Would you pay as much for an expansion NBA team in Las Vegas as was just paid for the Los Angeles Lakers?
Apparently someone is going to, according to a new report from Shams Charania of ESPN, and the NBA is going to pick that owner in the “very near future.”
The NBA is expected to select the winning bid for owner of the Las Vegas expansion team in the very near future, with a price of at least $12-13 billion for the franchise and new arena among three finalist groups — Nancy Walton Laurie and Bill Laurie; Steve Apostolopoulos and Marc Lasry; Bill Foley and Jerry Colangelo, sources told ESPN.
Quick note: Charania’s phrasing suggests — or at least leaves open the possibility — of a $10 billion expansion fee to the league plus a $2-3 billion new arena. While Las Vegas does have the T-Mobile Arena just off the Strip — home to the WNBA’s Aces, the NHL’s Golden Knights, and host to the final rounds of the NBA Cup the past two years — Silver said earlier this month, “it needs some significant improvements” before an NBA team could call it home. With NBA ownership more of a real estate investment now (just ask Mark Cuban), it seems likely the new owners would want to build the arena as an anchor for a new hotel/casino/resort complex (maybe with shopping and condos/apartments) rather than rent an existing building.
The three potential owners detailed by ESPN are:
• Bill Foley and Jerry Colangelo. Foley owns the NHL’s Knights, and he teamed up with Colangelo, the former owner of the Phoenix Suns. Colangelo jumped into the process relatively late (July), and while Foley has ties to the T-Mobile Arena, the plan is to build a new one. This ownership group also includes former NBA players Vinny Del Negro and Jay Williams, former Turner Sports president David Levy, and Scott Colangelo, a managing partner at Prime Capital Financial.
• Bill Laurie may be familiar to sports fans as the former owner of the NHL’s St. Louis Blues. His wife, Nancy Walton Laurie, is the daughter of Walmart co-founder James “Bud” Walton. They live in the Las Vegas area and are worth about $17 billion.
• Marc Lasry is the former co-owner of the Milwaukee Bucks, who sold his share of that team but is looking to get back in the game. He is partnered with Apostolopoulos, a Canadian billionaire.
It’s been reported for some time that the NBA would move forward in picking the Las Vegas bid first, then focus on Seattle. That’s because Seattle is pretty straightforward. There is a trusted bidder — Samantha Holloway, who also owns the NHL’s Seattle Kraken — who also is the majority owner of an NBA-ready venue in the Climate Pledge Arena, where the team would play. Recently, a second bidder — BlackSun Private Equity partnering with the Tulalip Tribes — made a splash announcing their interest, with plans to build a new arena about 35 miles outside the city. It’s too early to say if they are considered serious bidders, or if one of the losers of the Las Vegas bid decides to jump into the Seattle mix.
The Seattle team also is expected to go for several billion dollars less than Las Vegas. The NBA has been vetting all the potential owners for both locations since about March.
Silver said after the recent Board of Governors meeting that both ownership groups are expected to receive formal approval before the end of the year. It sounds like we will find out the Las Vegas winners soon.
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