A 500 Million to 1 Billion USD Franchise Fee: Who Will Own European Basketball?

Jordi Bertomeu, who spent twenty years as EuroLeague CEO, has now spoken about the NBA's proposed European league. The franchise fee the NBA is asking for a single slot runs from 500 million to 1 billion USD. Bertomeu calls that valuation out of step with the reality of European basketball. He adds a heavier point: at that price, nearly the entire existing club ownership base would be replaced by new investors. This is a governance argument, not a pricing dispute.

I do not watch games, I read them like an income statement in motion. And this deal reads like a balance sheet that does not add up.

Context: the power structure of European basketball

EuroLeague operates under a shared club-ownership model. Most of those clubs are the basketball arms of larger football organizations. Fenerbahçe, Bayern Munich, Real Madrid, Barcelona — for these groups, basketball is a brand-extension arm, not a revenue pillar. Basketball budgets have never stood independently on the parent organization's balance sheet.

The NBA wants to launch a European league under its own brand and charge entry fees from new owners. That is the North American franchise model: pay a large sum for a slot, then capture commercial value that grows over time. For the NBA, this is a growth market. For European clubs, it is a shock to their ownership structure.

Bertomeu maps the market by readiness. Turkey and Germany have proven potential, France is progressing, Italy is losing its traditional weight, while the UK and the Nordics are standing still. In the UK, he calls the market saturated and in need of a concrete investment plan, not mere presence.

Core: a valuation that does not fit the balance sheet

The 500 million to 1 billion USD price is not small for anyone. For EuroLeague clubs, Bertomeu assesses they lack the capacity to pay. An unconfirmed report claims offers of up to 1 billion USD are already on the table. This is the sharpest tension in the whole story.

One side says nobody can afford it. The other says someone has already offered 1 billion. Both cannot be true if they refer to the same group of actors. The only way both hold: those offers come from the investor class, not from existing clubs. That means the NBA's real counterparties in Europe may be private investment funds, not the leadership of Fenerbahçe or Bayern.

That changes the nature of the sport. A European basketball club today is a community institution: multi-generational supporters, national federation oversight, local identity. An asset held by an investment fund pursues profit, or resale value. These two models do not share a value system.

I make a living from numbers, but I only trust the numbers that keep me up at night. The 1 billion USD figure keeps me up for a different reason: it has one source, and that source is anonymous. In financial analysis, an unverifiable number is an unprocessed variable, not an event. If the 1 billion offer is refuted or exaggerated, the entire "reservations may prove unfounded" framing collapses with it.

One more layer of risk: Bertomeu says plainly that parent football organizations may not be willing to fund their basketball arms. This is a capital-allocation decision, and no regulatory framework binds it. Outcomes will be decided by strategy, not by law.

Contrarian angle: stop watching the fee, watch the brand

If you only look at the fee, this is a story about money. But Bertomeu offers a more constructive thesis at the end: basketball grows fast when a multi-sport brand with an existing social base adopts it.

He uses Fenerbahçe as the example for Turkey and Bayern Munich for Germany. Both are giant football brands that expanded into basketball, carrying supporter bases and cross-border brand power. That is the formula Bertomeu calls beneficial for basketball overall.

This reverses the conventional view. If the real growth driver lies in choosing the right brand partner, then the entry fee is secondary. The NBA could lower entry barriers while binding more tightly to major brands, still achieving market presence. That is the route the league can exploit to reduce conflict with incumbent clubs.

For the UK, the lesson is clearer. London once had a franchise attempt that failed. Bertomeu calls it bad luck, a soft framing of a structural problem. Finding a dominant English football brand to sponsor basketball, instead of building a standalone club, could rewrite that old failure.

Risks and signals to watch

Every season is a funding round, and fans are the most unconditional investment fund on the planet. In this deal, fans are left outside the negotiating room, yet bear the longest consequences.

Three signals to track. One: the final franchise fee. If set at a level incumbent owners can pay, they keep control. Two: ownership-transaction moves. If new investors keep buying slots, Bertomeu's owner-replacement thesis is confirmed. Three: capital commitments from major football groups. If a top football club funds a basketball arm, the capital-allocation question is answered.

In Vietnam, this question has barely been put on the table. But if Asian basketball is following the European model, ownership structure will be the next chapter, not a side chapter.

Takeaway

Transfers are the only stock exchange where shareholders sing the national anthem. This trading session is repricing an entire ecosystem.

Whether Bertomeu is right or wrong, the market will answer, but one thing is clear: European basketball faces a negotiation whose outcome is not just a number. It is the answer to whether this sport belongs to the community or to the balance sheet. When a single entry slot is priced at years of a club's budget, the answer is likely no longer in the hands of those who built it.

If the NBA lowers the fee to keep old owners, what does it lose? If it holds the fee and replaces the owners, what is left of European basketball?