XTB has signed on as a Global Partner of FIBA, the international governing body for basketball, in a deal that runs through December 2027 and makes the Polish investment app a sponsor of the sport's two flagship world championships, the company and FIBA said today (Thursday).
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XTB Joins FIBA as Global Partner Through 2027
The agreement covers the FIBA Women's Basketball World Cup 2026 and the FIBA Basketball World Cup 2027, along with the worldwide qualifying rounds for the men's tournament.
XTB will become the presenting sponsor of the European Qualifiers starting with the third window, scheduled for June 29 to July 7, 2026. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
"Partnering with FIBA allows us to connect financial empowerment with one of the world's most beloved sports,” Omar Arnaout, Chief Executive Officer at XTB, said in the announcement. “Together, we'll be giving fans the tools to put their money to work while celebrating the game they love."
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Under the terms set out by FIBA, XTB will use the qualifiers and the two World Cups to push its brand in front of basketball audiences and run what the governing body described as exclusive fan experiences, including behind-the-scenes access and the chance to step onto the official courts in Berlin and Doha. The 2026 women's tournament is scheduled for Berlin and the 2027 men's event will be held in Doha.
Broker Basketball Sponsorships Heat Up
The FIBA deal lands during a period of unusually heavy investment by trading brands in basketball rights, after years in which football absorbed most of the category's sponsorship budgets.
The NBA alone ended its 2024-25 season with 51 marketing partners, including seven new deals, and several of those new partners came from the CFD, fintech, and crypto exchange world.
Dubai-based STARTRADER became an official NBA partner in January 2026, with the deal covering arena signage, broadcast placements, and social impact programs through the 2025-26 season. That agreement followed TMGM's multi-year tie-up with the Brooklyn Nets announced in July 2025, covering courtside and digital signage at Barclays Center.
Robinhood remains one of the most aggressive brokers in the space, holding NBA jersey patch deals with the Washington Wizards, Memphis Grizzlies, and Miami Heat, the first of which was signed in October 2023. Proprietary trading firm Hola Prime signed five-time All-Star Karl-Anthony Towns as its first sports ambassador in May 2025.
Crypto exchanges have made similar moves. Coinbase signed a multi-year deal with the Los Angeles Clippers in November 2024, extending an earlier sponsorship of the Golden State Warriors and the NBA itself.
Older deals include Plus500's jersey partnership with the Chicago Bulls, signed when the London-listed broker was pushing into the US market, and CFI's sponsorship of Jordan's national basketball team, part of a broader industry drift away from football-only strategies.
XTB Sports Portfolio Now Spans Six Disciplines
Basketball joins a roster of XTB sports deals built primarily since 2022. The broker added former UFC champion Conor McGregor as an ambassador in September 2022, followed by Spanish goalkeeper Iker Casillas in early 2023 and Swedish striker Zlatan Ibrahimović as global ambassador in 2024, coinciding with the firm's 20th anniversary and a refreshed logo.
The company has since moved into tournament-level sponsorships. In late 2025 it signed a partnership with OKTAGON, adding to its title sponsorship of Polish MMA promotion KSW, a combination that XTB has described as the largest combined MMA sponsorship footprint in Europe.
In tennis, the broker sponsored 10 players at Roland Garros in June 2025 in its first move into Grand Slam events. Other deals include McLaren in Formula 1, heavyweight boxer Tyson Fury, the UAE Boxing Federation, Poland's Drifting Championships, and Portugal's Final Four Cup.
Frank Leenders, FIBA's Director General of Media and Marketing Services, said the governing body was "delighted to welcome XTB as a Global Partner" and added that the broker's presence at the events "will help to drive a strong connection with their global brand."
Leenders framed the basketball tie-up in similar terms to XTB's other sports messaging, saying the broker recognizes that "basketball inspires passion, strategy, and resilience - the same qualities they have identified as driving smart investing."
Marketing Budget Has Nearly Doubled
The FIBA deal comes on the back of a sharp acceleration in XTB's overall marketing spend. The broker's marketing bill climbed by close to 70% in 2025 to PLN 584.9 million (about $143 million), an increase of PLN 240 million year-on-year. Management has told investors that the 2026 marketing budget could rise another 40% to 50%, according to comments from Arnaout cited by Polish analysts.
That spending has driven a sharp expansion in the client base. XTB added 864,000 accounts during 2025, a 73% jump that pushed the total past 2.16 million by year-end. Arnaout has told Polish daily Parkiet that reaching two million new accounts per year is "completely realistic" within a few years. Client assets held at XTB reached about 10.8 billion euros at the end of 2025.
The basketball agreement will run through a period in which XTB expects to roll out many of those new products and compete directly for retail clients against international platforms including Interactive Brokers, Robinhood, and Trade Republic, all of which have stepped up their European presence over the past 18 months.
