Spurs–Pelicans in Paris and Manchester: Why It's Worth It

The Spurs are going to Europe for real games in January 2027: Thursday, Jan. 14 at Accor Arena in Paris, then Sunday, Jan. 17 at Co-op Live in Manchester, both against the New Orleans Pelicans. Both games count in the standings, per the official FAQs for Paris and Manchester. This is no preseason goodwill tour.

Here’s where I stand, up front: of course it’s worth it, and international experience can do more to help the players.

This piece starts with what’s confirmed, then takes on a question a lot of fans are asking — why is it the Spurs again? The league’s announcements don’t say, so the clues have to come from the record. Then it’s back to the position up top: why the trip is worth it, and what it costs. Last comes the practical part: tickets, TV and, just as important, what hasn’t been announced yet.

The two games: what is actually confirmed

For fans back in Texas, Manchester is the friendlier slot of the two: a 9:30 a.m. Sunday tip in San Antonio, versus 1 p.m. on a Thursday, when most people are at work. Fans in Taiwan get the same break: 11:30 p.m. Sunday for Manchester versus 3 a.m. Friday for Paris.

Which team is the home team? The announcements don’t say. The NBA’s announcement only says the two clubs will play in both cities, and the Spurs’ own schedule page lists both games as “Neutral Site.” This piece follows that wording and does not assign home court to either team.

Why the Spurs? The announcements don’t say. The record offers clues.

Start with a fact that usually gets skipped: the cities came first, and the teams were matched to them later. The NBA announced on July 30, 2025, that it would play in Manchester and Paris in 2027, and said the participating teams would be named down the road. San Antonio and New Orleans weren’t named until May 20, 2026. In that release, George Aivazoglou, the NBA’s managing director for Europe and the Middle East, explained the choice of cities, not teams:

“Playing games in Paris and Manchester reflects the strong momentum we’re seeing for basketball and the NBA in France, the UK and across Europe,”

Neither release explains why the league picked these two teams. What the May release does include is the team’s own reason for being glad to go: Spurs CEO RC Buford called it an honor to return to France and play in England for the first time, “given the strong embrace we’ve felt from the community and fans across Europe.” That’s why the Spurs are happy to make the trip, not why the league picked them. So everything below is what the record shows, not a reason the league has given. That distinction matters here, and this site won’t blur it.

The Spurs have played in Europe more often than you think

The league has the exact count: these will be the Spurs’ 10th and 11th games in Europe, their sixth in France and their first in England. Here are the first nine, each checked against the official record:

• Two wins and a tournament title at the McDonald’s Championship in Milan, October 1999
• A game against the Memphis Grizzlies in Paris, October 2003
• ASVEL in Lyon-Villeurbanne on Oct. 5, 2006, then Maccabi Tel Aviv in Paris three days later
• Alba Berlin in Berlin, October 2014, then Fenerbahçe in Istanbul three days later
• Two games against the Indiana Pacers in Paris, January 2025

Of those nine, only the two 2025 games in Paris counted; the rest were preseason or tournament play. So these will be the Spurs’ third and fourth regular-season games in Europe. That’s this site’s tally from the list above; the NBA hasn’t framed it that way.

One more detail from the old box scores: the ASVEL club the Spurs faced in Lyon-Villeurbanne in 2006 is the same club Victor Wembanyama played for in 2021-22.

Now zoom in on Paris specifically. The NBA’s regular-season games there started with Bucks–Hornets in 2020, followed by Bulls–Pistons in 2023 and Nets–Cavaliers in 2024, then the Spurs’ two games against Indiana in 2025. Add the 2027 game and Paris will have hosted six NBA regular-season games, three of them with the Spurs — again, this site’s count.

Wembanyama: the numbers the NBA published itself

The league’s 2023-24 season review for Europe credits him by name: League Pass viewership of Spurs games in France jumped 177% in Wembanyama’s rookie season.

