The NBA and FIBA announced on Monday that they’ll begin engaging with teams and owners about joining their newly planned European league next month. As expected, this has caused huge waves within the basketball world. Besides permanent spots, the new league will feature some of the best talent from all across Europe with “a merit-based pathway” to qualify.

This means that teams will be able to participate in this annual tournament through the FIBA’s Basketball Champions League or an end-of-season tournament. However, what is the Basketball Champions League? And how is it connected to Adam Silver and Co.?

When and why was the Basketball Champions League created?

The creation of the Basketball Champions League can be traced all the way back to 2000, when Europe’s top clubs broke away from FIBA’s control and formed a new competition run by Euroleague Basketball. In fact, that tournament still operates under the Spanish club-owned entity. Since the split, the Euroleague has been organizing the top two tiers of European club basketball.

The infamous Euroleague and the second tier the Eurocup. Meanwhile, FIBA, through its FIBA Europe division, continued to run its own third-tier competition, the EuroChallenge, which was later replaced by the FIBA Europe Cup.

In 2016, the world basketball entity wanted to claim its lost glory in Europe and established the Basketball Champions League.

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FIBA promised Europe’s basketball powerhouses a bigger share of revenue, among other benefits, to lure them away from the Euroleague. Although whether they were successful remains debatable, the Basketball Champions League was FIBA’s answer to the Euroleague. But how does it work?

How does the Basketball Champions League format work?

The Basketball Champions League starts with 32 teams. Clubs from all across Europe qualify for this prestigious competition based on their performance in the national league and cup competitions. However, on some occasions, teams are wild-carded. This means a team might be invited by FIBA to participate in the league when they don’t qualify through normal circumstances.

After qualifying, these 32 teams are divided into four groups, each consisting of 8 teams. Seeding is used to draw teams from this stage, and teams from similar countries may not be drawn into one group. Once that’s settled, the action begins with each team then facing the other in one home and one away game.

Once the group stage concludes, the top four teams from each group progress to the playoffs. The fifth and sixth-placed teams are given the option to enter the FIBA Europe Cup playoffs in the same season. In the meantime, the playoffs begin with the Round of 16, followed by the quarter-finals and so on.

Here in the Round of 16 and the quarter finals, teams play each other twice, once at home and once away. The winner is decided based on the aggregate score. Then the semi-finals and the finals take place separately. Now that you have a better understanding of how the Basketball Champions League works, it’s only right that you also get to know which countries and teams compete in this high-intensity tournament.

Which countries and teams compete in the BCL?

As we mentioned, the Basketball Champions League is merit-based; the countries from which the teams qualify vary in each season. Still, the clubs that participated in the competition during the 2024-25 and the 2025-26 seasons came from approximately 30 countries. These featured teams from Spain, Italy, Turkey, Greece, Germany, France, Israel, and others.

And some of the most successful clubs in the competition are the Canarias, who are two-time winners and two-time runners-up. The Spanish giants are closely followed by a couple of other Spanish club called the San Pablo Burgos and the Unicaja Malaga. AEK from Greece and Virtus Bologna from Italy are also some more heavyweight teams of this competition.

Why is Adam Silver’s NBA exploring a partnership with FIBA in Europe?

The NBA is partnering up with FIBA to explore Europe because Adam Silver believes that there’s massive “untapped” potential in the European market. The league’s commissioner has always been in an active hunt for new opportunities across the globe further expand the reach of the NBA, and obviously, Europe has been under his radar for a while now.

With this new competition, Adam Silver aims to build an international structure for the NBA in key markets across Europe. In fact, this isn’t the first time he’s exploring a new continent. Adam Silver similarly introduced the Basketball Africa League back in 2019. Even though that didn’t turn out be massively successful, Silver believes things will be much different in Europe.

What has Adam Silver said about NBA-FIBA collaboration, and what is the vision?

“Our conversations with various stakeholders in Europe have reinforced our belief that an enormous opportunity exists around the creation of a new league on the continent,” Silver said recently about the NBA-FIBA collaboration. “Together with FIBA, we look forward to engaging prospective clubs and ownership groups that share our vision for the game’s potential in Europe.”

It seems like Silver is quite excited about this new league that the NBA and FIBA are about to introduce. Although there’s still a lot of question marks around the format, teams, and other aspects of the league, this will certainly be something to keep an eye on as it truly be the beginning of something massive in the basketball world.