NBA Europe is coming but British basketball is locked in a civil war. What will it mean?

New York Times

22-05-2025

There is potentially little more than a year before the NBA launches a new professional basketball league in Europe in partnership with FIBA, the sport's governing body — and the United Kingdom is prominent in their sights.
'I'd say it's the single biggest opportunity (in Europe),' said George Aivazoglou, the NBA's managing director for Europe and the Middle East (EME), speaking onstage at SportsPro Live at London's Kia Oval earlier this month.
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Details of the proposed new league are not yet fully defined, but the NBA's laser-like focus on having teams in major European cities has been clear from the outset. In the UK, London and Manchester are being earmarked for representation in a 16-team competition that could also feature teams from Madrid, Barcelona, Paris, Berlin, Munich, Rome, Milan and Istanbul, according to Aivazoglou, when he spoke to EuroHoops.
Many of those continental European cities are already home to teams that compete in Euroleague, which has established itself as the second-best basketball league in the world since breaking away from FIBA in 2000. But no British team has ever competed in it. This season, the UK does not even have a representative in Eurocup, regarded as Euroleague's second-tier club competition.
No wonder, then, that the UK is regularly referred to as the sleeping giant of European basketball. This almost total lack of relevance at the elite professional level jars with soaring levels of interest and participation in the sport among the general population.
Basketball is the second-most popular team sport in the UK behind football, according to Sport England's most recent Active Lives survey. Data compiled by the NBA indicates that the UK is its second-largest merchandise market in Europe behind only France, and home to more current subscribers to NBA League Pass — the league's premium live game subscription service — than any European country other than Germany.
Virtually everyone with an interest in basketball sees fertile ground for growth in the UK, and the establishment of two NBA Europe franchises in London and Manchester in 2026 could be genuinely transformative. But as things stand, the hypothetical giant that is British basketball is not simply sleeping. It is stuck in a self-destructive nightmare.
Last Sunday was the flagship event of the British club basketball season, as 13,401 spectators attended the O2 Arena in London to watch the inaugural Super League Basketball (SLB) playoff finals. You would be forgiven for being unaware; while the women's and men's finals were available to watch live for free on DAZN, media coverage of the event was scant and there were no post-game press conferences.
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The action on the court was not elite, but it was fast, physical and compellingly competitive (for the most part — Leicester Riders ultimately blew out Newcastle Eagles 105-74 in the men's final). The arena experience would be familiar to NBA fans: pumping music and dancers during breaks in play, cheerleaders at half-time, presenters trying to get the crowd going, and even a 'kiss cam' on the giant screens dangling from the roof.
Much of the crowd skewed very young, with a multitude of schools represented. The abiding impression was of a fun, family-friendly day out, and a reasonably priced one at that, with lower tier seats for the afternoon priced at £48 ($64) for adults and £34 ($46) for children and cheaper tickets available higher up.
That might have been enough for Sunday to be viewed as a success by Super League Basketball. The league was formed last summer by the nine professional clubs left standing amid the wreckage of the British Basketball League, which had its operating license terminated by the British Basketball Federation (BBF) in June 2024 due to the liquidation of Miami-based minority investor 777 Partners.
At that time, the BBF worked closely with the clubs to ensure the 2024-25 season could take place, granting SLB an interim license to operate the league and even stepping in to help save several clubs including the London Lions, who were also owned by 777.
But the absence of any BBF representatives at the O2 Arena on Sunday highlighted the full-blown civil war between UK's basketball governing body and its major clubs that has been raging since January.
The BBF awarded a 15-year license to operate the men's professional league to a group of American investors led by Marshall Glickman, formerly a Portland Trail Blazers president and acting CEO of Euroleague.
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SLB clubs were outraged, questioning the legality of the BBF's tender process and raising their concerns with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), as well as with UK Sport and Sport England, who have pledged a combined £4.5million in funding to British basketball over the next four years. The clubs have also refused to engage with GBB League Ltd (GBBL), the company set up by Glickman and his fellow investors to run the new league.
At its nub, the dispute is about control. The consensus view among SLB club owners is that the BBF has essentially sold their commercial rights to a third party without their consent, and that any league not majority-owned by its member clubs is not viable. There is also a belief that the BBF's decision was primarily motivated by the £15million — coincidentally the same number that SLB clubs say they have invested in the first year of their league — that Glickman's group pledged up front to 'support operations and growth activities' over the first two years of GBBL's operations.
BBF chair Chris Grant has a different view on both of those points. 'People in and around the clubs have grown used over the last 40 years to running the league as well as their clubs,' he tells The Athletic.
'This is all based on good faith and people wanting the best for British basketball and their clubs. They felt that they had to protect their competitions, their clubs, from other forces in basketball. I think that desire to control it is partly the result of habit.
'All we are trying to be is a federation. We're not trying to be an empire. We're trying to not be huge. I have this phrase that I use, which is minimum viable federation. What's the minimum viable capacity that we need to do our job? And our job is to get brilliant basketball on the court, to get great development for players and coaches.'
Grant maintains he does not know why SLB did not submit their own bid for the license, and is bullish on the integrity of the process that led to Glickman's group being chosen. 'We only had one bid, but the competition wasn't between bidders,' he insists. 'We got a 20-page analysis back from our independent panel with a review, and it was agreed that their bid cleared our bar.
'They had a humility but also a basic level of understanding around Britain-specific things (to do with the home countries) that convinced us that they could run a British league, and not simply parachute some North American idea of a league into this country.'
Glickman is full of ideas as he speaks from his home in Portland. The CEO of the newly-minted GBBL enthusiastically lays out the broad strokes of his grand plan to raise up British basketball.
