'm well aware of fact that NBA Europe is not happening because of Croatia, Serbia or Slovenia, but in same time i'm also familiar enough with "market" that they are targeting, that will never care about basketball.

If you ask random person in UK to name 10 active nba players, odds are, 8 won't know that Kobe died. 2 will say Jordan.

UK played qualifications versus Serbia in 2022. In Newcastle. In Vertu Motors Arena. That arena has 3500 people capacity. It's small arena often used for boxing. Do you know how many people showed up? 2001

When they played Luxemburg, in Belle Vue Sports Village, even smaller arena, 2000 capacity. 400 people showed up.

Odds are, most of them didn't even pay for ticket.
For example ABA league is league famous for producing many NBA players like Bogdan Bogdanovic, Bojan Bogdanovic, Jokić... do you know cost of tickets for some games ? 4 to 7 euros. That's 5-8 dollars


Euroleague also has attendance issues, especially among places where basketball isn't big thing. In 2023 Monaco played entire season without single sold out arena. Hell, i'll share numbers, again, this is 2023 season



There is simply collossal misconception of what people from USA think about basketball in Europe ,versus what actually basketball in Europe is. It's niche sport. There are lot of places where people prefer handball over basketball. Hockey is huge in north. Bigger than basketball. And there are so many damn places where basketball is irrelevant.

For example, people think basketball in Serbia is super popular and booming. But in their national league, only 3 teams have stadium with capacity of +5000 people. Thare are 3000 registred football teams, and only 200 basketball ones.

In Eastern and MIddle Europe booming sports are: minifootball , futsal and padel.

Ofc you can find some study of "rapid basketball growth in UK". But what they will "forget" to tell you is what was starting point. Zero.

In addition, one of biggest Europe markets is France. Does this look promising to you?

[Mirotic12]

I'm well aware of fact that NBA Europe is not happening because of Croatia, Serbia or Slovenia, but in same time i'm also familiar enough with "market" that they are targeting, that will never care about basketball.

If you ask random person in UK to name 10 active nba players, odds are, 8 won't know that Kobe died. 2 will say Jordan.

UK played qualifications versus Serbia in 2022. In Newcastle. In Vertu Motors Arena. That arena has 3500 people capacity. It's small arena often used for boxing. Do you know how many people showed up? 2001

When they played Luxemburg, in Belle Vue Sports Village, even smaller arena, 2000 capacity. 400 people showed up.

Odds are, most of them didn't even pay for ticket.
For example ABA league is league famous for producing many NBA players like Bogdan Bogdanovic, Bojan Bogdanovic, Jokić... do you know cost of tickets for some games ? 4 to 7 euros. That's 5-8 dollars


Euroleague also has attendance issues, especially among places where basketball isn't big thing. In 2023 Monaco played entire season without single sold out arena. Hell, i'll share numbers, again, this is 2023 season



There is simply collossal misconception of what people from USA think about basketball in Europe ,versus what actually basketball in Europe is. It's niche sport. There are lot of places where people prefer handball over basketball. Hockey is huge in north. Bigger than basketball. And there are so many damn places where basketball is irrelevant.

For example, people think basketball in Serbia is super popular and booming. But in their national league, only 3 teams have stadium with capacity of +5000 people. Thare are 3000 registred football teams, and only 200 basketball ones.

In Eastern and MIddle Europe booming sports are: minifootball , futsal and padel.

Ofc you can find some study of "rapid basketball growth in UK". But what they will "forget" to tell you is what was starting point. Zero.

In addition, one of biggest Europe markets is France. Does this look promising to you?

Monaco actually has plenty of sellouts. Their arena seats 5,000 and if you look at box scores, they often have 5,000 arrebdance.