As was expected, on Wednesday the NBA’s Board of Governors — made up of the 30 league owners — voted to explore expansion, specifically in Seattle and Las Vegas.
This means the league will take the next step of surveying interested bidding groups for two cities. Those discussions will include the franchise fee to buy the team — expected to be at least $7 million per team — and details such as where the team would play in the city. There would be other votes needed down the line to formally expand the NBA to 32 teams, but the fact that at least 23 of the current 30 owners voted for this step means expansion is very likely coming to the league before the end of the decade.
“Today’s vote reflects our Board’s interest in exploring potential expansion to Las Vegas and Seattle — two markets with a long history of support for NBA basketball,” NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said in a statement announcing the vote. “We look forward to taking this next step and engaging with interested parties.”
The hope is that both franchises could start playing in the 2028-29 season, a fairly tight timetable.
While expansion talk has been floating around league circles for at least a decade, Silver wanted a new CBA with the players and a new television deal in place before seriously exploring the matter. Those things done, and with the rapidly rising value of franchises driving up the expansion fee, it has finally reached the point where the majority of owners think it is time for expansion.
Seattle and Las Vegas have been the frontrunners for NBA expansion for a while now.
Putting a team in Seattle rights an old wrong. Seattle had a thriving franchise and fan base in the Sonics, but a fight over arena renovations led to the team’s sale to an ownership group looking to move the team to Oklahoma City, which led to the team’s relocation and the formation of the Thunder. It was unfair to the loyal fans of Seattle — who didn’t want their tax dollars to fund an arena for a billionaire owner — and that remains a massive television market the league has not touched.
“Seattle is ready to welcome the Sonics home,” Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson said in a statement released this week in advance of the vote. “We never stopped being a basketball city, and the fans have never given up. You see it in our parks, in our schools, in packed gyms in every neighborhood, and in our Seattle Storm championships. We built a world-class arena. We have a strong economy and a dedicated workforce. We are prepared, we are united, and we are ready for the next chapter of our Sonics.”
While there will be multiple bidders in Seattle, Samantha Holloway — owner of the NHL’s Kraken — has let it be known she is interested. Whoever the new owners are, they will take over the old SuperSonics name, logo and image.
Las Vegas and the NBA have a strong relationship, it’s where the NBA Summer League goes every year, and where the NBA Cup semi-finals and finals are conducted. Las Vegas also has become a pro sports city with a championship and well-backed team in the WNBA’s Aces, a thriving NHL team in the Golden Knights, the NFL’s Raiders, and construction of a baseball stadium for the Athletics is underway.
“I think Seattle and Las Vegas are two incredible cities,” Silver said last December. “Obviously, we had a team in Seattle that had great success. We have a WNBA team here in Las Vegas, the Aces. We’ve been playing the summer league here for 20 years. We’re playing our Cup games here, so we’re very familiar with this market. I don’t have any doubt that Las Vegas, despite all of the other major league teams that are here now, the other entertainment properties, that this city could support an NBA team.”
Both cities also have arenas that an NBA team could step into now. In Seattle, the team will play at the renovated Climate Pledge Arena (formerly the Key Arena), home to the NHL’s Kraken. In Las Vegas, the team very likely will play at the T-Mobile Arena, already home to the Aces and Golden Knights. While there has been talk of the new owners (whoever it ends up being) building a new arena further down the Las Vegas strip, an arena that would anchor a new resort and casino, the current economics of visitors to Las Vegas may mean that project is off the table, at least in the short term.
The last time the NBA expanded was 2004, when the Charlotte Bobcats joined the league.
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