At the NBA’s board of governors meetings next week, team owners will vote on moving forward with adding expansion teams in Las Vegas and Seattle, according to ESPN. If 23 of the 30 governors vote in favor, the NBA will proceed to take bids for the new franchises.
According to ESPN, there is increasing support for expansion among owners, though some of them “want to see the final valuations of the bids plus the individual franchise fees before deciding whether to expand now or in a few more years.”
Voting to move forward with the process at these board of governors meetings, scheduled for March 24 and 25, would not seal the deal on Las Vegas and Seattle getting teams. That vote would take place later this year.
Bids for the franchises are expected to come in between $7 billion and $10 billion, per ESPN, citing industry executives.
If expansion is ultimately approved, there will be 32 NBA teams and the two new ones will both be in the Western Conference. In this scenario, either the Minnesota Timberwolves or Memphis Grizzlies are expected to move to the Eastern Conference, per ESPN.
At All-Star weekend last month, NBA commissioner Adam Silver said that the league would likely come out of these upcoming board of governors meetings “prepared to take a next step in terms of potentially talking to interested parties.”
Silver added: “I think the logical next move would be to say, all right, we’ve had those discussions internally, we’ve made decisions about cities to focus on and what the opportunity is, and now we’ve got to go out into the marketplace. I think that’s probably the most important step, to find out who is potentially interested in owning a franchise in particular cities, what’s the value of that franchise. There’s some work to do in terms of potential conference realignment. That’s the next step there.”
