The National Basketball Association (NBA), according to Front Office Sports, has plans to sell franchises in the Basketball Africa League (BAL), the league it established in 2019 through a joint venture with the International Basketball Federation (FIBA).
It is unclear how big the founders’ respective stakes in the BAL are at present, but some estimate the NBA’s stake at 50 percent. According to Yahoo Sports, the league was founded with about $75 million drawn from a variety of investors, among them former US President Barack Obama.
The league was founded with 12 extant clubs, whose competition in the league depends on their success on the court. As many in the press have pointed out, this resembles the operation of Europe’s Champions League in football. The NBA’s franchise sale would begin to establish a permanent roster of teams in the BAL.
The franchises to be sold would be “newly minted” and come with the opportunity to build arenas, as NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said in an onstage interview at the Bloomberg Philanthropies Global Forum 2025, on Sept. 24. Each arena, in Adam’s vision, would serve as a venue for touring acts and the like and sit at the heart of a mixed-use development, with the franchise club serving as “anchor tenant.” In other words, each franchise sale would invite further investment and stimulate the local economy.
Europe, Silver went on to say, is home to much great basketball playing but lacks arenas on the NBA level.
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver’s segment runs from 57:30 to 1:08:00, his comments on Africa from 1:00:00 to 1:03:50.
