The Roca Team has been granted a further reprieve in its fight to remain in France’s top professional basketball division, with the French Basketball Federation’s appeals chamber deferring its ruling on the club’s case until Monday, July 27, following a hearing in Paris on Monday, July 20.
The reprieve gives the reigning triple French champions an additional week to gather supplementary documents required to confirm the viability of its proposed takeover, according to Me Le Cerf, the lawyer representing the club. Monaco had appealed a July 3 ruling by the DNCCG, French basketball’s financial oversight body, which had blocked the club from competing professionally in the 2026-2027 season.
According to Nice-Matin, the DNCCG had earlier deemed insufficient the financial backing offered by a group of investors known as Helen Holdings, led by former NBA player Jamal Mashburn, whose proposed investment stood at around ten million euros. The outlet also reports that a court-appointed administrator calculated the club’s debts at 24 million euros at the end of June, an eight-million-euro shortfall on top of a further 16 million euros already advanced by the Société Nationale de Financement (SNF), which has pushed back its own repayment deadline to July 30 to give Monaco’s leadership more room to finalise a rescue deal. Nice-Matin further reports that the club settled its situation with its largest creditor, sports agency BeoBasket, last week.
Le Cerf described the additional week as a positive signal, telling reporters that the club was not being left with only a day or two to turn things around, and said he remained confident the takeover documentation could be finalised by the July 27 deadline.
According to Le Cerf’s account, reported by Nice-Matin, the outcome effectively rests on two scenarios: should the takeover be validated by the Federation, the club’s separate hearing before Monaco’s court on Friday, July 31 would become a formality, since the court could not then declare the company insolvent. Should the takeover fail to materialise, the commercial entity would cease to exist, though the sporting association itself would continue, dropping instead into France’s lower divisions.
Nice-Matin also reports that the Monegasque government has signalled its willingness to act decisively to help finalise the deal with Helen Holdings, citing the Principality’s decision to fund the immediate settlement of 1.5 million euros in outstanding obligations owed to the LNB and its licensed agents as evidence of that commitment.
The uncertainty comes just weeks after Monaco completed an unprecedented clean sweep domestically, claiming the SuperCoupe, the Leaders Cup, the Coupe de France and the French championship in the same season, a period of celebration now overshadowed by serious questions over the club’s financial footing and its participation in next season’s competition.