The National Basketball Association (NBA) has settled on a three-year schedule of regular-season games to be played in Europe.
Next year the Memphis Grizzlies and the Orlando Magic will be playing in Berlin on Jan. 15 and in London on Jan. 18. Regular-season games are scheduled also for Manchester and Paris in 2027 and Berlin and Paris in 2028. All of these games will be shown live in some 200 countries, in Europe and elsewhere, through television, digital media and social media.
It’s no coincidence that the Orlando Magic were chosen to play in Europe. Both Franz and Moritz Wagner, who are born and raised in Berlin, play for the Magic. “To have the Orlando Magic and the NBA play a regular-season game in our hometown of Berlin means everything to us. Growing up here, we dreamed of moments like this. It’s a huge honor to represent Berlin and Germany and show how much the city and country love basketball. We hope we can inspire kids the way we were inspired watching games from afar.”
In related news, as we’ve learned through Palco23 and London newspaper City A.M., Sportico reports that NBA Commissioner Adam Silver and deputy Mark Tatum were in London late this July to meet with private equity firms, investment banks, sovereign wealth funds, government officials and basketball clubs. They were discussing the establishment of a European competition between teams in London, Manchester, Paris and other European cities.
NBA Europe, as the project might be called, would be function in tandem with the International Basketball Federation (FIBA), which runs the Champions League but not EuroLeague. It would field 16 teams, 12 of them permanent, four qualifying on recent performance.
