[Tongue-Out-Like-23Participant]

I was driving home and thinking about how basketball is now the second biggest global sport.

10 years ago, everyone’s dream was to play in the NBA, it didn’t matter where they were from but nowadays, there are so many leagues around the world. ACB (Spain), PBL (Russia), HEBA A1 (Greece), CBA (China), LNB (Argentina), LNB (France), LBA (Italy), and the TBL (Turkey) are some of the biggest/best leagues outside of the NBA in the world.

Could it be possible that in another 10-20 years, we could see a system resembling soccer? Leagues around the world, players playing the game around the world to the highest bidder?

Could we see inter-league tournaments resembling the FIFA Club tournaments?

Obviously the NBA will always be the center of the world in terms of basketball, but with basketball becoming pretty prominent is Spain, could Barcelona’s basketball team mirror their soccer team in 20-30 years?

[Krypt14Participant]

I’d love to see that happen, but I think it would take a complete rebranding of the Euroleague and various domestic leagues to compete financially with the NBA in order for it to happen. Another way would be if basketball teams got bought by oil billionaires like Manchester City and Chelsea did in soccer. They could pay players whatever they wanted unlike in the NBA with the salary cap which would definitely get some guys to consider playing in Europe.

I guess the Euroleague and Eurocup are interleague tournaments, but one which included NBA teams as well would be great to watch.

[phila9012Participant]

basketball will always be second to soccer/football, and it is not even close right now. There already are interleague tournaments for pretty much every league but the NBA.

Most european and chinese basketball teams struggle to make a profit.Right now the elite basketball players in europe get paid 4 to 5 million dollars in terms of relating to american salaries that count the salary before taxes. That is far off from the 15 to 20 million NBA players make. There is not the fanbase in europe for basketball to come close to soccer/football. China has some potential, but soccer/football is just as big as basketball there.

http://www.ballineurope.com/european-basketball/top-salaries-european-basketball-3298/(this is the source I used)

Barcalona basketball will never come close to being Barcelona football. The football stadium holds 90,000 and their basketball arena holds 8,000. that is a big difference. The passion for football is intense over there and FC barcalona has so much meaning to the people of catalonia and barcalona.

[European BallerParticipant]

Barcelona is building a new state of the art 16,500 seat basketball arena that the club will own itself. The club will own totally. The arena will include all features of the newest NBA arenas.

[phila9012Participant]

yea and barcelona’s top salary are roughly equivalent(some site said to double their salary in euros to account for the value before taxes and the difference between the euro and the dollar) to $5.5 million, the next 2 are $3.5 million and $2 million. That is not even close to NBA wages. This is from 2010 but is should be close.

http://www.talkbasket.net/salaries.html

[European BallerParticipant]

Spanish League teams don’t pay net salaries genius. I think it’s the only league in European basketball that pays gross salaries. Anyway, for sure, they don’t pay by net figures in Spanish teams.

[phila9012Participant]

sports like cricket have huge followings, but nobody cares in america

this has basketball as the 9th most popular sport in the world
http://www.topendsports.com/world/lists/popular-sport/fans.htm

I love basketball, but people in america try to make it out that it is some huge global sport, but it really isnt compared to sports that are played in other countries that are not very popular in america.

[European BallerParticipant]

1. Russian Basketball League no longer exists. They just claim it does, to show it on paper for qualifying to European competitions. It does not actually exist anymore though.

2. Many basketball clubs in Europe ARE owned by billionaires. You obviously have no freaking clue about European basketball if you did not know that.

[phila9012Participant]

I know they are but they are not profitable, Most NBA teams make money, teams like chelsea and man city in european football can’t sustain losing $150 million a year. Barcelona FC is in a ton of debt. The NBA is positioned for long term sustainibility and growth most of the other teams aren’t and right now they aren’t close to competing with the NBA.

[European BallerParticipant]

You are 100% dead wrong when you say NBA teams make money. NBA teams lost just as much or more than Euroleague teams do.

