Bertomeu, the NBA Proposal, and the Question of Who Actually Owns European Basketball

In a studio at RAC1, on the programme "Tu diràs", Jordi Bertomeu said a short sentence: the clubs will again do what others tell them to do. He said it in Catalan, to a Catalan audience, and the first club he named was Barcelona. Three layers sit inside a sentence like that: self-governance, money, and who is permitted to decide how European basketball is played. I have heard many statements of this kind across twenty-seven years of watching the industry. They are usually not meant as forecasts. They are reminders of an old wound.

In 2026, those same clubs — Barcelona, Real Madrid, Olympiacos, Žalgiris, Maccabi, the two Belgrade clubs — walked out of the FIBA system and built a competition they co-owned. The old system lost a corner, the clubs stood up, and a model was born: the competition belongs to the people who play it. Bertomeu ran the EuroLeague from that year until 2026, twenty-two years of executive authority inside a structure where ownership sat with the clubs rather than with the league office. Twenty-six years after the breakaway, a proposal from the NBA places on the table precisely the asset the clubs left FIBA to win: the right to determine their own competition.

I was not in Barcelona in 2026. I was seventeen that year, following European basketball through blurry videotapes and old newspaper pages, and the only thing I grasped was that different teams wore different shirts in different leagues. Years later, sitting in a commentary booth, I understood that a competition can be read through its structure as much as through its scoreline. The season without spectators was the moment I learned to hear a game instead of only seeing it — and also the moment I realised that the frame behind the game is what decides how long the game can last.

That proposal, as Bertomeu described it on RAC1, comes down to three facts. Clubs pay a participation fee considerably larger than what they receive back. The revenue share returned to clubs amounts to roughly one tenth of what they put in. The stated launch date is 2027. Added together, those three facts invert the entire logic of an ordinary expansion deal.

In an ordinary expansion deal — the NBA adding teams, the EuroLeague granting wildcards — the entrant pays a fee and the incumbents receive dilution compensation. Here, the payers are the incumbents, and they receive back one tenth. The structure resembles a franchise agreement more than a partnership. Bertomeu names the thing being bought and sold: sovereignty, rather than cash.

The most expensive item in this proposal is not the number but the four rights transferred at once: calendar, format, media rights and club-selection criteria. A club that pays to enter a competition usually keeps at least one of those four. Here, as described, all four leave the clubs' hands simultaneously. Media rights move to the centre. The calendar is set by the centre. The format is set by the centre. And club selection — who is invited, who is excluded — is set by the centre. When those four rights travel together, what remains with a club is a ticket, not an equity stake.

The one-tenth payment is more telling than the ratio. A small, nearly symbolic payment is designed to secure a signature rather than to secure value. It buys consent cheaply and defers the real cost. In expansion deals this is a familiar pattern: pay a little up front for the signature, and leave the rest in clauses nobody reads carefully until the ink has dried.

The FIBA comparison is the sharpest part of Bertomeu's remarks: now it is called the NBA, before it was called FIBA. But the two situations differ in legal character. Breaking from FIBA was clubs asserting rights against an external governing body. Signing NBA terms is clubs voluntarily contracting those same rights away. The first was hard but repeatable. The second is far harder to reverse, because there is no longer anyone to claim against.

The 2027 date deserves scrutiny. Bertomeu built the EuroLeague in roughly three months in 2026. If he once did that, technical feasibility cannot be the main reason 2027 is treated as unworkable. He shifts the argument to organisational sophistication, and concedes that the 2027 date is being used to maintain pressure on investors. A deadline announced publicly, without a technical roadmap, is usually a negotiating instrument.

The biggest risk to the clubs is not rejection. It is fracture. Any body made up of independent owners carries a built-in weakness: a few members receive a separate offer, see a separate advantage, and step away from the common voice. One high-market club signing early breaks the bargaining position of the rest, and the rest then negotiate from a far weaker position than they hold today.

The London example Bertomeu uses to argue that expansion is normal partly refutes his own case. London joined at the league's inception, when there was no asset base to protect. Applying that precedent to a twenty-six-year-old league with entrenched incumbents is not an equivalent comparison. Olympiacos, Žalgiris, Maccabi or the two Belgrade clubs are not in London's position of 2026. They are in the position of parties who have paid for twenty-six years.

Club-selection criteria are the unanswered question across the whole story. If places are allocated by market size, the clubs that built the competition will compete against markets that were never there. Nobody says this out loud in the report, but Bertomeu naming Olympiacos, Žalgiris, Maccabi and the two Belgrade clubs specifically is itself a form of saying it.

The silent casualty is domestic leagues. ACB, LBA and BSL are not in the negotiating room, yet the calendar and the players' available time are decided at continental level. A schedule designed externally flows back down to national leagues, and those leagues must cope with whatever is left.

FIBA is entirely absent from the story, despite being a third party with a direct interest. An NBA-led competition in Europe, if it takes shape, would end what remains of FIBA's authority over global club basketball. Bertomeu's comparison is a warning addressed to FIBA as much as to the clubs.

Bertomeu says he will not judge which model is better, but the way he sets the two side by side is clear enough: Europe is used to competitive tension, America to business tension. In the European model, sport generates business in order to sustain sport. In the American model, business uses sport as an instrument. This is the most durable part of the argument, because it does not depend on whether the one-tenth ratio is accurate. It will decide the fan response, and fans are the party that ultimately pays for both models.

The speaker's position also needs placing. Bertomeu held the EuroLeague's executive office for twenty-two years, long enough to understand the structure he is defending at a level of detail few possess. But he holds no negotiating mandate, and the remarks contain no voice from any club leader or NBA official. Choosing a Catalan station, and naming Barcelona first, anchors an abstract governance argument in the concrete exposure of a founding club.

The weakest part of the story is the part quoted most. The one-tenth ratio is a former executive's characterisation, with no term sheet, no NBA response, and no confirmation from any club. Bertomeu left office in 2026. He is defending a house he designed, and that does not make his argument wrong — it means the argument needs independent verification before it is used as a basis.

A more uncomfortable contrarian point sits underneath. The pull of NBA money exists because the current model has not produced enough money for the clubs themselves. If the owners of a competition must cover losses every year in order to retain ownership, warnings about sovereignty lose weight in the boardroom. The first stumble did not make me fall; it taught me how to stand up in the middle of the track — but it also taught me that standing up is not the same as standing firm when the surface is still slippery. European clubs stood up in 2026. The question twenty-six years later is whether they can stand on their own resources.

A good broadcaster is not the person with the answer but the person who knows where the story is going. Bertomeu is that kind of figure, and he is telling a story that holds: when one side pays and loses control at the same time, that side is no longer a partner.

Over the next few months, the thing worth tracking is not news about the 2027 date but the first term sheet that surfaces, and which club speaks first. From track and field to esports, every athlete runs toward one finish line: the moment of being oneself. European clubs touched that moment once. The question left for them is whether they want to keep it this time, or sell it for one tenth of its price.