Livescore
Can a LIV Golf-style league for basketball prove a true challenge to the NBA?
A group of investors believes in the idea enough to raise $5 billion to start a league and find out, according to a report at Bloomberg. The investors have hired Maverick Carter — LeBron James’ longtime friend and business partner — as an advisor, the report states. LeBron himself is not involved directly or indirectly.
The league would initially consist of six men’s and six women’s teams that would play more in a golf or tennis event-style format. The teams would travel to eight different cities around the globe — not just in the United States — spending two weeks in each one playing games. This is similar to where Ice Cube’s Big 3 league has found some success (although that is a North American product only and is in town for a week at a time).
The LIV Golf comparison comes from the fact that the investors can (and likely will) include private equity groups and sovereign wealth funds (like Saudi Arabia’s), which are currently limited in how much of an NBA team they can own. That’s a deep well of money to tap into.
Would it be worth the investment?
What gave LIV Golf standing was it spent huge dollars to secure some of the biggest names in the sport — Phil Mickelson, Jon Rahm, Brooks Koepka, Dustin Johnson, etc. — by giving them massive guaranteed contracts. NBA contracts are already guaranteed, and the contracts are already massive and growing — this summer, Luka Doncic will be offered and sign a five-year, $346.3 million “supermax” contract extension. There are 27 NBA players making more than $40 million this season and 23 on total contracts worth more than $200 million.
How many men’s players would be willing to jump to an untested league when they make that much money in the current system? If the money is enough some would consider it, but it would take 80-90 players on the men’s side alone to field the six teams. Would the league end up chasing aging stars who couldn’t get the last NBA payday they wanted but could find it with this league? Would fans watch?
With the lower salaries of the top WNBA players — A’Ja Wilson, Caitlin Clark, Breanna Stewart, Napheesa Collier — poaching them for a new league would theoretically be easier. It’s also theoretically possible to buy enough top men’s players to draw attention, but the question becomes, how much money are the investors willing to lose (and for how many years) to establish the league?
There have been more than 30 leagues that have attempted to challenge the NBA since its inception in 1949 and only one — the ABA of the late 1960s and early 1970s — made a dent before it merged with the NBA (giving us the New York Nets, Denver Nuggets, San Antonio Spurs and Indiana Pacers).
The odds are against this new league having that level of success today, but if the investors’ pockets are deep enough, they will find out.
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