After the first Paris game in 2025, the NBA called it the most-watched regular-season NBA game ever on television in France. Wembanyama had 30 points, 11 rebounds and five blocks that night in a 140-110 rout.

Two caveats, though.

First, both games aired live on beIN SPORTS and Canal+, and NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said at a news conference in Paris before the first game that they would be on over-the-air television. Wider distribution likely helped set that record. It can’t all be credited to one player.

Second, Silver himself offered a candid line at his January 2026 news conference in Berlin:

“It obviously helps to have three German players on the Orlando Magic, but it seems regardless of which teams we’re bringing to London or Paris, and we announced we’re going to Manchester next year, that we see a convergence of the basketball community.”

A local star helps, but as Silver put it, the crowd seems to show up regardless. So the idea that the Spurs were picked for Wemby’s box-office pull is, at most, a reasonable inference. Neither NBA release says it.

The international pedigree: Silver’s word was “pioneer”

At that same January 2025 news conference in Paris, Silver went out of his way to mention San Antonio:

“they were a pioneer around the international game, as you all well know. They were scouting internationally in a deep way long before many other teams”

In an April 2024 release, the team counted more than 50 international players in franchise history, seven of them from France. But as this site laid out in the real story of the Spurs’ international scouting, the pipeline that kept turning up international draft steals had run dry before Wembanyama arrived — he came through the lottery. The pipeline broke. The reputation survived. And reputation is exactly what a game like this sells.

And the Pelicans?

The NBA’s release doesn’t explain that pick either. What we do have is New Orleans’ own reason for going. In the Pelicans’ announcement, owner Gayle Benson — who also owns the NFL’s Saints — tied the trip directly to her football team:

“Together with the Saints playing in Paris next season, the opportunity for the Pelicans to play internationally in Paris and Manchester represents another significant step in strengthening our organization’s cultural and economic ties in these regions.”

The Saints face the Pittsburgh Steelers at the Stade de France on Oct. 25, 2026, in the first NFL regular-season game ever played in Paris, and since 2023 they have been the only team holding the NFL’s international marketing rights in France. One owner, one city, two leagues, less than three months apart.

Why Manchester?

The NBA has been to Manchester before: on Oct. 8, 2013, Oklahoma City beat Philadelphia 103-99 in a preseason game at what was then the Phones 4u Arena. January’s game will be the city’s first NBA regular-season game. The venue, Co-op Live, opened in May 2024, advertises a capacity of 23,500 and bills itself as the U.K.’s largest indoor arena.

The bigger story is the backdrop. The NBA and FIBA are building a new European league, and Aivazoglou told Sky Sports in July 2026 that the league is particularly excited to bring “permanent, world-class basketball” to “marquee European cities like London and Manchester.” NBA.com reported in September 2026 that Silver said some version of that league would begin play in 2027. It’s hard not to read a regular-season game in Manchester as a test run for the market — but to be clear, that’s this site’s reading, not something the league has said.

Whatever the league’s reasons, the result is the same: a young Spurs core gets another shot at playing real games overseas. Whether that’s worth it is the next question.

Is it worth it? My take

Of course it’s worth it, and international experience can do more to help the players.

The commissioner’s own observation points the same way. At a news conference in Paris before the first 2025 game, Silver described what teams get out of these trips:

“Coming with that is a great bonding experience for them, as well, just the time they spend with each other here, the time away from home, I think, turns out to be very impactful, so our teams are really embracing these sort of trips”

And this is a young core on a team that has bet on growing from within: Stephon Castle was the 2024-25 Rookie of the Year and Dylan Harper was a 2026 Rising Star. Castle played in the first Paris game in 2025 and the second. Harper arrived as the No. 2 pick in the 2025 draft (this site has looked at how his second-year role should work), and De’Aaron Fox came over from Sacramento in a trade on Feb. 3, 2025. Neither made the last Paris trip. If both are on the roster and healthy in January, it will be the first time either of them plays in Europe with the Spurs.

