A fool and their money is easily parted. European basketball has never lacked rich owners willing to splash out for no return. What’s different about now is that more and more owners see basketball as an investment with real revenue potential. The first edition of the Sunday column after our summer break sees Emmet Ryan kick off a new five part series on the European basketball money race.
There’s a whole lot happening right now in European basketball. Spending has absolutely skyrocketed in recent years at the top of the sport. More investors are backing more clubs in an effort to be part of the elite.
Is it all FOMO or is there real investment logic behind this? Between Euroleague expansion and the move towards franchises, the NBA Europe project, and big investors coming in, there’s a lot to address.
Money has always talked in sports. It’s just more visible in European basketball than ever before. The patrons are being replaced by private equity but the core goal is still the same, to benefit from owning a basketball team.
Suddenly €30 million doesn’t sound enormous
That was the top prize in Friday’s Euromillions draw. A few years ago, it would have been seen as outlandish spending for a European basketball club of any size in a single season. The losses that would be needed to be absorbed would have been simply too much.
Now, it’s just what you spend to have a chance of hanging around the top table. Contracts like the €12.6 million over three years to Guerschon Yabusele or the release fee of €1 million Dubai paid FC Barcelona to get Toko Shengelia don’t really surprise anyone.
Salary inflation is comfortably outpacing actual inflation (unlike for the rest of us I hear you say) at the top of the sport. It’s not that Europe suddenly discovered some rich owners, it’s that investors genuinely believe they can make a real return on investment.
Yes, there actually is more money
The revenue increase at Euroleague level clubs alone proves telling. The average revenue at clubs for 2026/27 is up 14 per cent to €22.3 million. while club market values have risen by 40 per cent over the last three years. This has been driven by 85 per cent growth in gameday revenue and 30 per cent growth in commercial revenue.
That provides some economic rationality to the spending increase, particularly as there appears to be a lot of room for further commercial growth. Live sport, both in person and viewing on broadcast, holds a comparative value to other forms of entertainment greater than it has ever held previously. There is no realistic medium term scenario where that changes.
That being said, the increase in spending is still outpacing the revenue increase on average. By definition, that’s not sustainable if clubs are expected to be investments rather than trinkets for owners. Payroll increases however are notably closer to being in line on a growth trajectory to overall revenue increases. That would indicate more of the apparent excess spending is investing in areas that can deliver returns in the future.
Victory is no longer everything
Although it always helps. The old calculation of spend €X million and hopefully win Euroleague doesn’t quite hold anymore. It’s getting more expensive to win big in European basketball, including down the levels, but the money isn’t merely being thrown down the sink anymore.
JB Capital’s report estimated that the introduction of the franchise system could increase combined member value by 25 per cent to more than €4.3 billion. That was before the expansion to 24 teams was forecast as well. While that won’t mean owners will suddenly have hundreds of millions each in available cash, with these types of assets they often tend to act like that is the case.
More sensibly, it changes the incentive structure. Now, losing say €5 million in a season can make sense if it helps the overall receipt of increasing value to the underlying asset (the club). If that sounds risky to you, congratulations and welcome to the eek part of sports financing.
BallinEurope is ramping up its YouTube game this season. Subscribe to our channel now for player exclusives, analysis videos, and much more.
The FOMO factor
All of the spending, particularly on marketing and promotion, has generated one key desired effect. There are more people seeking to invest in the sport. A governing body’s core purpose is to administer the game. Its second is to bring in more money to help grow it. Whether it’s FIBA, the NBA, or Euroleague, that’s the way it goes.
The rush is already producing extraordinary movements in markets like Rome, which we’ll return to later in this series. Existing Euroleague shareholders have already discussed raising €1.5 billion for strategic growth while another €1 billion in total outlay is being considered for arena development and modernisation.
Franchise fees will certainly play a part in that for the Euroleague, with no fixed price and different market factors likely to impact cost. This is a long-winded way of saying any other teams in the Gulf states will likely pay more than anyone else.
NBA Europe has already changed things
For a league that has no teams yet, NBA Europe has proven remarkably influential. With the league still targeting an October 2027 launch, there’s already interest in claiming one of the 12 permanent franchise spots. Mark Tatum has said that bids were in the region of $500 million to $1 billion.
Granted, it’s in his interest to hype it up. It still indicates that FIBA and the NBA are confident it will attract big money. It’s also in everyone’s interests to try and look like the more lucrative offering. The result is that Euroleague and NBA Europe in turn are feeding a machine that encourages more potential investment.
It’s clearly already influencing some of the upturn in spending at the Euroleague level. The efforts by the likes of AEK and Galatasaray at the Basketball Champions League level to gain access shows they recognise a potentially lucrative opportunity.
BallinEurope has a book, a real life actual book called I Like it Loud, and you can buy it on Amazon now. It’s here as a book and here in Kindle form.
Now the brakes are off
Euroleague was expected to introduce extra layers to its competitive balance standards, essentially efforts to curb excess salary spending by redistributing penalties. It’s a really complicated luxury tax.
Anyway, the extra layer that was going to include the top three salaries in the accounting of this now won’t be applied. This was an upper brake and without its abolition, the fanciful story of Panathinaikos trying to sign Nikola Jokic likely wouldn’t have happened.
A total of €5.4 million has been redistributed since the I can’t believe it’s not a luxury tax was introduced. This would have either skyrocketed under the new format or, as was probably hoped, curbed the pace of increased spending.
Money has flavours
Considering the popularity of basketball across the continent, it’s wild to see how justified observers of the sport have been for decades in pointing out that it doesn’t make enough money.
The real question now is whether spending is rising based on real value, FOMO, reasoned speculation, vanity, or a combination of all of these. We’ve already seen teams fail to realise the value they expected. Asvel entered the summer talking about a €59 million budget. Now they’ll do well not to fall below the minimum salary threshold in Euroleague again.
The sport as a whole in Europe definitely is richer than before. Over the next four parts of this series, I’ll examine how many of its clubs actually are richer and how sustainable this is going forward.
Leave a Reply