Jason Levien, the American attorney and sports executive who has cycled through ownership stakes in the NBA, MLS and European football, is expected to become Maccabi Tel Aviv's representative on the EuroLeague board of directors, replacing longtime club figure Dani Federman, according to a report by ONE.
The switch is the latest consequence of a summer that has scrambled the top of Israeli basketball's ownership charts. The Recanati family, Maccabi's dominant shareholder, exercised its right of first refusal to buy out the entire stake held by the Federman family's holding company, Padenko Sport.
That deal, confirmed by the club, saw the Recanatis pay roughly $50 million for the Federman family's shares, lifting the family's total holding in Maccabi Tel Aviv to 58 percent, Ynet reported. Danny Federman, whose father David Federman had been a fixture in the club's boardroom for years, served as co-CEO alongside Eli Driks from 2011 and remained influential in Maccabi's management even after leaving that post.
With the Federmans out, their seat on the EuroLeague board — one of the more consequential positions in European club basketball, given the competition's control over scheduling, expansion and revenue distribution — appears to be passing to Levien, a 52-year-old attorney with law and public policy degrees from the University of Michigan.
Levien's path into sports ownership began on the other side of the table. He worked as a licensed NBA agent, and his best-known deal saw him negotiate a $71 million contract extension for Luol Deng with the Chicago Bulls.
He later joined an investor group that bought into the Philadelphia 76ers before moving into an executive chair himself, becoming CEO and managing partner of the Memphis Grizzlies in 2012. ESPN ranked the Grizzlies first in North America that period for front-office efficiency and fan experience.
In 2016, Levien and American partner Steve Kaplan led a takeover of roughly 68 percent of Welsh football club Swansea City. The ownership proved contentious: supporters and British media criticized the pair for treating the club more as a financial asset than a community institution, and Swansea slid into relegation to the Championship during their tenure. The partnership ended in late 2024.
Levien currently serves as co-chairman and CEO of MLS side D.C. United and chairs the Brisbane Bullets of Australia's NBL, giving him an active ownership footprint across three continents.
His connection to Israeli basketball runs deeper than a boardroom appointment would suggest. Early in his career as an agent, Levien represented Omri Casspi and Yotam Halperin, two of the first Israeli players taken in the NBA draft — a relationship that dates back roughly two decades.
Neither Maccabi Tel Aviv nor EuroLeague has formally announced the board change, and ONE frames Levien's appointment as expected rather than finalized. The move would nonetheless hand a experienced, if polarizing, figure in global sports ownership direct influence over decisions shaping the competition Maccabi has long treated as its top priority.
