NBA Europe aims for big cities, not basketball cities

The NBA announced the locations of the 12 permanent teams in NBA Europe, slated to start in the fall of 2027. Their choices lean heavily on cities with the most eyeballs, rather than the most basketball culture.

Teams from seven European nations will make up the league, along with three winners from domestic leagues and one from the FIBA Champions League. It's still not clear how the format would work or whether existing EuroLeague clubs would compete. It is clear that the NBA wants to involve huge cities.

NBA Europe favored the largest metro areas

The cities included in the NBA's announcement include:

• London and Manchester (United Kingdom)
• Paris and Lyon (France)
• Berlin and Munich (Germany)
• Barcelona and Madrid (Spain)
• Rome and Milan (Italy)
• Athens (Greece)
• Istanbul (Turkey)

The common thread is population size. Outside of Russia, the seven largest metropolitan areas are represented with these teams, according to EuroStat, with Rome and Athens at ninth- and 10th-largest. Greater Manchester has over 3.3M residents, Munich has 2.6M and Lyon is the smallest area, with just over 2M people.

That's not necessarily where people play basketball the most. The U.K., with a population of over 69M, has had 11 NBA players born within its borders, the same as Slovenia, which has a population of just over 2M. All-Stars Nikola Jokic (Serbia), Luka Doncic (Slovenia) and Nikola Vucevic (Montenegro) all come from Eastern Europe, but that region is only represented by Athens and Istanbul, both basketball hotbeds.

The NBA may be planning to lure established teams

One thing that all these cities have in common is an existing, well-funded professional sports infrastructure. Manchester may not have any history with basketball culture, but Manchester United and Manchester City are massive soccer clubs. Bayern Munich has been a soccer powerhouse for decades, and it extended that dominance to basketball in the last decade. Lyon has more basketball titles than any other French team.

The Athletic reported that Real Madrid, Barcelona, Alba (in Berlin) and Lyon's ASVEL Basket are all "expected" to join the league. That would certainly make it easier for the NBA to establish its European presence, by piggybacking on teams and facilities that are already there. The NBA is likely to make an attempt to partner with Qatari authorities who own Paris Saint-Germain. Not coincidentally, Qatar is also hosting the 2027 FIBA World Cup.

The NBA might also consider a basketball-light market like the U.K. to have more growth than a city like Belgrade, which already has avid fans well-established local rivalries. They're happy to have Partizan Belgrade or another Adriatic League champion participate. but perhaps not as permanent members.

It remains to be seen how NBA's European ambitions will progress in the next two years. It seems clear that commissioner Adam Silver and his partners want to go big.