A related data point comes from the last team to face the Spurs in Paris. Before the Paris games in January 2025, Pacers coach Rick Carlisle talked about an early-season schedule squeeze he said was probably due in large part to the trip:

“That’s challenging, but it hardens your resolve and makes you tougher. What do they say about pressure? It bursts pipes or it makes diamonds, and you hope that is the kind of thing where it can bring out the best in us.”

That Indiana team went all the way to the NBA Finals and lost to Oklahoma City in Game 7. Paris doesn’t get the credit for that; one trip proves nothing about cause and effect. But at the very least, it didn’t sink a team that went on to play for a title.

The experience isn’t only on the court, either. That week in 2025, Wembanyama’s calendar was jammed, and then-teammate Chris Paul described it this way:

“But it’s a lot of responsibility that comes with that. Every media outlet, every event, trying to see your family that you don’t get to see that often.”

Under that load he scored 30 in the first game and 20 in the second, and the Spurs split. Wembanyama’s own takeaway was about the other side of it: people kept finding ways to surprise him and show him he mattered to them, and he called that “priceless.”

The costs: what the trip takes

Worth it doesn’t mean free. There are three line items.

One: San Antonio likely gives up a home date. Under the Spurs’ non-relocation agreement with Bexar County, the team normally can’t play more than two of its 41 home games away from Frost Bank Center in a season, though commissioners have repeatedly amended that to three or four since 2022. In July 2026, they voted 4-0 to allow up to four in each of the next two seasons, one more than they had previously approved for 2026-27, and KSAT reported that only one of the two European games is likely to count as a Spurs home game. Which one, the announcements don’t say, and this piece won’t guess. Commissioner Tommy Calvert, who abstained, raised the concern that deserves raising — what the community gets back:

“When we’re talking about such sizable public investments, return and partnership have to be true partnership,”

Two: the schedule tightens. The Spurs play at Atlanta on Jan. 10, then get three days off before Paris, two more between the European games and two after Manchester, before they host Miami on Jan. 20. From that night through a road game against the Clippers on Feb. 2, they play eight games in 14 days, including two back-to-backs. Both teams play the same two games on the same dates, so jet lag favors nobody in these two games; the bill comes due in the games after the flight home.

Three: the last sample cuts both ways. In 2025 the Spurs won the first Paris game by 30, lost the second by 38, and dropped their first game back to the Clippers. One trip and two games prove nothing in either direction — not that the trip hurts a team, and not that it toughens one up.

What this site will be watching

• Whether the eight games in 14 days after the trip leave core players — Wembanyama above all — missing significant time with fatigue or injuries. If they do, the math here was too rosy.
• Whether the number of home games moved out of San Antonio keeps growing beyond these two seasons, and what the community gets back. That’s Calvert’s question, and it’s worth asking again.

The practical guide: tickets, TV and what’s still unannounced

Tickets: both games went to a ballot

• Public tickets for both games went through a ballot, essentially a random drawing: fans who were drawn got a purchase link and a single-use access code, good for up to four tickets per code. Paris went on sale at noon Paris time on Sept. 15, 2026, and Manchester at noon British time on Sept. 17; the Manchester FAQ notes that ballot entry has closed.
• Fans who weren’t drawn go on a waiting list and may be contacted if tickets are left after the winners buy theirs.
• Ticketmaster is the only official ticket agent, and resale runs only through Ticketmaster Official Resale. The official FAQ warns that tickets offered on other reseller sites “will be monitored and subject to cancellation.”
• If you’d rather skip the ballot, the league also sells NBA Experiences packages, which the official FAQ says don’t require entering it; check the site for current prices.

Prices: this site isn’t listing numbers. The Manchester FAQ says only that “Pricing details will be released during the ticket sale,” and the Ticketmaster UK page lists only the seats still available when you check, not a full price list. For Paris, too, go by the official ticketing channels. This site doesn’t quote resale-market prices.

