SBJ Unpacks: NBA Europe enters final stages of bidding

Tonight in Unpacks: NBA Deputy Commissioner Mark Tatum said Tuesday that final bids for NBA Europe teams were due by the end of June, and as SBJ’s Tom Friend reports, he also admitted that the league will proceed with or without a EuroLeague merger.

Also tonight:

• Announcing the Forty Under 40 Class of 2026
• Report: Teams, not players, still drive engagement engines in sports
• USTA, AELTC leaders meet with tennis players seeking reform
• Op-ed: WNBA’s new CBA addresses pregnancy retaliation

Listen to SBJ’s most popular podcast, Morning Buzzcast, where Abe Madkour discusses the Mavericks’ “seismic” move in selecting an arena site outside downtown Dallas, how Illinois legislators didn’t want to feel “rushed” on a bill for a new Bears stadium, the NHL and NBA finals and more.

Final bids for the proposed NBA Europe are due at the end of June, NBA Deputy Commissioner Mark Tatum said Tuesday, while admitting the league will proceed with or without a EuroLeague partnership.

Speaking to international journalists before Wednesday’s start of the NBA Finals, Tatum said NBA Europe is in the advanced stages of a multi-tiered launch that will include what he called “one of the largest marketing campaigns ... not just in sports but of any consumer brand period.”

He added that the 16-team league is on track to begin in October of 2027 and that, at some point after final bids arrive in four weeks, both the NBA and FIBA Board of Governors will vote whether to green-light the venture.

“We’ll talk to our board, and FIBA will talk to its board and go through the process as well, so we’re right on track,” Tatum said. “I won’t give you a specific timeline because we’ve got to negotiate and finalize negotiations with several of those clubs and come to agreement. ... So we’re very pleased with the progress there.”

Negotiations will also continue with EuroLeague, which has the most marquee basketball brand names on the continent, such as Real Madrid and Barcelona, and would give the fledgling NBA league instant provincial credibility. But to be permanent franchises in the startup -- as opposed to a year-to-year merit-based participant -- those clubs would have to bid between $500M and $1B, which has created skepticism in the region.

“We’ve expressed to the EuroLeague, and we’ve talked to them about [how] the only way to guarantee a permanent spot in our league is through a successful bid for permanent franchise,” Tatum said. “But ... we’re also ready to proceed with our partners and investors if we can’t come to some sort of an agreement. It would not be ideal, obviously, but ... we continue to pursue a constructive, collaborative and aligned outcome across the entire European ecosystem. We’ve been consistent in that, in believing that all parties should align here for the best interest of basketball.”

The issue, based on the questions aimed at Tatum on Tuesday, is the perception that the NBA Europe model is a money-grab for the NBA owners in the U.S. -- something Tatum vehemently denied.

“It’s a mischaracterization and it’s just flat–out false that the vast majority of the money will get extracted back to the United States,“ he said. “The vast majority of that money, call it 85 to 90% of the economics, will stay in Europe. I just want to make sure that’s very, very clear.”

To emphasize that, Tatum pointed to what would be an impending marketing campaign throughout Europe, while reminding reporters that the NBA is prepared to use franchise fees to offset early projected losses for teams. Sources have said previously that the NBA informed bidders in early May that they will invest more than $3B to cover deficits and reduce risks for teams.

“It means that they don’t have to contribute additional capital upfront,” Tatum said. “So, we’re going to deploy that capital on strategic investments, including infrastructure and funding of grassroots development programs throughout the European basketball ecosystem. That’s what we’re communicating to the potential investors, and that’s really, really resonating.

“... We’re very, very far along with many of the clubs in Europe, both existing basketball clubs as well as potential new clubs and new investors. I would say the things that we are looking to work out are just a clear understanding of the model, right? Teams now are starting to understand the economics of the model, where they are getting participation fees, they’re getting performance fees, they’re getting revenue that is being shared from the projections that we have at the center, and they’re recognizing that the vast majority of the economics here are going to go to them. That’s one of the things that has taken a little bit of time.”

Sports Business Journal and presenting sponsors Anheuser-Busch, Bank of America, Polymarket, TurnkeyZRG and Verizon are pleased to announce the Forty Under 40 Class of 2026. The 40 executives are recognized for achievement and innovation in their careers, all before the age of 40.

