Zalgiris unveils €28.8m budget: Kaunas bets on its veterans

The budget sheet was four pages long, resting on the second-floor meeting table at Žalgirio Arena, its edge still marked by staple holes. The first line read 28,800,000 euros, before taxes. Right beneath it sat the item that made me read three times: 19,700,000 euros allocated to player and staff salaries. Last season that same line was 14,500,000 euros.

I have sat in that room before. Summer in Kaunas usually feels the same: weak coffee, a coach giving short answers, an executive talking about stability. This time the paper told a different story. An extra 5.2 million euros in payroll is a 36 percent jump in a single season. In Europe, where EuroLeague clubs must secure a licence year after year just to enter, that kind of leap is not routine.

Then my eyes reached the bottom line. Projected revenue before the postseason was 26,800,000 euros. The budget spends 28,800,000. A two-million-euro gap sits there quietly, waiting to be filled.

Context: a small club in Europe playing a large hand

Zalgiris Kaunas are the champions of Lithuania. That gives them legal and sporting ground to enter the new season as domestic title holders and as one of the permanent Baltic representatives in the EuroLeague.

Last season Zalgiris finished fifth in the EuroLeague regular season. They reached the playoffs, then lost to Fenerbahce Beko. A good season, not a championship-level one. The distance between fifth place and the Final Four is not about spirit. It is about bench depth, about the quality of the eighth and ninth men, about surviving a schedule that runs from October to April.

European basketball operates on different rules from the NBA. In the United States, a hard cap, a luxury tax and a web of contract exceptions turn every roster decision into a spreadsheet calculation. In the EuroLeague there is no such cap. What binds clubs is licensing and financial sustainability. To be admitted, a club must show revenue streams, prove there are no overdue payments to players, and demonstrate that the following season's budget will not collapse against the previous one.

So when Zalgiris published a budget of 28.8 million euros before taxes for 2026–27, that sheet carried two roles at once: a sporting plan and a legal filing. It told EuroLeague officials that Kaunas can pay. It told supporters that the club will not sell its core. It told the players that pressure is about to rise.

Against last season, actual expenses were 24.8 million euros. The new budget is 16.1 percent higher. Actual revenue last season reached 24.0 million euros. The projection for the coming season is 26.8 million, an 11.7 percent increase. Every percentage is positive. Every number looks safe. Until you subtract.

Core: five decisions hidden inside four pages

The first decision is the payroll. The step from 14.5 million to 19.7 million euros for players and staff is a 36 percent rise. In European basketball, wages do not jump like that unless a club decides to keep people. An extension for a core player, a new deal for someone who proved his value, a performance bonus folded into a fixed structure — add them together and you get 5.2 million euros.

The second decision is the ratio. Salaries take 68.4 percent of the total budget. That number describes a model: this club puts nearly all of its resources into the people on the floor. The remainder covers travel, medical staff, facilities, the academy and administration. A player-centric model pleases supporters, but it leaves almost no buffer. A long-term injury, an outbreak, a cancelled night flight — all of it has to come from the same pot.

The third decision is revenue. The 26.8 million euro figure before the postseason is higher than last season's actual 24.0 million. Management is betting on tickets, broadcast rights and sponsorship. But the phrase before the postseason makes one thing clear: that total excludes playoff gate income and performance bonuses. In other words, the plan assumes the team goes deep in Europe.

The fourth decision sits in the words before taxes. In Lithuania, as across much of Europe, income tax and social contributions take a significant share of any payroll. When a club announces a pre-tax budget, it is telling the market how much it has in total, not how much a player takes home. It is the smallest detail on the sheet and the one most often misread.

The fifth decision is about names. Jonas Valanciunas and Edgaras Ulanovas are described by the front office as the veterans who lead on the floor. Those are two very different professionals. Valanciunas is a centre who plays through size, position, rebounding and finishes near the rim. He lives on space inside the paint. Ulanovas is a wing whose contribution rarely shows fully in the box score: correct defensive positioning, ball security, reading the game, controlling tempo.

Placing those two names inside a budget announcement is a tactical signal, even if an indirect one. The team will keep playing half-court basketball built on height, experience and tempo control. Nothing suggests Kaunas is preparing a stylistic revolution.

