European football giants to meet in London for NBA basketball talks

A cluster of European football giants will convene in London next week for talks as they try to finalise a string of deals for European basketball teams worth billions of dollars.

Sky News has learnt that executives from clubs understood to include AC Milan, Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Paris Saint-Germain and Real Madrid will hold talks with counterparts from the National Basketball Association (NBA) on Tuesday.

The football club chiefs will be in London as a result of the Ballon d'Or awards ceremony in the capital on Monday evening, although it was unclear whether they would meet NBA executives in person or remotely.

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Their discussions with the NBA come amid efforts to finalise the sale of a dozen franchises for a new European basketball league slated to launch late next year.

A further four teams are expected to participate annually on a merit-related basis.

Discussions with potential investors prepared to pay hundreds of millions of dollars for each franchise - and as much as $1bn in the case of London - have been under way for more than six months.

In recent weeks, however, they have been complicated by the NBA's bid to acquire the rival Euroleague - with the latest offer rejected by the target's 13 shareholder clubs.

Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Real Madrid are among the Euroleague's participants.

Industry sources believe the NBA is unlikely to proceed with the sale of its own franchises until the situation with the Euroleague is fully resolved.

Speaking this week, Mark Tatum, the NBA deputy commissioner, said: "We're about creating significantly more value and reinvesting into the European basketball ecosystem.

"We believe that we've developed a model here that combines the best elements of global sports, including the merit-based pathways that make European sport so special and give every fan and club the right to dream.

"There's no doubt that the fans love the game of basketball.

"You see that in the arenas, in the experiences and we want to maintain that.

"We want to preserve that - but there's still a lot of confusion for fans of European basketball today."

There had been expectations that some of the successful bids for NBA Europe franchises would be announced by this point, with some cities attracting a significant number of offers.

The London team drew multiple bids worth hundreds of millions of pounds, including from the billionaire Reuben family and a consortium which includes the Formula E owner Liberty Global and Daniel Levy, the former Tottenham Hotspur chairman.

Nikesh Arora, the technology billionaire who led the successful bid for a stake in the London Spirit team in English cricket's The Hundred format, has also expressed an interest.

"There's no timeline yet on when we announce the clubs," Mr Tatum said this week.

"I would say, our timeline is we plan to start rolling this thing out a year from now.

"So, in the not-too-distant future we do expect to be able to announce who some of the franchisees are going to be."

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Next week's talks between the European football clubs and NBA again underline the growing convergence between sports as they target similar audience demographics and seek to grow their brands beyond traditional borders.

However, Sky News reported in April that some prospective investors had expressed reservations about the proposed revenue and costs model associated with the new league.

Establishing an NBA Europe team will involve substantial infrastructure costs, with some uncertainty about the league's likely popularity given basketball's limited previous appeal in Europe compared with sports such as football and tennis.

The NBA has said that it will invest billions of dollars from its own financial resources to help get the league up and running.

An NBA Europe spokesman declined to comment.

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