Basketball Africa League (BAL) president Amadou Gallo Fall has said that contrary to a Semafor report, the league is not yet switching to a franchise model.
Citing investors and executives who spoke to them on condition of anonymity, Semafor reported that the league - which is currently run by the NBA Africa in partnership with FIBA - was actively seeking financial backers to move to a franchise model.
Their article claimed the BAL was hoping to have its initial set of franchises ready by the end of 2025.
When asked about it by ESPN at the BAL 2025 opening week in Morocco, Fall stopped short of confirming or denying that the league could switch to a franchise model at some point in the future. However, he said that the change was not presently imminent.
Fall said: "There's no question that we remain very focused on continuing to build the Basketball Africa League... We are committed to establishing this league into one of the best professional basketball leagues for years to come.
"We are constantly looking at ways to improve, but there is no decision to change the format currently. We want to focus on continuing to improve.
"Obviously, the article you [ESPN] talk about is not from us, but we remain focused on continuing to build our league in partnership with FIBA."
He stressed the importance of a league that focuses on developing African talent first and foremost rather than simply measuring itself against the NBA's business operations in the US.
"We are part of the NBA ecosystem. We want to make sure that in Africa, we offer an opportunity for talent - the immense amount of talent that exists from Africa in the diaspora - to come and play basketball here at the highest level. In the process, we want to build an industry around our game," Fall said.
If the BAL moved to a franchise model, teams would be brought under the league's control in a more similar model to what exists in the NBA. Currently, the league does not own its teams. An upside of the existing model is that it allows continuity for Africa's pre-existing sporting powerhouses.
An example would be current champions Petro de Luanda - one of many smoothly-run clubs in Africa that was already functioning well across multiple sports before the NBA's involvement in Africa.
However, the financial challenges at some smaller clubs in the league have proven to be a challenge for the league's governance. Moving to a franchise model would allow more control, but the BAL believes the existing model - now in its fifth season - has been a roaring success overall.
The BAL claims that since 2021, it has contributed more than $250 million to Africa's GDP, an impact which it says is projected to grow to $5.4 billion by 2034.
The league is also bullish about its job creation prospects. The league claims to have created nearly 37,000 jobs linked to hosting BAL games in its first four seasons and believes it is on course to increase that figure to 650,000 in the next decade.
NBA Academy Africa graduates and former BAL players Khaman Maluach (Duke) and Rueben Chinyelu (Florida) were in action in the final four of the Men's NCAA Division I Basketball Tournament, with Chinyelu's Gators clinching the championship.
The Toronto Raptors' Ulrich Chomche last year became the first former academy graduate and former BAL player drafted in the NBA. With the green shoots of the league's groundwork in Africa beginning to show, all indications are that more will soon follow.