Spurs fans planning to follow the team next year to France — the home of power forward Victor Wembanyama — could score front-row seats to NBA history and game-time perks to boot.
On Monday, the NBA announced it was expanding the Paris Games, a series of the NBA Global Games, to include two back-to-back matchups between the Spurs and the Indiana Pacers on Jan. 23 and 25.
The games will be a homecoming for Wembanyama, a rookie superstar selected by the Spurs with the top pick in the NBA draft in June 2023. His return heralds a revitalization of the annual event for French basketball fans.
In recent years, the level of play at the Paris Games was average and the tickets were expensive, said Théo Quintard, a French journalist covering Wembanyama and the San Antonio Spurs. With two matches scheduled and Wembanyama playing, the NBA can revitalize the Paris Games, he said.
Overseas NBA games date to 1978, when an exhibition match was played in Tel Aviv. The NBA hosted its first regular season games outside North America in 1990 with a two-game series between the Phoenix Suns and Utah Jazz in Tokyo. The NBA Global Games was created in 2013 and kicked off in Southeast Asia.
The Spurs participating in the 2025 Paris Games matter to more than just casual fans or even well-known French-American former basketball players who wore the Spurs jersey, point guard Tony Parker and power forward Boris Diaw.
It’s also something special for the 20-year-old player from France, he added.
“For Wemby, it’s really important to play in front of French fans [and] making it happen in his second year is a big achievement,” Quintard said. “He will be super excited. He is really attached to his French roots and giving back to the French public is very important.”
The five-time NBA champions, who play home games at the Frost Bank Center traveled to Paris in 2003 and 2006, but the upcoming games will be the first regular-season matchups for the Spurs in that city.
“Playing in Paris has been an incredible experience for our organization in the past and we are thrilled for the opportunity to be a part of The NBA Paris Games 2025,” said San Antonio Spurs CEO R.C. Buford.
NBA Experiences, which provides ticket and experience packages for the games, has released a set of “VIP experiences” for fans in Paris for the 2025 games.
Packages range in price from $350 per person for the Rookie level, which includes game tickets and a trophy photo opportunity, to $8,000 each for the Hall of Fame, which offers courtside seating and dinner with an NBA legend. In the past, such dinners featured retired players like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
Four other package levels are available: Legend, MVP, Playmaker and Sophomore.
The Spurs finished the 2023-24 regular season ranked 14th in the NBA Western Conference with 22 wins and 60 losses.
