The EuroLeague Can Say No to the NBA. EU Law Won't Let It Stop Its Clubs From Saying Yes.

The EuroLeague's shareholder clubs met in Cernobbio, Italy, on October 6 and rejected the NBA's proposal to work together on a European league. Front Office Sports reported that a supermajority voted no, and other outlets reported the vote as unanimous. The objections, according to Front Office Sports' sources, were that the offer undervalued the EuroLeague and would have required it to pause its planned expansion; owners used the word "colonialist." Gazzetta dello Sport reported that the offer was contingent on the EuroLeague keeping its current structure.

The NBA has said NBA Europe will launch regardless, built with FIBA, the sport's international governing body, as a 16-team league targeting fall 2027. More than 20 clubs, including current EuroLeague teams, bid $500 million or more for places in its 12 target cities, according to Sportico, and The Athletic reports at least six EuroLeague teams are considering a move.

The EuroLeague has answered on two fronts. It is converting its clubs' licenses into permanent ownership stakes. And according to ESPN, it sent the NBA a letter warning of legal action if the league kept talking to EuroLeague shareholders.

European sport sits under EU competition law, and the leading authority is the Court of Justice's 2023 judgment in the European Superleague case. The Court held that rules on prior approval of competitions, on clubs' and players' participation in them, and on sanctions for joining them constitute an abuse of a dominant position under Article 102 of the EU Treaty when they are adopted without substantive criteria and detailed procedural rules ensuring they are transparent, objective, precise, non-discriminatory and proportionate.

The Court did not say incumbents can never set rules. It recognized that a governing body may legitimately subject competitions to common rules and an approval process. What it condemned was discretionary gatekeeping by an organization that both regulates the market and competes in it.

Two features of this dispute are different from that case. The Superleague ruling was about FIFA and UEFA, governing bodies with regulatory power. Here the governing body, FIBA, is the NBA's partner, and the EuroLeague is a privately run competition. Its hold on its clubs comes from contracts: the licenses it is now turning into permanent stakes.

The EuroLeague had every right to say no. An organizer can turn down a partnership it thinks undervalues it, and by the reported terms, a deal requiring it to freeze its own growth was a fair thing to refuse.

What it cannot do as easily is make that no stick, and that is why the NBA's offer was the EuroLeague's best available deal, not its worst. The rejection does not stop NBA Europe. It only takes the EuroLeague out of the room where the new league's terms get written.

The tools the EuroLeague has left are weaker than they look. A letter threatening legal action over the NBA's talks with its clubs is a claim about contracts, and contracts can be honored and still be left at the end of their term. Converting licenses into permanent stakes gives clubs a reason to stay, but a club that wants to go is a club that will test how far those terms can hold it. And if the EuroLeague is the dominant organizer of top European club basketball, any rule or sanction designed to keep its clubs out of a rival competition invites the same Article 102 question the Court answered against FIFA and UEFA: is the restriction transparent, objective and proportionate, or is it an incumbent protecting itself from entry.

The structural irony is that the Superleague ruling was a weapon for challengers against incumbents, and here the challenger has the governing body on its side. The EuroLeague cannot invoke FIBA's authority against the NBA. It has only its own contracts and its market position, and the second of those is precisely what EU competition law polices.

The counterargument deserves its weight. The reported terms of the NBA's offer cut the other way too. An agreement between two competing league organizers that one of them will not expand is the kind of restriction EU competition law looks at closely, and the EuroLeague could fairly argue that accepting it would have exposed both sides. Leaving was also arguably the cleaner legal position. And no one has yet tested whether any EuroLeague contract term would actually be enforced against a departing club.

Those are real points. They support the EuroLeague's right to refuse. They do not change the arithmetic: a league whose clubs can leave, facing a rival backed by the governing body, was offered a seat at the table and chose to negotiate from the outside.

The clubs, more than either league. Every EuroLeague team that bids for NBA Europe raises the price of keeping the rest, and EU competition law limits how hard the EuroLeague can push back. The NBA holds money, FIBA's sanction and a launch date. The EuroLeague holds history, its clubs' existing commitments and the permanent stakes it is now offering. That is real, but it is the leverage of an incumbent persuading, not one able to prevent.

The EuroLeague had every right to refuse. But its hold on its clubs is a contract, EU law limits how a dominant league uses one, and the governing body is with the NBA.

Watch which EuroLeague clubs commit to NBA Europe, and whether the EuroLeague acts on its legal threat against the NBA or against a departing club. Either would put the Superleague principles to a test in basketball for the first time. Watch the terms of the converted licenses, especially any exit restrictions, because those are the clauses a competition authority or court would examine. And watch whether the NBA comes back with a second offer: Silver's position that NBA Europe launches with or without the EuroLeague is credible only if enough clubs follow.