Only a handful of NBA teams make money, most lose tens of millions every year.

Same exact as Euroleague, where a handful of teams make money, and the rest lose it.

[zolaParticipant]

EB, which teams in Euroleague make money? I think that all teams depends on their sponsors and owners.

[akhan786Participant]

Dang son. We can’t even beat Field Hockey and Table Tennis internationally? Depressing.

[MkadozaParticipant]

Field hockey is HUGE in the Caribbean, Africa, and India… Well pretty much any place there’s soccer fields…. er, football pitches. Its a British popularized sport that was heavily integrated in places like India, South Africa, Australia, etc because of the British influence. Also, handball, a game NO-ONE in America plays in probably less that 100 million behind basketball.

[MkadozaParticipant]

The reason the NBA is bragging about global branding is because it has a foothold in China, the biggest market in the world. Most of the other sports are already established as prominent in other countries, and when you look at the top four, you can understand how A) British Colonialism and B) The length of time the sports have been around make a huge difference in viewership. Table Tennis, kinda the odd ball in the list, has massive followings in both China and India, the two most populated countries in the world, both well over a billion strong.

Also, the numbers seem outdated. I feel like more Chinese people voted for Yao Ming than the 400 million NBA they say there are >_>… Only a jest… kinda.

[hoopscopParticipant]

@European Baller

Look, You have no clue at all you are talking about

The NBA will generate 5000 million $ this season, as for EL,, it is like in the 60-70 million range. Nobody outside the US is generating money with basketball, if you are not generate money there is no profit whatsover. Do you know how much television is paying in spain, greece, russia or italy for the rights for basketball. Its in the realm of 100000s not millions. As for the NBA, the next 4-6 years revenue will rise above 8000 million $, and as of 2014 probably all the teams will earn a profit.

“NBA Commissioner David Stern revealed Tuesday (November 13) revenues estimates for the league, saying they expect a record $5 billion for the current season, reports NBA.com.

The numbers are around a 20% increase from the league’s last full season in 2010-11, and is for the current year ending next September 30. That puts the NBA third among the major North American leagues, trailing the NFL ($9 billion) and Major League Baseball ($7.5 billion), but ahead of the NHL ($3.3 billion).”

“David Stern announced Thursday that he would step down as commissioner of the National Basketball Association in February 2014, which will mark 30 years in charge of the league. Stern’s longtime deputy, Adam Silver, will replace him. It marks the end of a wildly controversial run for the longest serving commissioner in sports. Stern oversaw four lockouts, six franchise relocations, owner spats, trade vetoes, a referee betting scandal and the implementation of a player dress code. His all-wielding power caused some to dub him “The Godfather.”

One group that should never complain about Stern’s tenure are the longtime owners in the sport, who have made a mint under Stern’s watch. The NBA was a very different league in 1984 when David Stern took the reins. CBS was paying $22 million a year for the broadcast rights to games. Playoff games were shown on tape-delay with only the NBA Finals shown live. Average per game attendance around the league was embarrassing in places like Atlanta (7,139), Chicago (6,365), Cleveland (5,075) and Washington (7,920).
Four current owners bought into the league between 1981 and 1985 at prices ranging from $11 million to $19 million. (How prescient was Jerry Reinsdorf, who bought the Bulls during Micheal Jordan’s first season in 1985 for $16 million and now sits on an asset worth more than $600 million?) The league’s 23 teams were collectively worth roughly $400 million.

Flash forward to today. NBA owners divvy up $930 million annually from TV contracts. The 2012 NBA Finals were broadcast in 215 countries. Attendance averaged 17,273 last season for all regular season games. We valued the average NBA team at $393 million in our last look at the business of the NBA. That average will certainly top $400 million in our next take, after the recent sales of two low-revenue franchises in the New Orleans Hornets for $338 million and Memphis Grizzlies for $350 million. The NBA’s new collective bargaining agreement has made even small market franchises must-have assets. The collective worth of the NBA’s 30 teams is now more than $12 billion.

