24 teams, 21 permanent franchises, and one message to the NBA: European basketball is done being a feeder.
European basketball just made its biggest structural change in a generation. The EuroLeague is going from 20 teams to 24 for the 2027-28 season, and 21 of those spots will become permanent franchises, per Eurohoops. That is the end of the open, earn-your-place model that defined the competition for decades, and the start of a closed structure that looks a lot like the American one.
How the 21 breaks down
The 13 existing shareholder clubs get their long-term licences converted into franchises at no cost, a nod to their history in the league, while up to eight new franchises get sold off, with two more slots reserved for EuroCup qualifiers plus room for wild cards, according to Sportcal. Final decisions land between September and November.
The money is the story
Eleven candidates have submitted binding offers worth almost €700 million in franchise fees, against an overall expected investment north of €3.2 billion over the next five years, reports Eurohoops. Total investor interest across all the proposals that came in has topped €1.2 billion, with projects from Rome, Berlin and London on the table, as Eurohoops noted when the process opened. Spanish outlet Blogdebasket pegs the cost of joining at roughly €80 million per club. That level of appetite tells you investors are treating European basketball as a growth asset, not a niche.
Why now, and what it does to the NBA
It also changes the balance of power. This is happening while Euroleague Basketball fends off the proposed NBA Europe project, Sportcal points out, and a league of 24 permanent, investor-backed franchises is a very different thing to sit across the table from than a rotating cast of licence holders. It is the same private-equity-shaped thread we have been pulling all year, now showing up as league architecture rather than team ownership.
The open question is whether the basketball keeps pace with the balance sheet. Eight new clubs arriving at once will stretch the quality gap in the early seasons, and one of the marquee candidates, London, is a market where the sport still lacks a spectator base. But the direction of travel is not subtle. Watch the same franchise logic spread in the items below.
The Digest
beIN Sports grabs the EuroLeague in France. Fresh off the expansion news, the league sorted out one of its messier markets. beIN takes French EuroLeague rights for 2026-27 on a one-year deal after the collapse of Skweek, whose contract the league terminated citing a "repeated failure" to honor it, per Sportcal. Coverage centers on the two French sides, Paris Basketball and LDLC ASVEL, plus a marquee pick each round, with the French clubs debuting September 24, reports Eurohoops. beIN kicks off with the new season-opening SuperCup in Abu Dhabi on September 18 and 19, a reminder of where the league is chasing new revenue.
The franchise model goes global: Africa's turn. What the EuroLeague is doing in Europe, the NBA is doing in Africa. The Basketball Africa League is shifting to permanent franchises, with the NBA now selling teams to private investors through a multimillion-dollar process, and NBA Africa claims the league has added more than $250 million to the continent's economy so far, a figure it projects to reach $5.4 billion by 2034, per CNN. Franchises are expected to start around $50 million, and the NBA has hired investment bankers to test which markets are ready, Andscape reports. Same closed-franchise, investor-money playbook, second continent.
FIBA keeps stacking the commercial deck for Qatar 2027. The governing body added Jetour, the Chery-owned Chinese SUV brand, as its Official Car Supplier, providing the vehicle fleet for Doha, FIBA confirmed. Days earlier it named sporting-goods retailer Intersport its ninth global partner through 2031, a retail and licensing deal that starts at this year's Women's World Cup in Berlin and runs to the 2031 men's edition in France, according to Sportcal. The backdrop: Al Wakrah's Al Janoub Stadium has rebranded to Al Janoub Arena for the one-year countdown, as The Stadium Business reported, becoming the first venue to host both a FIFA and a FIBA World Cup.
Duke puts a sponsor on Coach K Court. For the first time, one of college basketball's cathedrals will carry a corporate logo, with Edward Jones landing on the Cameron Indoor floor under a four-year deal, ESPN reports. It is part of a broader $34 million, four-year Edward Jones push into college sports brokered by Learfield, according to Forbes. The trigger is the post-House v. NCAA economics forcing even the traditionalists to sell inventory they never used to touch.
USA Basketball lands Essentia and P&G. Two sponsorships in two days: Essentia Water became Official Water Partner, USA Basketball announced, and Procter & Gamble signed on for the Women's National Team, with Tide and Downy activating first, per USA Basketball. P&G's move builds on the multi-brand WNBA partnership it struck in April, which the WNBA detailed here, and slots into the women's-sports spending boom we have been tracking: ad spend on women's sports jumped 69% in 2025 to $127 million, Marketing Dive reported.
Japan puts a price on ambition. The B.League's new top tier, B.League Premier, launches for 2026-27 with a hard financial bar for entry: clubs must clear roughly $10.8 million in sales and average at least 4,000 in attendance, per The Japan Times. At the same time the league is playing its first-ever overseas home games in Manila on September 9 and 10, a marker of a Philippines-first expansion strategy that treats Southeast Asia as core rather than a tour stop.
The investment wave reaches Australia's NBL. Melbourne United was restructured at a record $50 million valuation, the highest ever publicly disclosed for an Australian basketball club, as Australasian Leisure Management reported. And WNBA star Angel Reese joined the Brisbane Bullets ownership group, the NBL confirmed, partly to back a bid for a tenth WNBL franchise, per Bleacher Report. Athlete-as-investor, women's-game growth and rising valuations, all in one market.
Latin America's data rights get bought up fast. Sportradar signed a multi-year deal covering Brazil's entire LNB ecosystem, from the top-flight NBB down through its development leagues, Sportradar announced. Meanwhile FeedConstruct has swept up streaming and data rights across Argentina's top leagues plus Chile, Bolivia and Ecuador, SBC News reports. The infrastructure land grab is how emerging markets get monetized before the marquee money arrives.
Sweden hands its fan data to Two Circles. The Swedish Basketball Federation signed the sports-marketing firm to run audience insight, ticketing and fan engagement around its national teams, building toward FIBA Women's EuroBasket 2027 in Stockholm, Two Circles announced. A small deal with a bigger tell: even mid-sized federations now see their fan database as the asset worth investing in.
A Jordan jersey goes up like fine art. Michael Jordan's Game 3 jersey from the 1998 "Last Dance" Finals hits Pharrell Williams's Joopiter auction from September 15 to 29, and could break the $10.1 million record for a basketball jersey, per CNN. The estimate is $10 to 15 million, though the seller, who calls the jersey "the new modern art," floats a $100 million dream number, according to KSL. Game-worn memorabilia is now an asset class, sitting in the same conversation as the $24.12 million Babe Ruth jersey.