UcanUwill wrote:And I will elaborate futher. Basketball is niche sport, there is not much money in it outside North America. Best way for the NBA to get some success in Euorpe, would be if they worked with biggest Euroleague teams and just flat out stole them from Euroleague. I am talking Real, Barcelona, Maccabi, Panathinaikos, Olympiacos etc. I think in some cases, that is the idea. These teams for sure have basketball market. They won't be worth 500 million dollars, you can stop dreaming those sums NBA, but you take those teams, do NBA thing with it and hope fans are buying what you are selling. Maybe you undermine the product same way, but people would still care because they care for these teams.
But if you are dreaming of going to PSG and Man City and trying to convince them to create Basketball teams for you, this is NFL Europe again, you are trying to make money where there is not any. I got to admit, last year was the first time I heard of NFL Europe... I am European sports fan who lived through all that and 20 years after that, and I never even heard of its existence... This would be similar thing where they dream big, but establish franchises where there is simply no interest in a sport. We niche European Basketball fans wont care for Man City Basketball division. I mean UK has some hipster NBA fans, so yeah, there would be small fanbase there, but 500 million dollars worth a franchice, NBA, get off that weed, its not happening.
This is the problem, Euroleague has all these teams that has all these niche sport fanboys, and we still can't make this sport a success. We are still a huge niche. Imagine what niche would be a league with PSG basketball, Man City basketball, London basketball. It is flop waiting to happen.
Maybe I am wrong, NBA has global interest, but I do not think its big and consistent enough where you could form NBA team in any major city and find fans. London, Manchester, these are just not sustainable markets. maybe I am wrong? I think they sell out Paris NBA game, and London NBA game, and they got the wrong idea, I am just not seeing that myself. And Lithuanians who dream of Rytas or Wolves in the NBA, thats great, but we are small and poor market, our economy is ass, guys in LA pay for parking more than some of us make in a week... Vilnius is not that big, we are not on these guys radar. They IMO delusionally dream bigger than that.
I don't think that the NBA is trying to form a new league in Europe without the EuroLeague teams. I believe that they are trying to get the EuroLeague teams to change the EuroLeague format from where the A license clubs run the league and own it, to a new model where the NBA runs the league, and the NBA gets 50% of the money, and the EuroLeague clubs get 50% of the money.
FIBA is probably just involved because they tried to take back EuroLeague in 2016, and the EuroLeague clubs refused, because they don't want to go back to when FIBA ran things. That was why they split from FIBA in 2000. Because FIBA made no real serious efforts to improve arenas, marketing and promotion of the league, and finding new ways for rhe clubs to increase revenues and profits. Since the EuroLeague clubs split from FIBA, they drastically improved all of that, especially the arenas.
So I think that the NBA wants to get the EuroLeague clubs with A licenses, minus CSKA Moscow, to merge with them, so they can get half the money in the league, and so they can get decision control over what the league does. That way it works as more money for the NBA owners, and the EuroLeague's huge clubs like Barca, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, etc., can't become a rival that takes away NBA views and fans.
FIBA probably just wants to get back that organizing structural control, and to be able to slap their logo and name back on EuroLeague. What they have been trying to do since 2001, but failed over and over in that so far - 2001 FIBA SuproLeague, 2004 FIBA Europe League, 2015 FIBA Europe Cup, the 2016 failed attempt to get back EuroLeague clubs into FIBA, and the FIBA Basketball Champions League.
The EuroLeague, which most people don't understand, especially NBA fans, is basically just the A license clubs. They badically run the league. So this probably just the NBA's and FIBA'S way of letting those A license EuroLeague teams know that they can either not merge with FIBA and the NBA, and keep complete control of their league, but have less money, or they can merge with them, lose control of the league, and make more money.
I see it as a direct appeal from the NBA and FIBA, to the owners of those EuroLeague teams, that they can make more money. That has to be what this is about.
The NBA couldn't possibly be so delusional to think that a European basketball league consiting of Manchester City Basketball, London Arsenal Basketball / London Chelsea Basketball / London Lions, Paris Saint Germain Basketball merged with Paris Basketball, Alba Berlin, Unicaja Malaga, AEK Athens, Galatasaray Istanbul, Virtus Bologna, AS Monaco, Hapoel Tel Aviv, Hapoel Jerusalem, etc. - that such a league, which is in fact something like what the teams would look like, under this proposed NBA Europe League - that such a league would have a snow ball's chance in hell at competing directly with the EuroLeague.
Such a league would end up just like FIBA SuproLeague and FIBA Europe League did. FIBA knows first hand how that would go. They already closed two previous such leagues that were meant to compete directly with EuroLeague, and they gave up on the current FIBA Basketball Champions League being a EuroLeague competitor after one season. After just one season, they switched to trying to rival the second tier level EuroCup Basketball league instead, and even that has had mixed results so far.
The NBA supposedly did a big economic study to make sure this would be financially profitable. That's not doable without the big EuroLeague clubs. So both the NBA and FIBA have to just be using this as negotiating leverage with the big EuroLeague clubs. Because otherwise, they are delusional about the power of just slapping the FIBA and NBA brands and logos on something.