United Kingdom prime minister Keir Starmer held a meeting on Wednesday with NBA commissioner Adam Silver and deputy commissioner Mark Tatum regarding a potential NBA Europe league, sources inform insider Marc Stein of The Stein Line (Twitter link). Silver and Tatum are also holding court with various possible stakeholders about this new venture.
Stein tweets that, in addition to Starmer, Silver and Tatum have conferred with investment firm Redbird Capital Partners, private equity firms KKR and CVC, Abu Dhabi’s Department of Culture and Tourism, and representatives from Turkish soccer team Galatasaray. Silver and Tatum also met with the U.S.’s ambassador the U.K., Warren Stephens.
Silver and Tatum’s meetings with possible European league investors included other basketball teams, in addition to the aforementioned private equity and investment firms, sovereign wealth funds, and government officials, a source tells Scott Soshnick and Dan Bernstein of Sportico. Private equity funds have been given a strict 20% ownership cap for any NBA team, although it remains unclear if that rule would remain in effect for this new league.
Soshnick and Bernstein also report that the new league could be supported by both the NBA and FIBA, and that a new team could be established in London specifically. The fresh league would employ FIBA rules, not NBA rules.
ESPN’s Tim Bontemps is convinced that a slate of two announced European regular season games for 2025/26, in combination with word of these meetings, makes a new European league something of an inevitability.
“This all goes back to the NBA Europe plan that the league is potentially looking to enact over the next couple of years,” Bontemps said during an appearance on NBA Today (Twitter video link). “Could be an expansion for the league, try to make a bunch of money over in Europe… This all points toward that league trying to get off the ground at some point here in the near future.”
Silver and FIBA secretary general Andreas Zagklis previously held a spring presser to verify that “exploratory” conversation were being held about a possible new European league, which would tentatively featuring 12 permanent teams and four wild-card spots. The possibility of extant EuroLeague squads getting involved was floated.
Current NBA owners are expected to own a stake in the new league at large, but would not own individual teams.
Huge sums of investment money are flowing out of the US as massive corruption spreads everywhere here. So the NBA better get on board this move fast. A new BB league outside the US can be part of this offshoring, this diversification and this search for safety for $ billions of private equity.
Piss off, Adam Silver
Gambling, crypto, oil-money ……. Adam Silver serving his masters really well.
The U.K does not care about Basketball in anyway. So what’s this really about?
Maybe the NFL should attempt another European league relaunch, too. It worked so well last time when U.S. Americans tried to force some second-rate franchise circus challenge cup upon European sports culture.
A basketball team in Albion London to rival football, rugby, racing, cricket and animal abuse… err… horse racing? What a knee-slapper!
No one outside Silver’s tax-evading “investors” is going to benefit from this obsolete Mickey Mouse carnival.