Chara-Lynn Aguiar of ESPN joins the SBJ Forty Under 40 Hall of Fame, which is reserved for three-time honorees. With her induction, the Hall of Fame includes 72 past honorees.

This year’s class also includes two-time Forty Under 40 and past New Voices Under 30 honoree Ben Kennedy of NASCAR; past New Voices Under 30 honorees Kerry Scalora of Anheuser-Busch and Scott Zanghellini of WWE; and 2022 Game Changers honoree Elizabeth Cohen of Major League Soccer.

Notably, the Class of 2026 includes 16 women, the most ever selected to SBJ’s Forty Under 40.

Honorees will be featured in the Aug. 10 issue of SBJ, in which the stories of their careers and successes are told. They also will be recognized at our annual Forty Under 40 gala on Nov. 20 at Pier Sixty at Chelsea Piers in Manhattan. For more information, please visit FortyUnder40awards.com.

Class of 2026

Alex Cadicamo, Major League Baseball

Tom Chapman, WME Sports

Hedy Chen, National Football League

Elizabeth Cohen, Major League Soccer

Jose Diaz, SMAC Entertainment

William DiBlasi, Elevate

Samantha Engelhardt, New York Mets

Ryan Fischer, Fenway Sports Management

Megan Fogarty, Allied Sports

Benjamin Freeman, Proskauer

Grant Hastings, Monumental Sports & Entertainment

Brady Hart, University of Tennessee

Kate Hussmann, Buffalo Bills

Chris Kaiser, Rock Entertainment Group

Julia Kang, U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Properties

Ben Kennedy, NASCAR

Jason Lavine, Los Angeles Chargers

Kyle McCarthy, Athletes First

Charlie Neiman, Amazon

Megan Nicol, CAA Sports

Adam Nurik, Genesco Sports Enterprises

Max Paulsen, National Hockey League

Zohar Ravid, Fanatics

Jasmine Robinson, Monarch Collective Fund

Jamie Rocha, Airbnb

Kerry Scalora, Anheuser-Busch

Arianna Scavetti, Weil, Gotshal & Manges

Preetam Sen, Excel Sports Management

Alex Seyferth, Chicago Cubs

Henry Shepherd, Diamond Baseball Holdings

Connor Swarbrick, The Team

Taylor Traub, Ilitch Sports + Entertainment

Maria Valdehueza, Golden State Valkyries

Kyle Vasey, University of Alabama

Sean Wallis, Legends Global

Katelyn West, National Basketball Association

Scott Zanghellini, WWE

Megan Zee, PGA Tour

Zach Zimmerman, Moelis & Company

Jimmy Zasowski, Walt Disney Company

HALL OF FAME

Chara-Lynn Aguiar

Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, Research, Strategy and Office of the Chairman — ESPN

National Research Group on Tuesday is releasing a new Sports IQ study of 12,500 sports fans that examines what it calls the “ecosystem of engagement.”

Overall fandom across the properties measured, for example, “still tends to be driven by teams rather than players,” according to the report, although fandom among younger audiences are “more athlete-driven.”

Forty-two percent of baby boomer-aged NHL fans (defined in the study as being born 1960-64), for example, are fans of the league because they claim allegiance to a specific club, but just 5% follow because of a single player. Just 19% of Gen-Z-aged fans (born from 1997 through 2012) credit their hockey fandom to team loyalty.

Streaming providers are “de-centering the household, building services around personal accounts and devices,” the report posits saying that viewers are increasingly embracing “individualistic modes of content consumption.”

The study was conducted between March 25 and April 28, a period when MLB, the NBA, NHL and NCAA were each actively in season. Respondents were ages 13 to 64, had access to sports content on at least one device and expressed interest in at least one professional league or college conference.

