In the middle of this autumn, Marko Pesic set out on a trip to Dubai to meet with the basketball Euroleague and business people from the emirate. The FC Bayern managing director is seen in a photo with fellow officials from the 13 licensed clubs that act as shareholders in the competition. Diving alongside club leaders on the recording, which was shot on October 11th in a newly built arenaalso the Euroleague boss Dejan Bodiroga and a gentleman named Abdullah al-Naboodah.
And he has important plans that could bring a revolution to Europe’s basketball. They recently established Dubai Basketball Club in the Gulf and from all accounts the club is poised to be in the second-best basketball league in the world for years to come. According to reliable information, Dubai is not in Europe, but the plan is clear: the club from the metropolis in the emirate wants to play in the Euroleague.
Dejan Bodiroga has been President and Director of the Euroleague since September.
(Photo: Marko Metlas/Imago)
Al-Naboodah, owner of the franchise and host of the meeting of officials in Dubai, revealed that negotiations are already going in this direction. In doing so, he confirmed what the Euroleague had already indicated at the beginning of October: talks about what was called a “potential cooperation” – which apparently is not just about expanding the league into the Arab world, but possibly about more. The money from the desert seems to be bubbling up so lavishly that there is even talk of a complete takeover of the Euroleague by the sheikhs.
“Negotiations with the Euroleague began eight months ago with the aim of including a club from Dubai in the prestigious competition and hosting certain matches in the city,” al-Naboodah said. For the time being, those “certain” games could also be the games of the Final Four of the Euroleague, as a test run, so to speak. Something similar was done recently with the US league NBA, which sent the Milwaukee Bucks and the Atlanta Hawks to Abu Dhabi for their pre-season games this summer. And teams from the Australian NBL league are also to throw baskets in the desert for advertising purposes in the future.
In short: The United Emirates are planning to enter the basketball cosmos after they have already been involved in Formula 1, football (Manchester City), chess and tennis. The planned investments should also be viewed as a reaction to the activities of competing Gulf states, which have long been promoting complete takeovers in golf (Saudi Arabia with the LIV tour) or organizing one or the other World Cup (Qatar in handball and soccer). In their efforts to organize major events, these countries are repeatedly confronted with the accusation of sports washing – athletes’ spectacles as a cover for tough power interests. In the end, of course, it’s about the money.
In basketball circles, there have recently been reports that Dubai even offered 50 to 60 million euros for the Euroleague naming rights. The national airline of the United Arab Emirates would therefore be a candidate as the new main sponsor. But al-Naboodah opposed such plans for the time being. “We haven’t discussed naming rights as the competition has a commercial partner by 2025 (Turkish Airlines, ed.) has,” said the businessman, who also pulls the strings in football.
Will Dubai even take over the Euroleague naming rights?
And after 2025? The contract with Turkish Airlines guarantees the Euroleague proper financial flows, but probably nowhere near the returns that can be expected from the Emirates – in this respect the Europeans in Dubai were quite impressed. “The purpose of the visit was to exchange ideas and identify opportunities for possible cooperation,” said Euroleague CEO Marshall Glickman after the meeting.
However, it is “still too early to go into details” and we look forward to “continuing the talks”. Incidentally, the Dubai Basketball Club only exists on paper so far – there is neither a homepage nor a team. But it really shouldn’t fail because of that.