16 Best Countries in Basketball

Published on February 9, 2023 at 7:06 pm by Ty Haqqi in Lists, News

In this article, we will be taking a look at the 16 best countries in basketball. To skip our detailed analysis, you can go directly to see the 5 best countries in basketball.

One of the most popular sports in the world, basketball is over a century old, which is relatively new compared to other popular sports such as football or tennis. However, the fast-paced nature of the sport combined with high scores and a high entertainment value has seen its audience grow across the world, but particularly in the U.S.

You might be forgiven for thinking that the National Basketball Association, or the NBA as it is more popularly known, is the oldest basketball organization in the world. After all, it was established almost 80 years ago and is the premier basketball league in the world. However, the first professional basket league was the National Basketball League established in 1898, and which lasted just 6 years.

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From relatively obscure beginnings, which led to the first professional basketball league disbanding in a few years, basketball is now a truly global sport with a following of hundreds of millions of people, while the NBA is among the richest professional sports leagues in the world. The major fan following, especially in the U.S., has attracted incredibly lucrative broadcasting deals, which has led to it becoming a huge source of revenue for various stakeholders, from teams and players to sponsors and broadcasters. In fact, from a business perspective, basketball provides various opportunities to generate revenue, including broadcasting rights, sponsorship deals, merchandise sales and ticket sales, which also then contribute to the economy of the best countries in basketball.

Some of the most valuable sports companies in the world are basketball teams, all of them in the NBA. This includes teams such as the Golden State Warriors and New York Knicks which combined are worth well over $10 billion, which is an astronomical figure for sports teams, and makes them more valuable than arguably more global football teams such as Real Madrid Football Club or Manchester United plc (NYSE:MANU), both of which have a huge global fanbase. Meanwhile, other teams such as the Los Angeles Lakers and Chicago Bulls are also each worth billions of dollars. These teams consistently sell out their home games which brings in higher revenue from ticket sales while the sport’s popularity has led to a creation of a luxury market in this respect, including luxury boxes and VIP seating.

Another important source of revenue for basketball is broadcast rights. As mentioned earlier, because of the sport’s appeal, basketball is highly sought after by broadcasters, who are willing to pay large amounts of money for the rights to air games. For example, the NBA has a multi-billion dollar broadcast deal with The Walt Disney Company’s (NYSE:DIS) ESPN and Warner Bros. Discovery, Inc.’s (NASDAQ:WBD) TNT, which allows the league to reach a wide audience. Meanwhile, sponsorship deals are also an important part in the business of basketball. Teams and players have partnerships with a range of companies, from sports apparel brands like NIKE, Inc. (NYSE:NKE) and Under Armour, Inc. (NYSE:UA) to fast food chains like McDonald’s Corporation (NYSE:MCD). These deals provide teams and players with additional revenue streams while merchandise sales are another important revenue generator for basketball. Teams and players have merchandise lines which earns sports teams additional millions in revenue.

Currently, Spain is the number one country in the world of basketball, topping the rankings by the International Basketball Federation (FIBA). This is primarily because Spain is the current World Champion and European champion, and knocked off the U.S. from the number one spot after an uninterrupted reign of 12 years! However, we don’t believe that Spain tops the list of the best countries in basketball. Yes, it may have won the World Cup when the competition was last hosted but that alone does not determine if the country is the best. When Greece won the football Euros in 2004, it was nowhere close to the level of other European footballing nations but luck, courage and determination allowed it to win all its games 1-0 in the knockout stages, after only qualifying from the group stage not on points or goal difference, but just number of goals scored. However, it is true that Spain has invested heavily in the country’s basketball infrastructure which has seen it rise to this level, and this could allow the nation to reap more benefits in the next several years.

That’s why, to determine the best countries in basketball, we decided to first determine the gold, silver and bronze medal winners in the Olympics and the World Cup in the sport of basketball. We then added all gold, silver and bronze medals for each country, before assigning 70% weightage to gold, 20% to silver and 10% to bronze, since a gold medal is by far the most important one. There aren’t many countries which have achieved significant success in basketball, so it was easier to finalize the list. For Russia, we added all achievements by Russia, Yugoslavia and Soviet Union. So now, let’s take a look at the giants of basketball, with a few standouts, starting with: