The NBA’s expansion into new markets has been a hot topic this year. While the NBA held meetings with interested teams, owners, and investors in early 2026 regarding a joint expansion to Europe with FIBA, it has also set its sights on domestic expansion.
In March, the owners of all 30 teams voted in favor of exploring expansion opportunities, specifically in Las Vegas and Seattle. Seattle formerly had the Seattle SuperSonics, while Las Vegas is home to multiple sports teams, including the WNBA’s Las Vegas Aces, the NHL’s Las Vegas Golden Knights, and the NFL’s Las Vegas Raiders. The A’s (formerly the Oakland Athletics) are set to move to Las Vegas by 2028.
Answering The Biggest Questions Surrounding The NBA’s League Expansion
While the NBA is exclusively exploring expansion into Seattle and Las Vegas, questions about ownership, arena development, financing, and the implications of adding two new teams remain.
In an exclusive interview with Cozen O’Connor Sports Industry attorney Joshua Goldenberg, I explore topics such as the financial implications of new NBA franchises, the potential oversaturation of the Las Vegas sports market, the viability of both Seattle and Las Vegas as markets for NBA teams, and the hurdles of securing private and public funding for building sports arenas in such markets, among others.
Q1: The Big Four American sports leagues have had a combined four expansion teams since the year 2000. The most recent one was the Seattle Kraken of the NHL.
So, do you think that expansion is a good idea for the NBA going forward?
Goldenberg’s Answer:
It depends on the viewpoint that you’re looking from, whether you’re an owner, versus a fan, or even a player. I would say in terms of the long-term growth and outlook for the league, I do think expansion is generally a good idea. Primarily, I think expansion to certain strategic markets makes sense.
Now, whether that’s through an expansion team versus a relocation is a good question. But obviously, the NBA’s Board of Governors approved the league going deeper on expansion into Las Vegas and Seattle. And I do think that it makes a lot of sense for the league to be in Seattle, whether that’s through expansion or relocation. You can make a good argument in either direction, but I think generally growing the footprint of the league and capturing important sports and cultural markets like Seattle is a positive for the growth of the league, also due to the fact that Seattle has had an NBA team before.
Q2: From the NBA’s perspective, expansion will be significant for them. While the NBA’s latest media rights agreement will have to accommodate two additional teams, there will be a lot more games, players, and the NBA as a whole will become a much larger product.
So, what do you think are the financial implications of adding two new teams to the NBA?
Goldenberg’s Answer:
I guess there are a few ways to look at it. One thing that a lot of people focus on, and it’s important, is the expansion fee. You see reports that predict the league could ask for a fee of $7 to $10 billion. I’ve seen a lot of people suggest that the fee will be around $8 billion.
And a significant factor in expansion is the fact that the expansion fee is not shared with the players. It’s not subject to revenue sharing. It goes directly into the owners’ pockets. It’s not revenue that the players would have an opportunity to participate in. So that is pure upside for the owners [the expansion fee]. It will probably be paid in installments by any new ownership group, but there would be an upfront fee. And it’ll be a significant amount of money for each ownership group in the league. So I think that’s one piece of the economic pie.
The other piece that you mentioned is an increasingly significant portion of league revenue in team sports, at least in the United States’ Big Four, which is media rights money. I think the NBA’s most recent media rights deal tripled the amount of money that the league was receiving on an annual basis and expanded its footprint to a number of new countries. It’s not just on linear television anymore, right? I mean, games are streamed on different networks. And I saw them streaming on Prime Video, and I think they’re on Amazon. I think maybe I also saw them on Peacock recently, and I know they have a deal with NBC.
So, the media rights money, there are a few ways to look at that. One is that this could, by adding one or two new teams, dilute the amount of money that each team receives, because now you’ve got more teams sharing the same pie. But I also think it’s fair to assume that any media rights deal has some kind of escalator that contemplates the fees increasing in the event of expansion. And leagues can structure the expansion fees, the way that they are paid, and the time at which new ownership groups and expansion teams are able to participate in the revenue from the media rights deal. So you don’t just get your expansion team, and now you’re participating like one of the 32. And the media rights deal could be set. You might not participate for a couple of years, or a portion of that participation could come out of the expansion fee. So there are a number of ways to structure it.
But I think, overall, if you look at it, zoom out over the long term, adding strategic markets to the league’s footprint will only increase the league’s ability to commercialize media rights and other intellectual property.
Q3: Right now, Las Vegas has several sports teams, including the NFL’s Raiders, the WNBA’s Aces, and the NHL’s Golden Knights. The MLB’s Athletics are set to move there by 2028.
With all of these sports teams concentrated in this area, do you think that the sports market in Las Vegas is oversaturated? And what do you think this means for a potential NBA franchise in Las Vegas?
Goldenberg’s Answer:
It’s a great question. I don’t know if anyone knows the answer to the question about oversaturation. I think it’s pretty obvious why the league would want to be in Las Vegas. The NBA already has connections to Vegas, right? In the past, they’ve done the Summer League in Las Vegas and the NBA Cup. I think it’s played at the T-Mobile Arena [NBA Summer League Games are held at the Thomas and Mack Center].
So the league has connections to that market. And look, you have a proof of concept, right? The Golden Knights have been tremendously successful [The Golden Knights won the Stanley Cup in 2023]. But off the ice as well, all counts indicate they’ve done quite well. And if you talk to people who’ve been to T-Mobile Arena for a hockey game, everyone raves about the experience. So it’s not a traditional professional sports market. But it has shown the ability to support at least two teams, with a third onboarding with baseball at some point. I don’t think anyone knows the answer when it comes to oversaturation, though I will say that all indicators seem to create the idea, or lead to the conclusion, that it could probably support an NBA team.
But I think Las Vegas is, for obvious reasons, a very desirable market. And I think if you’re weighing Seattle versus Las Vegas, I think the answer for the NBA is likely both. But I think there’s a clear path right now for Seattle and a little bit more work to do with respect to Las Vegas. But I think they’re both viable markets.
Q4: While Samantha Holloway’s group is widely regarded as the frontrunner for a Seattle NBA team, Las Vegas has several suitors, including the LVXP Group and the “The MAGI” Group.
Compared to the Seattle of the past, which struggled to maintain the Sonics in the city, what do you think is different now in Seattle, which can support an NBA team?
Goldenberg’s Answer:
So I think there are a few things. At least from what you say, I think Samantha Holloway and her ownership group are publicly viewed as the frontrunner for an NBA team in Seattle. But I don’t think they are the only potential ownership group. I think there are a lot of people who are going to be interested and have begun putting together potential ownership groups to explore expansion in Seattle.
I think in Seattle, the Holloway group has several advantages. One being they’re already in the market, and the hockey team, the Seattle Kraken, has done quite well, at least off the ice. They have not won big yet, which I think they would have expected to be more successful on the ice at this point. But I think off the ice, they’ve done a great job building a hockey culture in a market that had a hockey culture but didn’t have a professional team.
And the other key factor with the Holloway group is that they recently gained control of Climate Pledge Arena. And so the arena was renovated not too long ago. It’s a modern state-of-the-art arena. And so it’s kind of a turnkey solution for an NBA expansion team to play there. It has the level of premium offerings that the NBA would want in a modern arena, with the number of suites and sponsorship opportunities in that market. So that clearly provides a built-in advantage, right? Because any other potential ownership group has to either have a plan for a new arena, which I think will be very difficult to make an argument for, that you need a new arena in Seattle.
So I think it helps the Holloway group that any other potential group is going to have to negotiate a lease with the Holloway group or Samantha Holloway, and that ownership group could become a strategic investor, and maybe not the lead investor in an ownership group. I think that’s also possible because there are a lot of questions around the financing and how the Holloway group would finance an expansion team. Because, again, eight billion dollars is a lot of money. So some combination of potential private equity money and a consortium of owners, to me, seems like it would be a logical solution there. So I think it makes all the sense in the world that Samantha Holloway and her ownership group would be involved in a team in Seattle. But that doesn’t mean that they would be the lead owner of a team. So we’ll see how that shakes out.
But those are the dynamics right now in Seattle. They don’t need to do much to the arena, they already have a basketball culture, they’ve had a team, and they have a path to SuperSonics intellectual property at no cost, if they don’t want to rebrand, assuming they want to bring back the SuperSonics. So that alone is pretty significant in terms of the assets in that market.
Q5: Despite a Las Vegas NBA team potentially costing two to three billion dollars more than one in Seattle, there are a lot more interested ownership groups vying for a team in Nevada.
This may result in two or more groups coming together, ones aside from the Holloway group, to bring back an NBA team to Seattle. Who do you think is a part of these groups?
Goldenberg’s Answer:
I think there are probably a lot of folks who aren’t household names, necessarily. This is just speculation, for the record. There are a lot of people who would love Jeff Bezos to be involved in an ownership group for obvious reasons. I don’t know how realistic that is. So, I think there are a lot of investors out there who are interested in professional sports team ownership. But any ownership group in Seattle is likely to include a lot of people; it’s likely to be a fairly large group of owners to be able to pay that fee. It’s going to be syndicated. There could be some big names or public figures involved in a group. But that doesn’t mean that those public figures are the ones who will have a significant ownership stake, but they could be strategic investors. So in terms of specific owners, it’s anyone’s guess, but for that market, I would expect there to be a very large pool of prospective owners.
Q6: You were part of the stadium development team that helped finance, design, and construct the US Bank Stadium in Minneapolis for the Vikings [Minnesota Vikings, NFL]. So what would you say are the biggest hurdles to negotiating public-private partnerships for sports stadiums and arenas?
Goldenberg’s Answer:
Good question. The public aspect is you’re negotiating with the legislature to try to get public funding. You’ve got to find revenue sources to pay for it all. It’s interesting because I think more recently, you see a lot of owners now talking about privately financing arenas, because I don’t think there’s a public appetite for spending public money on arena deals. I think for most arena deals, even if it’s privately funded, there’s going to be some kind of subsidy. Usually, it’s a combination of property tax relief or exemptions for the arena. Maybe tax breaks on construction materials and things like that. It could be infrastructure around the arena, right? There’s a lot that goes into the infrastructure of the area outside of just the building. Wayfinding and signage, highway signs, parking, and there’s just a lot.
In Minnesota, it was a unique situation. US Bank Stadium was built on the Metrodome’s site, so the Vikings had to play at the University of Minnesota for two years while the new stadium was being constructed [on the Metrodome’s site]. So when I started with the Vikings, we had three separate leases: We had a lease for the Metrodome for the final year there, we had a lease with the University of Minnesota to play there starting the following NFL season, and we had a lease for this new stadium that hadn’t been built yet. So every situation is unique.
I think the days of publicly funded or majority publicly funded stadiums are behind us, which doesn’t mean that there won’t be any public subsidy. Your question on this topic was what the biggest obstacle is and what the most difficult thing is. And it’s garnering public and grassroots support for public subsidies for professional sports stadiums and arenas. That’s the hardest part. Because if the public supported it wholeheartedly, you’d be able to get the legislature behind it. But the public support is just not there today. And maybe that changes in the future, but today that’s not there. But you don’t have that issue now in Seattle. And in Las Vegas, while the arena may not be as turnkey as there may be capital improvements that have to be made, if they play at the T-Mobile Arena, you’re not starting from scratch, right? You’re not entering a market where you’ve got to build public support to spend two billion dollars on an arena.
And privately funding it is just one part of the story. Figuring out where you’re going to put it is a whole other situation. You see this everywhere now. City versus the suburbs. In Minneapolis, we built in the city, and it’s been very successful in terms of the fans. It’s just an incredible fan experience in that building. The owners in Minnesota- I’m biased, but I think that the Will Family is a very thoughtful ownership group that cares about the market, and they’ve done a great job. And when it comes to the stadium, they hit a home run for the city, the state, the team, the ownership group, and the fans. I mean, it, it’s really a success story.
There have been other stadiums and arenas over the years that have been less successful, and some of those are in the city, while others are outside of the city. So, ultimately, what it comes down to with an arena deal for these NBA markets is the thoughtfulness behind the design, around the design, making sure that it works for an NBA team, and making sure that that was considered in the design. This is the case for Climate Pledge Arena. I think they’ve got the capacity, as It’s over 18,000 seats, which would put it around the middle of the pack for the NBA. They’ve got the premium seating that the NBA desires. So there are a lot of things there that already work. So an arena and stadium deal is often, if not the primary, aspect that an ownership group brings to the table in terms of their plan for a team. The arena, the stadium, if that’s not number one, it’s number two. But it, you know, it’s one of the most critical factors. So, having that figured out in Seattle in a way that the NBA is comfortable with, I think it just gives it a leg up on any other market.
Q7: You mentioned that every situation is unique when it comes to building a sports arena. And the potential ownership groups in Las Vegas all have their own plans when it comes to how they will deal with the question of where the NBA expansion team will play.
What are the things that go into making an arena a reality, from the first blueprint to a place where sports events can be hosted?
Goldenberg’s Answer:
So there’s a lot of local government involvement. That’s one piece. Another piece is kind of the financing: How are you financing, whether it’s an upgrade, or a new building, how are you financing it? So that’s an important factor, and that takes time. The other important piece is that the various professional sports leagues have requirements when it comes to the design, so you’ve got to work with the league offices as you develop your design for the arena, and make sure that the league is comfortable with the design, and get them to support it.
A lot of teams, especially teams in new markets, will conduct a market study, as there are a number of things that teams need to consider. One that is becoming increasingly more important is premium seating and the commercialization of the arena. So, what is the market like in terms of demand for sponsorship? What’s the corporate community like? This is because a lot of your shareholders are going to be corporate businesses, not individuals.
Now, the NFL is a little different than the NBA in terms of their personal seat licenses. So in the NFL, someone has to buy a personal seat license, a PSL, in order to have the right to purchase tickets for those seats [this only applies for those looking to become season ticket holders]. So you’re paying a licensing fee. And the licensing fee just entitles you to the opportunity to purchase season tickets, and if you don’t purchase season tickets, you lose it. So that’s a whole new revenue stream that the NFL has been able to commercialize over the years. While those economics don’t necessarily apply to other sports, premium seating definitely seems to have become a huge part of it for all the leagues, and figuring out ways to commercialize the arena is key in these markets. In Philadelphia, for example, Comcast used to own both the Flyers and the 76ers, and they sold the 76ers a number of years ago to Harris Blitzer Sports Entertainment. But Comcast also owns the arena. And so when it came to scheduling, the Flyers got priority. Comcast also benefited from things like naming rights, which are a huge economic benefit these days. And the Sixers weren’t entitled to any of that revenue, since they just played in the Xfinity Mobile Arena, rather than being a part of the group that also owned the arena.
This is one of the reasons for the Sixers wanting to build their own arena, and now they’re doing it jointly with Comcast and the Flyers. It’s significant to the team’s economic strength to be able to exploit all those different commercial opportunities that they just couldn’t take advantage of when they were playing second fiddle in the arena [to the Flyers]. So the example I gave there, I gave it because of the existing markets that are the prime spots for the NBA’s expansion. You’ve got T-Mobile Arena, and you’ve got Climate Pledge. And if you have an ownership group that ends up unable to build a different arena, and it’s not the same ownership group, or doesn’t involve the existing owners of those facilities [T-Mobile Arena and Climate Pledge Arena], now it’s not just scheduling and having to negotiate a lease with those owners, but you also miss out on sponsorship opportunities and revenue from naming rights agreements. I think Bill Foley owns like 15%. I don’t think he controls the arena in Las Vegas, as Holloway does in Seattle, but he does have an ownership interest in it.
All these factors play into that. I mean, you’ve got these ownership groups that are going to be modeling out and building pro forma financials to try and make the economics work. And that’s how they can go out and get debt financing if they need to finance a portion of the expansion fee through debt. So to get someone to underwrite a financing for one of these teams, they’re going to want to understand what the commercial opportunities are [in the market/in the arena/lease, etc]. And so any ownership group that isn’t entitled to any naming rights money in Seattle or Vegas, or has unfavorable lease terms, makes it more difficult and less viable to put a successful team in those markets. So those are the factors at play.
I think it’ll be interesting to follow it. But the league’s considering all these things, ownership, arena, the existing sports landscape and market, I mean, you know, the ability to commercialize the corporate base in those markets. You know, these are all questions that the NBA is exploring, and so are the potential ownership groups.
Q8: Naming rights are important for both companies and ownership groups. That said, how early should a potential NBA team ownership group secure major sponsorship deals, such as arena naming rights, to strengthen their expansion?
Goldenberg’s Answer:
I’ll give kind of the lawyer answer, and that is to say that it really does depend. It would be easier for a group in Seattle led by Samantha Holloway. They’ve already got their arena, right? Like, you’re not going to rename that arena today. Even in Las Vegas, if the team ended up at T-Mobile Arena, I don’t know what the terms of the naming rights agreement are, but you can’t just tear it up, right? Now, you could renegotiate it in the case of Bill Foley, and you own both teams [Foley is a majority owner of the Las Vegas Golden Knights, and is interested in owning the NBA expansion team in Las Vegas]. So I think there’s a leg up there. But if you’re building a new arena, it’s going to be hard to get a commitment, but you can start feeling out the marketplace. You can do marketing studies that will give you a pretty good sense of what the market is like for naming rights, and kind of what the economic terms are that you can expect. I think that’s probably not one of the primary drivers of the expansion discussions with the league, though, just because I think the league expects that if you build a new arena, you’re going to get a naming rights deal.
So really, what it comes down to is if you’re going out to get debt financing, you can collateralize and secure those loans with what’s called contractually obligated income. So if I have a contract here for a naming rights deal, and it’s 20 years, it’s going to pay me $500 million, which is going to help me get better terms from a lender. And it’s an asset that I can use to secure any debt. So it helps when it comes to those types of things.
While most teams will seek out a naming rights deal in the market, it doesn’t necessarily apply to all teams. If you look at Tottenham in the Premier League, they still haven’t gotten a naming rights deal. So for most teams, that is a big piece of the economics in the local market [the naming rights deal]. I think the Clippers’ deal is more than 20 years and upwards of 500 million dollars. I mean, that’s a lot of money. They spent almost 2 billion on the stadium. Your naming rights deal underwrites a quarter of that cost, and that is pretty good.
So, while I think it’s an important factor in making the economics work for the owners, I don’t think the league has any concern around naming rights. I do think that matters for things like this, but typically, if you’re an expansion team going into a market and you’re building a new arena, I think that if the league has approved expansion into that market, they expect that the economics locally will work and that the naming rights deal will work. So in those markets, like, the ownership of the existing teams and arenas is really the most interesting dynamic because, again, you’ve got arenas there and you’ve got owners who at least own a partial interest in their arena. And in one instance, in Seattle, they control the arena. So I think that’s an important dynamic, more so than naming rights.
Photo Credit: Jerome Miron, Imagn Images via Reuters Connect