Generating $12 billion in value for owners was obviously not all Stern’s doing. His timing was impeccable. Stern arrived four months before Jordan was drafted by the Chicago Bulls and set the NBA on fire. The NBA is a star-driven league and basketball was blessed with a huge number of stars the past 30 years, besides Jordan, that helped spread the game globally including, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Shaquille O’Neal, Kobe Bryant, LeBron James and others. Credit also goes to owners and taxpayers who ponied up billions of dollars for new arenas, as every NBA team opened a new arena since Stern arrived, save the New York Knicks, who are currently going through an $800 million renovation of Madison Square Garden.”

Team profitability is on the rise in the NBA, fueled by a projected $200 million in revenue sharing among the clubs this year.

Total league revenue for 2012-13 is expected to reach $5 billion, according to league estimates, up from about $4.2 billion for the lockout-shortened 2011-12 campaign. It is expected that 22 of the league’s 30 teams will make money this year, up from 18 clubs last season, which was the first year operating under the NBA’s new 10-year collective-bargaining agreement and with the installation of its new revenue-sharing system.

For the 2010-11 season, prior to the new CBA and revenue-sharing plan, eight teams were profitable.

The revamped revenue-sharing system complements the larger, long-standing process in the NBA of teams sharing league-level revenue, including money from national television contracts, leaguewide sponsorships and international deals. The intent of the new system is to better aid the league’s smaller-market clubs financially relative to its large-market teams, which can generate higher revenue from local TV and sponsorship deals.

Typically, the NBA completes its team financial audits in September and distributes the reallocated revenue to clubs by early February of the following year, though for accounting purposes any revenue sharing is counted on the books for that past season, according to one team source. That means the league and clubs are in the process of finalizing the money that will be redistributed from the 2011-12 season.

According to projections, 15 clubs (half of the league’s teams) will be “recipients” of $104 million in additional revenue sharing from the 2011-12 season, with up to another $15 million from what’s called a “discretionary fund” also being shared — for a total of up to $119 million being shared. The discretionary fund is the result of money generated mainly from postseason dollars.

That amount compares to $54.5 million, shared among 12 teams, following the 2010-11 season — or, the amount that resulted from the league’s prior revenue-sharing system, before the system that’s in place now was initiated.

According to the new revenue-sharing formula, 10 of the league’s teams for the 2011-12 season are expected to be “contributors” to the system, while five clubs will be neither recipients nor contributors. The league has not shared specific team projections for this new, 2012-13 season with owners, but the team splits are expected to be roughly the same as for the 2011-12 season: 15 recipients, 10 contributors, and five clubs in between. The amount shared, however, is expected to increase to a projected $200 million compared with the lower amount for the lockout-shortened 2011-12 season.

Owners last year received a snapshot of a projected fully funded revenue-sharing system being in place for the 2013-14 season and what that system could mean for individual clubs (see box). Those numbers, considered rough estimates, ultimately could vary based on each team’s subsequent business performance.

When the formula was unveiled last year, $200 million was noted as the projected maximum amount to be shared among the clubs according to the new system.

“Ultimately, it is about competitive balance,” said Fred Whitfield, president of the Charlotte Bobcats. “Revenue sharing helps address the natural disparities between large- and small-market teams. [This] is a step in the right direction as every team strives to field a competitive team year in, year out.”

According to the new, widely expanded revenue-sharing plan, each team puts into a pool roughly 50 percent of its total annual revenue, minus certain expenses such as arena operating costs. Teams then receive an allocation from the pool that is equal to the average team payroll for the season.

So, if a team’s contribution to the pool is less than the league’s average team payroll, that team is considered a revenue recipient. If a team’s contribution to the pool is more than the average team payroll amount, the team is deemed a contributor to the system.

Teams are assumed to have achieved certain revenue thresholds based on market size when calculating the full revenue results. Teams that are payers into the revenue-sharing system also are protected to where their contributions to the plan will be no more than 30 percent of their total operating profits.

Under the old system, the maximum payout for any one club was about $5.4 million.

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