European basketball’s elite EuroLeague has officially announced that the 2025 edition of its showpiece season-ending Final Four will be hosted in Abu Dhabi, UAE, through a deal with the city’s Department of Culture and Tourism.
The deal, brokered by global sports and media heavyweight agency IMG, places the four-match slate at the city’s 12,000-capacity Etihad Arena across May 23-25, making it the first time the event has been staged outside of Europe since its 1966 inception.
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In the past, the Etihad Arena has hosted pre-season basketball contests from North America’s NBA, as well as exhibition games competed in by the national teams of the US, Serbia, and Australia.
Speaking on the deal, IMG senior vice president for sports management, Matt Dwyer, stated: “This game-changing deal is the largest in Euroleague Basketball’s history, expands the league’s global footprint, and creates exciting opportunities for continued growth.
“Abu Dhabi will provide a world-class Final Four experience for players, stakeholders, and EuroLeague fans, while introducing a whole new audience to the magic of European basketball.”
The 2024 Final Four was hosted in Berlin, Germany, and was preceded by Kaunas, Lithuania (2023), and Belgrade, Serbia (2022).
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By GlobalDataBelgrade, which also hosted the Final Four in 2018, was seen as the front-runner to host the 2025 edition until IMG, a long-term joint venture partner of the EuroLeague, reportedly intervened on behalf of Abu Dhabi with a far more lucrative offer, with the Emirate reportedly set to pay a record fee to the tune of €50 million ($52 million) for hosting rights.
That funding cache reportedly sees the EuroLeague’s joint venture with IMG now meet the funding goal requisite to extend the partnership beyond its initial 10-year span, a factor likely pivotal in Abu Dhabi’s successful bid. The tie-up was recently renewed until 2036.
The Abu Dhabi move was reported as far back as early December 2024, with only two of the 13 EuroLeague shareholder teams, Spain’s Real Madrid and Greece’s Olympiakos, allegedly voting against the plans while the remainder were in favor.
This isn’t the first attempted incursion into the Middle East for the EuoLeague, which hosted a qualifier for the youth-category Adidas NextGen Tournament in the country in the 2023-24 season.
In 2023, the EuroLeague toyed with the idea of having a member team from Dubai (Dubai BC) enter the 18-team league.
Although talks with Dubai BC were confirmed in January 2024, basketball’s lack of substantial popularity in the Middle East instead saw the team join southeastern Europe’s regional ABA League (in which a few EuroLeague teams also compete domestically).
Despite that, the reasoning behind the EuroLeague’s continued interest in the Middle East, the world’s richest region and a growing hub for sports investment at a time when many franchises are struggling for funding, is obvious, and it was only a matter of time before a tangible link was confirmed.
