ULEB was founded in 1991 from the Italian, Spanish and French leagues in an attempt to promote theirs clubs financial interests within the FIBA competitions.
The union was celebrated with the ULEB All-Star Game, held annually for three seasons, featuring stars from the three leagues and also NBA guests like Charles Barkley, Scottie Pippen and Michael Jordan.
The new competition was financially backed by Telefonica, a Spanish multinational telecommunications company which offered 35 million dollars per season for the next 4 years (2000-2004).
The 2000 split had as a result the cancellation of the very successful FIBA All-Star Game in the 2000-01 season as many of the best players (Dejan Bodiroga, Manu Ginobili, Alphonso Ford) were playing in EuroLeague.
In February 2001, delegation from the both sides met with an aim to unify the competitions as it was clear that European basketball could not financially handle two top tournaments.
Eduardo Portella and Jordi Bertomeu from ULEB and Borislav Stanković, Patrick Baumann, Giorgos Vassilakopoulos and Shimon Mizrahi from FIBA.
[5] Euroleague teams like Panathinaikos and Unicaja Malaga seemed close to chose the FIBA Champions Cup, but they decided to stay and strengthen ULEB's position.
At the time EuroLeague seemed to owe money to its clubs and the new FIBA project was presented appealing as the teams would be free to negotiate their broadcasting rights.
While top teams like Panathinaikos and Olympiacos BC seemed to be tempted, at the end only a total of 11 champions and runners-up joined the FIBA Europe League.
[11] They also tried to take the helm by convincing eight of the eleven teams with a EuroLeague A-licence to play in a new FIBA competition, Basketball Champions League.
[16] In its press release, the EuroLeague announced a new competition format for the 2016–17 season, identical to the one proposed by FIBA, with only 16 teams including the eleven A-license clubs (Anadolu Efes, Baskonia, CSKA Moscow, FC Barcelona, Fenerbahçe, Maccabi Tel Aviv, Olimpia Milano, Olympiacos, Panathinaikos, Real Madrid, and Žalgiris), playing in only one group with a double round-robin, with the top eight playing in a best-of-five playoffs round to decide qualification to the 2017 EuroLeague Final Four.
Georgios Nikolaou, director of communications of AEK Athens, after its defeat against PAOK, in the first game of the Greek League quarterfinals, stated that his club, "will not be blackmailed by anyone, and doesn’t get any kind of messages by anyone".
[26] Šarūnas Jasikevičius, head coach of Lithuanian team BC Žalgiris, argued that "playing in a FIBA tournament means taking a 20-year step back".
The ACB answered stating that it cannot impede clubs from joining their tournaments, and that the possible suspension of the Spanish national team was not its fault.
[29] On 13 May, the Supreme Council for Sports of Spain unilaterally cancelled the agreement between the ACB and EuroLeague, with the aim to avoid the suspension to the men's national team.
[39] In response, Maccabi Tel Aviv, one of the teams with EuroLeague A-license, announced that they would possibly also refuse to register to the Premier League.
[46] On 19 August, FIBA announced the expansion of its Basketball Champions League to 40 teams in the regular season, after allowing AEK Athens, Partizan and Stelmet Zielona Góra to play in it.
[48] In November 2016, FIBA sent new letters to the national federations of Slovenia, Montenegro and North Macedonia, asking them to take measures against clubs which compete in EuroCup.
[58] Days later, Turkish Basketball Federation made the same statement,[59] and French club ASVEL Basket, chaired by NBA player Tony Parker, confirmed it will join EuroCup.
[60] On 26 June 2017, the Luxembourg Commercial Court issued a favorable ruling for FIBA Europe amidst the long standing dispute with EuroLeague Basketball.
EuroLeague Properties was called to pay the sum of €900.000 to FIBA Europe, plus an additional fee of €1,500 and take care of all the costs by trial procedures.
The alleged anti-competitive behaviour includes EuroLeague granting 10-year licences to the 11 shareholder clubs without any transparent award process and reducing the number of available slots in the competition to just 18 from 24".