The NBA expansion train has been picking up steam for years and Adam Silver’s latest comments make it sound almost inevitable.
In promoting (and taking an early victory lap for) the In-Season Tournament, Silver appeared Tuesday on SiriusXM NBA Radio with hosts Justine Termine and Eddie Johnson, and was asked about expansion, specifically to Las Vegas and Seattle. Silver’s response was the most definitive sign that expansion is coming.
“What we said, over the last few years, there are two things that we wanted to see happen first before we turned to expansion,” Silver said. “One was we wanted to get a new collective bargaining agreement done. We did that, and we have now labor peace and I think a very strong agreement for both the teams and the players in place till 2030. The other thing we said we wanted to get done is our new media deals. And our current national deals with ABC, ESPN and then TNT go through the end of next season. And the reason we wanted to get those deals done, no secret, is we want to have a better understanding of what the economics would be going forward...
“So, you know, we’ll see what the timing is on those national television agreements. You know, we don’t have to wait till the end of the second season to get those done, but once we do, we’ll turn back to expansion, or turn to expansion. And again, I made no secret out of it. Las Vegas is one of those markets we’re gonna look to. I know that the fans in Seattle have wanted us to get back there forever. No commitments, you know, to anyone. But we’ll certainly be looking at those two markets. Again, as I’ve said before, I think it’s sort of part of any organization you wanna grow over time.
“At the same time, we want to be mindful of ensuring that our teams remain competitive... I think that had we expanded back a number of years ago, I think we may have seen more dilution. I think now when you think of the global pool of players, as we move towards 30% of NBA players who were born outside of the United States, including obviously some of our best, very best players in the league, you know, I think that as I said, the timing will work out when we’re done with our media deals and we start looking to expand, I think we could potentially add two more teams to this league that could be very competitive.”
Don’t expect this to be a rapid process. The NBA is expected to reach a new national broadcast rights deal — in whatever form it takes — in the summer of 2024, which is the earliest the league’s owners will then talk expansion. Even with Seattle and Las Vegas lined up as frontrunners (although expect a lot of Mexico City and Vancouver/Montreal talk, a prelude to a possible next round of expansion), it likely is 2025 before the current owners vote the new members into their club. Then, it takes a few years to get everything up and running.
That said, it looks more and more like it will happen. There used to be pushback from owners about further dividing the broadcast revenue pie, but that pie is about to get so large the owners are good with the plan. It helps that with expansion those owners would get a one-time cash windfall from the deal (the expansion fee new ownership groups will pay to the league is expected to be at or more than $3 billion a franchise, which gets divided among the teams).
It’s going to happen. Every time Silver talks about expansion it just seems more inevitable.
