NBA expansion appears to be on the horizon.
Earlier this month, news broke that the league would be discussing the possibility of adding two Western Conference teams during March’s Board of Governors meeting. On Wednesday the board met and officially voted in favor of the NBA formally exploring expansion.
“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,” Silver said in a statement announcing the outcome of the vote.
To be clear, the NBA has not approved expansion. Not yet. The league’s governors voted to allow the NBA to explore the possibility but an official vote on whether to actually expand to 32 teams will come later. However, this is a clear first step towards that end goal.
As part of the reporting around the news, ESPN’s Shams Charania revealed what the expected price point is for prospective buyers to come in and buy one of the two new expansion teams. It is significant.
“The NBA’s Board of Governors has approved a vote for the league to explore bids and applicants for expansion teams exclusively in Las Vegas and Seattle,” Charania posted on Wednesday. “A bidding process is expected to generate offers in the $7–10 billion range for each team.”
Quite a price tag. The Lakers sold at a $10 billion valuation as the most expensive team in NBA history; shortly before that the Celtics sold at a $6.1 billion valuation. So it’s not hard to see where the league came up with these numbers. It isn’t an exact comparison given there’s so much that goes into buying a brand-new team as opposed to purchasing an existing organization but there was never a doubt it would cost billions for a new party to buy their way into the NBA.
As noted above Seattle and Las Vegas would receive expansion franchises if the board approves expansion when the time comes. The fact that those make up two major media markets (and in the case of Seattle a fanbase extremely enthusiastic about the potential return of their NBA team) surely plays into the calculation of the cost.
NBA expansion timeline
In a follow-up tweet Charania gave a general overview of what the timeline could look like for expansion teams now that the NBA is officially exploring the process.
“Multiple high-ranking officials have termed expansion as ‘when, not if,’” Charania reported. “Now the NBA will examine Seattle and Las Vegas bids over the next several months, and whether to execute the new franchise purchases now or in a few years.”
When the franchise purchases occur will obviously play a big role in when expansion would occur. Previous reporting stated the league would discuss adding two new teams in time for the 2028–29 season. For all the pieces to be in place for a new team to begin play in 2028—from setting up an arena to building out the franchise infrastructure—a purchase would have to occur as soon as possible. Even from where we’re currently standing two years is not a long time to build two completely new NBA franchises from the ground up.
The league is undoubtedly aware of that and so it wouldn’t be a surprise to see the process get accelerated once expansion is officially approved. But for now the NBA is merely exploring its options.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as How Much NBA Expansion Teams Are Expected to Cost As League Explores Bids.