TV

• United States: both games are on Prime Video.
• Europe: Prime Video’s European NBA schedule, published in full by Advanced Television, says the Paris and Manchester games will be shown live “exclusively on Prime this season,” though it doesn’t list territories country by country.
• U.K.: Prime Video already carried the NBA in the U.K. last season; the NBA London Game 2026 aired on Prime Video.
• France: the 2025 Paris games aired on beIN SPORTS and Canal+, and no France-specific announcement has said who carries these games there.
• Taiwan: ELTA holds NBA rights in Taiwan from 2026 through 2030, but whether these two games will air there has not been announced (ELTA’s NBA coverage runs on ELTA.tv and Chunghwa Telecom MOD).

Still unannounced as of Sept. 21, 2026

• Manchester’s full price list (this site didn’t find an official one)
• Fan events in either city. The NBA’s May 2026 release said only that there would be “interactive fan activities,” with details on surrounding events to “be announced at a later date.” The official event pages for Paris and Manchester don’t list any fan events yet.
• TV arrangements in France and Taiwan

The bottom line

From a preseason tournament in Milan in 1999 to Manchester’s first NBA regular-season game in 2027, the Spurs have built a long European track record. The league’s announcement doesn’t say why it chose San Antonio, but the record offers clues: the games already played there, the French players who came through, and a reputation Silver summed up in one word, “pioneer.”

So my answer holds: of course it’s worth it, and international experience can do more to help the players. As for this site, the thing to watch comes after the flight home: those eight games in 14 days.

Sources: NBA announcement — Pelicans and Spurs in Paris and Manchester, 2027, NBA announcement — 2026-27 schedule and broadcasts, NBA announcement — 2027 cities set first, NBA Paris Game official FAQ, NBA Manchester Game official FAQ, NBA Paris Game official event page, NBA Manchester Game official event page, Ticketmaster UK — Manchester game, NBA Experiences — Paris packages, timeanddate — Paris game time zones, timeanddate — Manchester game time zones, Spurs 2026-27 schedule, NBA.com international games list, 2006 (Wayback Machine), NBA.com — Spurs vs. ASVEL, 2006, NBA.com — Spurs vs. Maccabi, 2006, NBA.com — Spurs vs. Alba Berlin, 2014, NBA.com — Spurs vs. Fenerbahçe, 2014, NBA.com — 2025 Paris Game 1 box score, NBA.com — 2025 Paris Game 2 box score, Basketball-Reference — Clippers at Spurs, Jan. 29, 2025, NBA.com — 2020 Paris game, NBA.com — 2023 Paris game, NBA.com — 2024 Paris game, NBA.com — 2025 Paris Games preview, NBA — 2023-24 Europe season review, NBA — 2025 Paris Game 1 viewership, NBA — 2025 Paris Games records, ASAP Sports — Silver in Paris, 2025, ASAP Sports — Silver in Berlin, 2026, Spurs — 2025 Paris Games announcement, Basketball-Reference — Wembanyama international stats, Pelicans announcement, Saints — NFL Paris Game, NBA.com — 2013 Manchester preseason game, PR Newswire — Co-op Live’s first year, Sky Sports — Aivazoglou on NBA Europe, NBA.com — Silver after the September 2026 Board of Governors meeting, Basketball-Reference — Harper, Basketball-Reference — Fox, NBA.com — Carlisle on the Paris trip, NBA.com — 2025 Finals Game 7, NBA.com — Wembanyama reflects on Paris, KSAT — Bexar County approves more home games away, Advanced Television — Prime Video’s 2026-27 NBA schedule for Europe, NBA — 2026 Berlin and London games records, ELTA — NBA rights 2026-2030

If you spot an error, email contact@gogospurs.com. I will correct it and disclose the change.