NBA keeping tabs on Las Vegas as potential expansion looms

NBA commissioner Adam Silver said the league has tremendous interest in Las Vegas as potential expansion looms.

Although the NBA doesn’t have a team in Las Vegas, Silver said he sees Summer League as the 31st franchise. There are nearly 80 games played during Summer League each July, with Las Vegas being the epicenter of basketball during that time.

“When we were first coming to Las Vegas with our Summer League, there were other leagues that weren’t permitting advertising from Las Vegas,” Silver said Monday during a session at the Associated Press Sports Editors conference at the Flamingo. “Now, obviously hockey, football (are in Las Vegas), and baseball is in discussions in coming to Las Vegas.”

Outside of the Summer League the NBA announced last week that the semifinals and final of its first in-season tournament would be held in December at T-Mobile Arena.

“I feel like we have a huge footprint here,” Silver said.

After coming to Las Vegas for decades, Silver said the appetite for sports and entertainment in the city keeps growing at an insatiable rate.

“I’ve watched it develop for a long time,” Silver said. “I’ve watched a bit of the ebb and flow of Las Vegas. It’s certainly beyond anything I would have expected when I started coming 30 years ago for trade shows. I think they’ve done a fantastic job.

“We will look at this market. There’s no doubt there is enormous interest in Seattle, it’s not a secret.”

Other markets have also expressed interest in attracting an expansion NBA team, but Silver said no direct talks with any city or ownership groups, including in Las Vegas, have occurred.

“We’re not engaged in that process now,” Silver said. “We have not taken meetings right now with any potential groups. What we are saying to everyone privately is the same thing I’m saying publicly. There will be a very open process at the time we are ready to consider expansion. But that is not yet now.”

Silver previously told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that the league wouldn’t explore expansion until it struck new collective bargaining and media rights agreements.

The NBA completed a new CBA with the NBA Players Association earlier this year and is slated to land a new media deal after the current one expires at the end of the 2024-25 season.

“We have two years left (on the media rights deal) … but that doesn’t mean we won’t get new media deals done until the very end of the second year,” Silver said. “We have exclusive negotiation periods with our partners next spring.”

Once the new media rights deal is in place, the league will turn its attention to expansion, Silver said.

“I think it’s natural that organizations grow over time,” Silver said.

Having those major deals in place before expansion is important to Silver to have potential new ownership groups coming in with certainty regarding those.

“They’re going to be your partners, so you’re not necessarily looking to have people betting on what they think the rights fees are going to be,” Silver said. “They might as well know exactly what that is. It helps us better set the value.”

Contact Mick Akers at makers@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2920. Follow @mickakers on Twitter.