NBA Europe, Roma and Friedkin in the project? The words of Mark Tatum

What if Roma brought the best basketball in the world to the capital? The Giallorossi club was mentioned by Deputy Commissioner Mark Tatum in the SBJ Dealmakers conference in New York in which he recounted the details of the project, the same one in which he mentioned the name of Milan and other football clubs interested in having a franchise in the NBA Europe project, the landing of the most famous basketball in the world in the Old Continent with a new league destined to revolutionize basketball and beyond.

words

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Tatum’s, as it was for Milan, is not an investiture but a mention that suggests that the Giallorossi club is involved in the project, which should raise the first ball in October 2027. “The teams that will make up this league will be a combination of existing teams that currently play in the Euroleague, such as Real Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Lyon, Tony Parker’s team – said Tatum on stage -. Then there will be some football teams that today do not have a basketball team, and I think of clubs like PSG, Manchester City and AS Roma of this world.”

Rome

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From the beginning, the NBA has mentioned Rome’s name as one of the 12 cities that will have a permanent team in this new league (George Aivazoglou also did so in his speech at the Football Business Forum, organized last November 7 in Milan by the Gazzetta dello Sport in collaboration with SDA Bocconi), but this is the first time that the Giallorossi club has been spoken about openly. The idea so far is that Rome would fall into the category of teams to be built from scratch, as will happen for example in London, where for reasons of football fans the NBA cannot partner with football teams, which would otherwise divide the city. This seemed to be the case in Rome, with the Giallorossi and Lazio being extremely competitive, but Roma’s international brand and the presence of the Friedkins have evidently changed things.

friedkin

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The US family that controls the Giallorossi already has ties to the NBA. In the past the Friedkins tried to buy the Houston Rockets, which they now sponsor through their arena, the Toyota Center, and were also interested in the Boston Celtics, before they changed hands for more than $6.1 billion last year. In retrospect, the fact that they did not succeed is a good thing for their involvement in the NBA Europe project, given that no shareholder of an NBA franchise will be able to own a club in the new league. If they really managed to bring top-level basketball back to the capital, they would add the Rome franchise to a sporting empire that in addition to the Giallorossi club also includes Everton in the Premier League and Cannes in Ligue 1.

arena

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The NBA Europe project is not just sports. “We will ask every investor interested in one of our franchises to also invest in the construction of an NBA-standard arena,” Tatum said at the New York conference. With the new league expected to begin in 2027, it is clear that the Rome franchise could only initially play at PalaEur, a facility where the NBA played two preseason games in 2007 but which would need to be adapted to the standards required by this new league. And here politics also comes into play: “One of the most positive things about our partnership with Fiba for this new league is their relationship with the governments and institutions of the various countries – recalled Tatum -. Thanks to them we are talking to many local governments and institutions, to ensure that our clubs that have to build new arenas have access to what they need”. The NBA has no intention of backing down from this project: it will be done and will begin in two, maximum three years. Rome will be there with one of the 12 permanent franchises. Roma, after the mention of Tatum, are officially in the game.