The group of top tennis players seeking reforms to the way they are compensated by the Grand Slams is continuing to lobby governing bodies across tennis. Former WTA chief and Pac-12 head Larry Scott, who has been advising players on the effort for more than a year, met separately with leaders from the All England Lawn Tennis Club and USTA — which own and operate Wimbledon and the U.S. Open, respectively — earlier this week, according to a source familiar with the talks. The meetings were said to be productive and mainly comprised of Scott reiterating the desires of the player group. These are as follows:

• A greater share of tournament revenue split with the players via prize money — from a range that the group contends hovers around 15% from Slam-to-Slam to 22%, which the group says would be consistent the ATP and WTA’s combined Masters events
• Contributions by the Slams to player welfare benefits
• A mechanism for players to be consulted on tournament decisions (akin to the ATP and WTA’s player councils)

Several top players — including Coco Gauff, Iga Swiatek, Aryna Sabalenka and Jannik Sinner — staged a media protest ahead of the French Open to drive the top point home by committing to exit their pretournament press conferences after 15 minutes. Ensuing conversations with the French Tennis Federation are expected to culminate in a counter proposal from the federation in the coming weeks, while the players’ response to Wimbledon’s prize money announcement later this month will be notable. It was the FFT’s prize money announcement for the French Open that sparked the recent public push, including players floating the idea of a boycott in the press and the media protest, which the player group hopes will spur action from the Slams in a way that talks held with each of them over the past year have not.

Because each of the Slams are governed independently, the player group is negotiating with each separately. It is unknown which executives from the USTA and AELTC participated in the meetings this week, or when talks might advance — though the source said incoming USTA CEO Craig Tiley, who is not expected to formally start with the organization until July, was not present.

Reached for comment, the USTA said of its general presence at the French Open: “The USTA can confirm that it held discussions with players, agents, and player representatives during Roland-Garros, in accordance with its policy of maintaining open lines of communications. These conversations occurred separately from other tennis entities. The USTA welcomes and remains committed to ongoing dialogue with players.”

The AELTC commented: “We were pleased to have the opportunity to meet with the players’ representative at Roland-Garros. Our discussions about the arrangements for this year’s Championships were positive. We look forward to continuing these discussions in further detail after The Championships.”

Netflix is celebrating the five-year anniversary of its “Untold” series of sports documentaries, with a larger domestic roster of docs and an expansion into Netflix territories like the U.K.

Among the key creators of the series from a production standpoint have been Howard Owens (Propagate Content) and film runners Chapman Way and Maclain Way (Stardust Frames). All are big sports fans, and each saw “Untold” as filling in some of the gaps left by an unsteady “30 for 30” calendar from ESPN.

“We saw that there was an opening in sports storytelling,” said Owens, whose work prior to Netflix included the “LFG” doc for HBO on the USWNT’s fight for equal pay. “We thought that ‘30 for 30’ had the light dimmed after Bill Simmons left ESPN. It felt they started to come out sporadically and the quality had seemed to kind of ebb a little.”

For the Way brothers, who had won Primetime Emmys as directors of the “Wild Wild Country” doc, the start to “Untold” was a time to grow beyond directorial roots.

“I really look back on that time, and it’s where we really learned how to produce and become good producers,” said Maclain Way, whose history with Netflix goes back to 2014, when it bought “The Battered Bastards of Baseball” from the brothers at Sundance as one of the streamer’s first sports docs. “For Chap and I, we knew that if we put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into those first early seasons, we might be able to make something that really defines itself and is long lasting.”

Chapman Way wanted to bring “something that was cinematically a little bit more elevated, a little bit more immersive” when he was creating the series for Netflix.

Give the audience what they want

The assignment for the Ways and Owens was creating something for Netflix that appealed not just to sports diehards but also to those who may have never been to sporting events.

“We’re really trying to keep both audiences in mind when we make these,” said Chapman Way.

One of the first ideas that brought the trio together was telling the story of the “Malice at the Palace,” the 2004 fight between the Pistons and Pacers that involved fans.

“Everyone told us, ‘Oh, we can’t do this. The NBA will never give you [permission]. It can’t be done.’ And I think that got us really excited,” Chapman Way said.

That led the creators to stories involving headline-grabbing central characters like Johnny Manziel, Manti Te’o, Tim Donaghy, Victor Conte, the AND1 shoe company, Jake Paul, Steve McNair, Connor Stalions and Brett Favre.

Globe trotting

When “Untold” started, the Way brothers wouldn’t have guessed that they’d be pushing 30 films — and they certainly wouldn’t have predicted the franchise would break into other markets. That includes a trio of soccer-related docs for the U.K. audience timed around the upcoming FIFA World Cup.