'A core part of our strategy is to showcase a limited number of games on free-to-air television,' he says. 'By following that strategy, we're not going to be able to command meaningful rights fees for free-to-air television, but we're not trying to. We want great viewership.'
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GBBL plans to launch in the 2026-27 season with 10 teams who will face each other home and away. 'But there's another core part of our strategy, a key pillar, which is what we're calling mini-tournaments,' he adds. 'We'll bring four clubs into a market for a weekend where there's a proper arena. We're having a kind of basketball festival, but more than that, it's really a communal gathering.
'There'll be art, there'll be culture, there'll be food, there'll be pubs and there'll be music big time. We're going to turn these weekends into something that people are going to want to be at whether or not they're a hardcore basketball fan. Hopefully we're going to turn them into basketball fans.'
These mini-tournaments would yield points that contribute to regular season standings and playoff seedings, encouraging all the teams involved to compete hard on both days. 'It gives us a platform to showcase the game in proper arenas with a great atmosphere, cool things like a glass floor, for example — things that really make it pop.'
Glickman describes GBBL as an 'innocent bystander' in the dispute between the SLB and BBF, and is clear that he wants the nine SLB clubs to be in his new league. 'We would like to see the Super League clubs be part of the future of British basketball,' he says. 'We fully embrace that and we continue to try reaching out.'
On the surface this appears to sit uneasily with Glickman and the BBF's desire to see more major British cities represented at the top-level of club basketball; a press release issued last week revealed that GBBL would issue invitations to parties interested in operating expansion clubs in Birmingham, Leeds/Bradford, Liverpool, Southampton/Portsmouth, Nottingham, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Coventry — none of which currently have SLB teams.
But the first right to join GBBL is reserved for the nine SLB clubs. 'If all nine clubs wanted to participate, then we'd only have one expansion club in the first year,' Glickman clarifies.
What does not appear to be on the table, however, is the level of control over GBBL that SLB clubs currently hold over their own league. 'Our governance will include board seats — observational board seats,' Glickman says. 'Which means full transparency and access to everything in the decision-making process, but non-voting, for two clubs on a rotating basis.'
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Glickman also wants to create a more attractive domestic alternative for the best young British basketball talent to the well-worn path of leaving for the American college system. 'Welfare standards need to improve, training standards need to improve,' he insists. 'Part of what we're going to do is really commit ourselves to being a player-centric league, and improve the conditions for the players and make it attractive for the best British talent to stay home.'
Home-grown player salaries would be exempt from GBBL's economic rules on sustainability and competitive balance. 'It has to make sense for them financially, but more importantly, it has to make sense for them in terms of developing and accelerating their career path,' he adds.
Then there is the NBA and FIBA's European project. GBBL is actively positioning itself as the natural home for any British franchises. 'The NBA coming to Europe from my perspective and from a Great Britain perspective is the best thing that could ever happen,' Glickman says.
'This is the sixth biggest GDP in the world. They need basketball in the UK to be lifted up. This is in their interests, and it's in my interests, and it is in my partners' interests, and it's in the SLB clubs' interests. It's in everybody's interests to bring it up, to uplift it.'
In their efforts to establish new leagues from scratch, the NBA and GBBL are effectively operating in parallel with one shared goal in mind: to launch in time for the 2026-27 season.
That happens to follow swiftly from the moment when Euroleague's 10-year license expires, providing shareholder clubs with a window to opt out. Real Madrid and Barcelona are widely believed to be keeping their options open regarding a potential NBA defection, as is ASVEL Villeurbanne, the French club majority owned by San Antonio Spurs legend Tony Parker.
Earlier this month ALBA Berlin departed from Euroleague after 24 years to join FIBA's Basketball Champions League, with the club's managing director Marco Baldi pointedly voicing his belief that 'the European competitions under the FIBA ​​umbrella will develop significantly in the coming years'. Euroleague may not be cracking just yet, but it is creaking.
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There is no indication that British basketball's civil war will end soon. Both the BBF and GBBL project total confidence in the legality of their path to this point and believe that FIBA is on their side. The SLB clubs are adamant their cause is just and have asked basketball's governing body for recognition as they prepare to operate outside the jurisdiction of the BBF.
What happens next could even undermine the recent progress British basketball has made at international level, which has seen both the men and women's senior teams qualifying for Eurobasket this year — not least because the license issued by the BBF to GBBL does not cover the women's league.
'In this day and age it's terrible to overlook women's sport,' Vanessa Ellis, coach of Sheffield Hatters, said after her team's 83-73 victory over Oaklands Wolves in the SLB women's playoff final at the O2 Arena. 'We know we're not in their plans — so what's going to happen to us? Nobody is going to support a women's league on its own. We haven't got that profile.'
There is also the worrying precedent of Japan, which was banned from participating FIBA competitions in 2014 for its failure to merge two rival professional leagues.
Earlier this year, the captains of Great Britain's men's and women's senior teams (Carl Wheatle and Temi Fagbenle) were among several current and former players to sign an open letter to the BBF board urging greater clarity over the GBBL proposal.
🇬🇧🏀Here's to transparency, togetherness and a better future for British basketball. We look forward to your response, @gbbasketball 🇬🇧🏀*reposted with correct date* pic.twitter.com/j3epoPP45Y
— Temitope Fagbenle (@TemiFagbenle) March 12, 2025
'The UK should be a place where young and pro players alike can choose to develop, rather than feel they must go overseas to improve,' they said. 'Many pro players currently playing overseas would relish the opportunity to come back home, but it is not sustainable in the current league set-up.
'British professional basketball has been stagnating and there is much uncertainty. We have waited patiently for many years, but our concerns regarding the future are valid.'
That uncertainty is going nowhere, and when the time comes for the NBA to try to wake the sleeping giant of European basketball, there is no telling what they will find.