EuroLeague Powerbrokers Meet at Lake Como to Discuss NBA Offer
The EuroLeague’s most powerful figures are heading to one of Italy’s most exclusive addresses for talks that could reshape the continent’s top basketball competition.
According to La Gazzetta dello Sport, a select group of EuroLeague club owners will gather on October 5 at Villa d'Este in Cernobbio, the storied lakeside retreat on Lake Como more accustomed to heads of state and captains of industry than to basketball executives. When the owners meet, it usually means the stakes are high.
This time, they are.
At the heart of the agenda, Italian reports say, is a potential offer from the NBA to acquire the EuroLeague. Alongside that, the owners are expected to debate expansion plans and a shift toward a full franchise model — a move that would formalize the league’s closed-circle tendencies and push it further away from traditional European promotion-relegation structures.
Owner-level meetings are rare compared to the more frequent stakeholder board sessions. They tend to be reserved for existential questions: who really controls the league, how it grows, and what kind of competition it wants to be in the next decade. Lake Como will host that conversation next.
Milan’s Final Four ambition
While the boardrooms buzz about the future, another race is already underway: the battle to host upcoming Final Fours.
La Gazzetta dello Sport reports that Milan has officially entered the race to stage the 2030 EuroLeague Final Four. The city’s bid centers on the new Unipol Dome in the Santa Giulia district, a modern arena project designed to anchor Milan’s sporting and entertainment calendar for years to come.
If successful, it would mark a return of the EuroLeague’s showpiece weekend to a city with vivid memories of its last turn on the big stage. In 2014, Milan watched underdogs Maccabi Tel Aviv stun heavily favored Real Madrid in a Final Four that still resonates as one of the competition’s great upsets.
Milan, though, is not alone. Valencia are also pushing to host a Final Four and are widely expected, according to the same reports, to land the 2028 edition at the newly opened Roig Arena. That would give Spain another major European basketball event in a state-of-the-art venue built with such nights in mind.
The calendar around those years is already partly locked in. The 2027 and 2029 Final Fours are tied to an existing agreement with Abu Dhabi and will be staged in the United Arab Emirates, a clear sign of the league’s continuing drive into new markets.
So the picture is emerging. Abu Dhabi in 2027. Likely Valencia in 2028. Abu Dhabi again in 2029. And then, perhaps, Milan in 2030, showcasing its new dome to the rest of Europe.
The real intrigue, though, lies back on the shores of Lake Como. If EuroLeague owners decide to embrace an NBA offer and a franchise model, the competition that lands in those future Final Four cities could look very different from the one that crowned Maccabi in Milan a decade ago.
