How an untrademarked name let Europe's top clubs seize basketball's EuroLeague
In 2000 basketball's world governing body woke up to find a rival running a competition under the name it had been using for four years. FIBA had never trademarked EuroLeague, so the breakaway clubs simply took it, and for one strange season Europe crowned two separate club champions.
The competition began in 1958 as the FIBA European Champions Cup, took the EuroLeague name in 1996, and from 1987–88 decided its winner at a Final Four. Across 44 editions under FIBA, Real Madrid won most often, with eight titles, and Maccabi Tel Aviv took the last one in 2001.
The split came in 2000, when leading clubs backed by the union of leagues known as ULEB launched their own tournament. Because nobody had protected the name, FIBA had to rebrand its version as the SuproLeague. Panathinaikos, Maccabi, CSKA Moscow and Efes Pilsen stayed with FIBA, while Real Madrid, Barcelona, Olympiacos and others defected. In May 2001 Maccabi and Kinder Bologna were both European champions, and within months FIBA accepted terms that placed the top club competition under Euroleague Basketball, keeping national team events such as the World Cup and Olympics for itself.
The new organisers handed top clubs multi-year licences not tied to sporting results. FIBA tried to win clubs back in October 2015 with a proposed 16-team league, but the clubs rejected it and soon adopted an almost identical plan with Euroleague Basketball. A 10-year joint venture with IMG, worth €630 million guaranteed, created a full league in which every team met every other. In 2019 direct entry through domestic leagues ended, and critics including FIBA condemned it as a closed league.
Crowds are enormous for indoor sport: 10,383 on average in 2023–24, second among basketball leagues only to the NBA. Real Madrid lead with 11 titles, ahead of CSKA Moscow on 8 and Panathinaikos on 7. The 2025 Final Four in Abu Dhabi was the first held outside Europe, and the league grew to 20 teams for 2025–26, with Dubai Basketball joining on a five-year licence.
Source: EuroLeague
