Manchester & London named among NBA Europe League’s 12 permanent franchise targets

A senior NBA executive has named London and Manchester among its 12 target cities for permanent franchises in the forthcoming NBA Europe League, set to launch in October 2027, as confirmed by George Aivazoglou, the league’s Managing Director for Europe and the Middle East, in an interview with La Gazzetta dello Sport.

Speaking at the Football Business Forum in Milan, Aivazoglou outlined further details of the project, reaffirming plans for a 16-team competition featuring 12 permanent franchises and 4 qualification spots linked to FIBA competitions such as the Basketball Champions League.

“We’re thinking of London and Manchester for the United Kingdom,” Aivazoglou said, listing the 12 cities under consideration, which also include Paris, Lyon, Madrid, Barcelona, Milan, Rome, Berlin, Munich, Athens, and Istanbul.

The league is expected to operate under a “semi-open” structure – combining financial stability with sporting merit – allowing national league performance to influence qualification in some cases. “Our ambition is to elevate the entire ecosystem starting from the base of the pyramid, the national leagues,” Aivazoglou said.

The confirmation of London and Manchester as target locations raises the stakes in Britain’s ongoing governance saga between Super League Basketball (SLB), the British Basketball Federation (BBF), and the Great Britain Basketball League (GBBL).

With FIBA having formally recognised the SLB as a legitimate domestic competition last week — allowing its teams to register players, apply for letters of clearance, and compete in European structures — the NBA Europe franchises, who have to play in their country’s domestic league, seem a step closer to aligning with SLB when they join domestic play.

By contrast, GBBL, which was awarded the licence by the BBF but has yet to launch, last issued a statement in September confirming plans to debut in September 2027 “to align with NBA Europe”.

Since then, however, FIBA have intervened in the license dispute with a club matters taskforce, suspending the GB Senior Men before unbanning them this week after recognising the SLB.

For the NBA, the inclusion of UK cities underscores its commitment to establishing a long-term foothold in one of Europe’s most commercially attractive markets.

However, with just two years until the planned tip-off, the key question remains: which domestic league will the NBA’s UK teams actually play in?

As things stand, the Super League Basketball (SLB) – the independently operated, FIBA-recognised competition that worked with the BBF to rescue the men’s professional game in 2024 – appears to have the inside track.

But until the NBA formally announces its UK partners, and the BBF resolves its governance disputes, the structure of British basketball’s future at the professional level remains uncertain.

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