With Super Bowl LVIII over, Las Vegas has more sports news to look forward to — a potential NBA expansion team.
“We have one more year left on our television deals in the U.S. after this year,” NBA commissioner Adam Silver said Wednesday on “The Pat McAfee Show,” “and so we want to figure out what our media relationships are going to look like and then we will turn to expansion. Vegas is definitely on our list.”
Silver called Super Bowl week “a huge success” and said Las Vegas felt like the center of the sports world because of the number of parties and events taking place.
“Man, do they punch above their weight,” Silver said about the city.
“Our summer league has become almost like a franchise in Vegas..
It’s two weeks of basketball at a time of year in Vegas when there’s not a lot else going on”
Adam Silver #PMSLive pic.twitter.com/zmwcVxQYQZ
— Pat McAfee (@PatMcAfeeShow) February 14, 2024
Tuesday’s comments are the latest from Silver about ongoing interest in the NBA adding an expansion team in Las Vegas. In July, he called Vegas “our 31st franchise” and also pointed out that the league wants to sort out its media deal before turning to expansion. The NBA’s exclusive negotiating window with its current TV partners ends in April and this TV deal ends after the 2024-25 season.
The league has 30 teams and has not added a new one since the Charlotte Bobcats, now the Hornets, came into existence in 2004. The NHL is the only one of the four major North American professional sports leagues to add a franchise since then.
Seattle and Las Vegas are the two cities that have been floated most heavily as possible expansion sites for the NBA. The league left Seattle when the Supersonics moved to Oklahoma City.
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How Las Vegas became a sports city
Between the NBA Summer League, the 2007 NBA All-Star Game, the WNBA’s Las Vegas Aces, the WNBA All-Star Game in 2019, 2021 and 2023 and the 2023 NBA In-Season Tournament, the NBA has done plenty to establish a strong relationship with Las Vegas. It’s gotten to a point where it feels like a matter of when — not if — the NBA brings a franchise to the city.
Once written off as taboo, Las Vegas has grown into a major sports powerhouse in recent years. It’s already host to three major professional sports franchises in the Aces, NHL’s Golden Knights and NFL’s Las Vegas Raiders, and the MLB’s Oakland A’s are set to relocate to Las Vegas as well. It’s hosted large-scale events such as the NCAA’s Elite Eight, Formula 1’s Las Vegas Grand Prix, and it received its biggest stamp yet when it hosted Super Bowl LVIII last Sunday.
The proliferation of sports gambling opened the door for Las Vegas to breakthrough into the sports world and it’s taken full advantage of the opportunity. — Tashan Reed, Raiders staff writer
Where could an NBA team play in Vegas?
In terms of where a potential NBA franchise in Las Vegas would play its games, there’s already an option in the works. In 2022, Oak View Group purchased land near The Strip for the purposes of building a privately funded, $10 billion casino resort that’ll include a $1 billion, 20,000-seat arena built to NBA specifications. OVG CEO Tim Leiweke stated last summer that construction is expected to start without a commitment from a professional franchise. It’ll be similar to the approach with OVG’s Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle, which completed a $1.15 billion renovation in 2021 and could potentially become home to another NBA franchise.
The OVG project in Las Vegas, when completed, could give a future NBA team an arena, and a venue it would not have to share with any other professional sports team. That would allow an NBA team first access to dates and scheduling needs. There is hope that the project will be completed in 2026. Agent Warren LeGarie’s Summer League could move there when it opens, multiple sources briefed on the matter said, giving the arena a prime tenant.
Based on Silver’s comments, a permanent tenant sounds like it could soon follow. — Reed
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(Photo: Presse Sports / USA Today)