“Chap and I are kids from Southern California. We know what’s interesting to us, but it’s incredibly fun to partner with people from Britain or people from Australia or wherever we’re doing these things,” said Maclain Way. “It just feels fun to be able to tap into those expertise and kind of keep growing the format.”

On March 20, after months of deadlock, the WNBA and the Women’s National Basketball Players Association (WNBPA) reached a tentative collective-bargaining agreement through 2032. The deal introduces a first-in-its-kind revenue-sharing model in women’s professional sports and a $7 million 2026 salary cap with annual increases.

Beyond the economic headlines, the CBA marks a major shift in how the WNBA addresses pregnancy in the workplace. The agreement prohibits teams from trading pregnant players without their consent, safeguarding player autonomy at one of the most vulnerable points of their career. More than a baseline protection, this provision establishes structural guarantees, ensuring pregnant players can return to a stable and supportive workplace as parents.

WNBA’s CBA requires pregnant player consent for trades

Trades can upend an expectant player’s life, disrupting medical care, family support systems and postpartum recovery, while introducing stress that may contribute to adverse maternal outcomes. The new CBA gives players a decisive voice over whether such a significant move occurs during pregnancy. This builds on prior agreements: The league’s 2020 CBA guaranteed full salary during maternity leave and provided childcare stipends and family planning support, but lacked anti-retaliation provisions. By pairing benefits with enforceable safeguards, the new agreement affirms that athletes can assume parental responsibilities without jeopardizing their standing.

This concern is far from hypothetical. In 2024, Dearica Hamby sued her former team, the Las Vegas Aces, alleging she was traded in retaliation for announcing her pregnancy. In particular, Hamby alleged that the franchise disparaged her for “not taking precautions” to avoid her pregnancy, rescinded her benefits and traded her because she was pregnant. Although the case was dismissed in 2025, it highlighted how employers may penalize pregnant players in less overt ways.

National data underscores the issue: Roughly 250,000 women are denied pregnancy-related workplace accommodations each year, and more than one-third of pregnant workers do not request them, often due to fear of retaliation or lack of awareness. Thousands of pregnancy discrimination charges are filed annually with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), with claims often involving termination, denial of accommodations, or unfavorable changes in job duties.

The legal landscape of anti-retaliation parental protections

Protecting pregnant and parenting workers requires more than leave; it demands safeguards against retaliation throughout employment. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, as amended by the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978, prohibits discrimination based on pregnancy or related medical conditions and bars adverse actions such as termination, demotion or reassignment. It also requires that pregnant employees be treated the same as others “similar in their ability or inability to work.”

More recently, the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA) of 2023 requires reasonable accommodations for pregnancy-related limitations unless doing so would cause undue hardship. The law includes robust anti-retaliation provisions, preventing employers from denying opportunities or penalizing employees for requesting accommodations.

The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 (FMLA) provides up to 12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave for childbirth and related medical needs and prohibits retaliation for using that leave. It also guarantees reinstatement to the same or a “substantially equivalent” position, including comparable pay benefits and responsibilities, which prevents employers from quietly sidelining returning employees. Many states have enacted their own laws that expand on the federal FMLA, often providing paid leave or extending the duration beyond the federal minimum.

Growing expectations for parenting athletes

The WNBA’s latest CBA comes at a pivotal moment, as elite athletes increasingly reject the idea that parenting must derail their career. At the 2024 Paris Olympics, fencer Nada Hafez and archer Yaylagul Ramazanova competed while pregnant. That same year, the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) expanded parental leave, childcare support and return-to-play protections in its CBA.

Other leagues are following suit. FIFA’s international soccer regulations now guarantee paid maternity leave, prohibit contract termination due to pregnancy and protect return-to-play rights. The World Surf League (WSL) will launch a “Maternity Wildcard” in 2027, reserving a competition spot for athletes who miss qualifying due to pregnancy.

Together, these developments signal a cultural turning point: Women athletes are no longer expected to plan their families around their career but increasingly expect their careers to adapt to their families. Against this backdrop, the WNBA’s new pregnancy protections are not just progressive but practical, reflecting a reality in which parenthood is normalized and supported at the highest levels of sport.

Alison Hagani is a Tom Henderson Civil Rights Fellow at Sanford Heisler Sharp McKnight in the Washington, D.C., office of Sanford Heisler Sharp McKnight, a national civil rights and public interest law firm.

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