Head coach Tomas Masiulis remains in place. System continuity is an asset in a league where coaches are sacked mid-season. But continuity also means the ceiling is known. If the team finished fifth and lost in the playoffs, another season with the same core, the same philosophy and more money only matters if the money fixes a specific weakness.

Where is that weakness? I followed their playoff run. The problem was not the first quarter. It was the fourth, when the pace rises and every substitution is punished. The team lacks a player who can create a basket in a late-game set, and lacks a defender quick enough to chase opposing scoring wings. Fenerbahce attacked exactly that gap.

So where do the extra 5.2 million euros go? Three possibilities. First, keeping the same core at higher wages. Second, adding one or two quality players on the wing and at the ball-handling spot. Third, widening the bench with players who can be rotated more often. Of those three, only the second and third change the final result.

In the EuroLeague, money does not buy a title directly, but it buys depth. A team with eight quality players instead of six wins three or four extra games across a season. In a long regular season, those three or four games are the difference between fifth place and a direct route into the next round with home advantage.

I have spoken with European scouts about how they price rosters. In Istanbul or Madrid, a 28.8 million euro budget is average. In Kaunas, it is the highest in club history, or close to it. That gap does not vanish because of a press release. It only means Kaunas has bought itself the right to be spoken of a little more as an equal.

Contrarian: the blind spot of an ambitious budget

One line in the club's statement stopped me longest: the team has the backing to compete with the strongest clubs in the EuroLeague. That is a statement of intent. It is not a verified fact.

Zalgiris published its own budget. The clubs above them in the standings published nothing. And several of those clubs almost certainly still spend more than 28.8 million euros, sometimes half again as much. When you spend more while rivals stand still, you close a gap. When you spend more while rivals also spend more, you are simply running on a longer treadmill.

That is the first blind spot: a growth number presented as a turning point when it is only a relative step.

The second blind spot is age. A core built on experience cuts both ways. The good side is composure in tight games. The bad side is durability. A centre who plays through size holds the heaviest load in modern basketball: constant contact, lateral movement defending the pick-and-roll, hundreds of rebounding jumps per season. Past thirty, the body does not recover the way it used to.

If Valanciunas misses three weeks in December, how many games does Zalgiris lose? The answer depends on how the 19.7 million euros were distributed. If most of it is locked into four or five large contracts, the club has no room to react. A large payroll is not automatically a flexible one.

The third blind spot is the two-million-euro gap. The 26.8 million revenue plan excludes the playoffs. But the 28.8 million in spending must be paid regardless of how far the team goes. Wages are monthly. Flights are per ticket. If the team exits early, the two-million gap has to be covered by sponsorship, by next season's ticket sales, or by selling a player.

In European basketball, selling a player mid-cycle is the most common way to balance the books. And the player sold is usually the young one, the one with transfer value, the one who has not yet collected most of the payroll. Here is the paradox: a budget raised to keep aging veterans can end up being balanced by selling the future.

The fourth blind spot is the two-front problem. Zalgiris must defend the domestic LKL title and go deep in the EuroLeague. Both consume the same resource. European clubs usually pick a priority in mid-season, when bodies begin to fade. With the new budget, management wants both. The ambition is legitimate. But fitness cannot be bought with euros.

Takeaway

The empty summer of 2026 — the whole world slept while I read the fine print. That experience taught me that in any financial plan, the most important part is always the line that is not bolded. For Zalgiris, that line is the two-million-euro gap and the structure of the 19.7 million euro payroll.

Three indicators to watch. One, the length of Valanciunas's contract: one year or three will tell us whether the club is playing for now or for a cycle. Two, the partnership deals announced in September and October, as the season begins: those are the plug for the gap. Three, the roster moves in January, the moment when European clubs must decide whether to keep or release.

Basketball does not live on the hardwood. It lives between two signatures. Zalgiris has signed the first time with its budget sheet. The second signature will happen in some corridor, in a month nobody expects.

The question left for the season: did Kaunas just buy exactly what it needed, or did it buy a set of expectations its current core cannot repay?