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The NBA is officially putting domestic expansion in its owners’ hands.
On Monday, ESPN reported that the league will hold a vote during next week’s Board of Governors meeting in New York to explore adding expansion teams in Las Vegas and Seattle. The NBA is reportedly targeting the 2028-29 season for the debuts of the potential new franchises.
NBA commissioner Adam Silver has been discussing expansion for more than half a decade, but his stance has fluctuated over the years. In December, Silver said at the NBA Cup—which is held in Las Vegas—that the league would make a definitive decision on expansion this year.
Expansion bids for both teams could reach $7–$10 billion, with the money divided among the league’s 30 owners, potentially netting each team more than $300 million. Seattle Kraken owner Samantha Holloway, the daughter of late billionaire David Bonderman, has long said she will lead an expansion bid in the Emerald City if the league moves forward.
Next week’s vote is the first step in a process that will allow the league to focus on Las Vegas and Seattle and begin soliciting expansion bids. Should the first vote pass, there would be a second one later in the year to finalize expansion to 32 teams. Both votes would require 23 of the league’s 30 governors to approve in order to pass.
ESPN reported that the majority of owners are in favor of expansion, which hasn’t always been the case. Silver first touted expansion during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the NBA was losing hundreds of millions of dollars due to fans’ inability to attend games in person. But the logistics of launching an expansion process during a pandemic came with its own set of challenges.
Over the years, Silver has also cited the league’s “broken model” with its regional sports networks, rising team valuations, and owners splitting revenues with two more partners as reasons for its hold-up.
“As I’ve said before, domestic expansion … is selling equity in this current league,” Silver said in December. “If you own 1/30 of this league, now you own 1/32 if you add two teams. So it’s a much more difficult economic analysis. In many ways, it requires predicting the future.”
Las Vegas and Seattle are the two most recent markets the NHL expanded to, in 2017 and 2021, respectively. While Las Vegas has never had an NBA team, it has been the league’s longtime home for Summer League since 2004, and has hosted the 2007 All-Star Game, and the finals of the NBA Cup since 2023. Seattle had the Supersonics from 1967 to 2008, before the team relocated to Oklahoma City and rebranded as the Thunder after being purchased by Clay Bennett. As part of his settlement with the city to move the team, Bennett agreed to keep all Sonics banners and memorabilia in Seattle, along with the team’s name, in case the city ever got another NBA team.
The NBA hasn’t expanded since 2004, when it added the Charlotte Bobcats, now the Hornets, as its 30th team.
Domestic expansion isn’t the only project on Silver’s radar this year. The NBA is also exploring a prospective league in Europe, which it plans to launch as early as 2027, and is expected to sell franchises in its 12-team Basketball Africa League during this year, too.
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