The NBA took its most concrete step toward expansion in more than two decades Today, when all 30 members of the league’s board of governors voted to formally explore adding franchises in Seattle and Las Vegas. The decision launches a bidding process that could reshape the league’s footprint for a generation and deliver a financial windfall to every current team owner in the process.
Commissioner Adam Silver called the vote a reflection of both cities’ deep history with professional basketball and confirmed the league would begin engaging with prospective ownership groups immediately. Investment bank PJT Partners has been brought on to evaluate bids, assess arena infrastructure, and analyze the broader financial picture. The NBA is targeting the 2028-29 season for both franchises to begin play, with a final ownership vote expected later this year requiring support from at least 23 of 30 governors.
What makes these two cities the right call
Las Vegas and Seattle represent two of the most compelling untapped markets in American professional sports, and for different reasons.
Las Vegas has spent the past decade proving that major league franchises can thrive in a city once considered too transient for sustained fan loyalty. The NHL’s Golden Knights arrived in 2017 and became an immediate success. The NFL’s Raiders relocated from Oakland in 2020. MLB’s Athletics are following the same path in 2028. The WNBA’s Aces have won three championships since moving there in 2018. The metro area now holds approximately 2.5 million residents, and the city’s appetite for professional sports has grown well beyond what its tourism reputation once suggested.
Seattle’s case rests on a different kind of urgency. The city lost the SuperSonics in 2008 after a lease dispute over KeyArena led then-owner Howard Schultz to sell the franchise to an Oklahoma City investment group for $350 million. The team became the Thunder, who are the reigning NBA champions. Schultz later called the sale the biggest regret of his professional life. The arena has since been renovated at a cost of $1.15 billion and rebranded as Climate Pledge Arena, where the NHL’s Kraken and WNBA’s Storm currently play. A returning NBA team would have a ready home and a fan base that has spent 17 years waiting.
The money behind the expansion
Franchise valuations across the NBA have risen at a pace that makes the expansion fee look less shocking in context. Mat Ishbia purchased the Phoenix Suns in late 2022 for $4 billion, which was a record at the time. That figure was surpassed multiple times in 2025 alone. The Boston Celtics sold to Bill Chisholm for $6.1 billion. The Los Angeles Lakers then sold to Mark Walter for $10 billion, the largest sum ever paid for a professional sports team in the United States. The Portland Trail Blazers changed hands in August 2025 for $4.25 billion.
Bids for the two expansion slots are expected to fall between $7 billion and $10 billion per franchise. At that price, each of the league’s 30 current owners stands to receive approximately $500 million from the expansion fees alone, which has contributed significantly to the unanimous enthusiasm among the board of governors.
The trade-offs the league is accepting
The financial logic is straightforward. The competitive implications are more complicated.
Adding two franchises means the overall talent pool spreads further across 32 rosters. Expansion teams historically spend their early years losing, and the NBA has spent recent seasons managing concerns about a significant portion of the league fielding non-competitive rosters. Two new franchises in the short term would add to that problem before the draft lottery and roster-building process gradually corrects it.
Both new teams would enter the Western Conference, which means one existing team will need to shift east to keep the conferences balanced at 16 teams each. The Minnesota Timberwolves and Memphis Grizzlies are the most commonly cited candidates for that move, with Minnesota considered the more likely option given its geographic proximity to Eastern Conference markets.
The NBA last expanded in 2004 when Charlotte joined the league. More than two decades later, the league’s next chapter is taking shape, and two cities are getting ready to fill it.
