Another day, another $10 billion.
Money continues to change hands in the NBA, the latest being the pending Lakers sale, which could alter the course of the league’s offseason. Expansion, for instance, was supposed to be just a perfunctory topic at July’s upcoming board of governors meetings, but Mark Walter’s 11-figure offer to the Buss family could fast-track (or, at least, enliven) the conversation.
In other words, if expansion fees end up being about half of Walter’s bid — say, between $5 billion and $6 billion — the league’s owners may bust out their calculators and green-light phone calls from Commissioner Adam Silver to Seattle and Las Vegas. That’s how remarkable it is — or “crazy,” as one team executive put it — that the Lakers’ sticker price turned out to be $10 billion.
“I’d say every other team’s valuation went up 25% to 30% that day,” the team executive said.
All of that points to a summer of expansion talk, whether it’s about the would-be 31st and 32nd teams or the 16 plausible teams in the proposed NBA Europe. None of it will be decided by Labor Day, but growth is clearly at hand in a league about to enter Year 1 of a $77 billion media rights deal. The only questions are: how, how much, and how quickly the investment bankers weigh in.
Domestic Expansion
Up until now, expansion has never officially been broached in a BOG session. “There may have been side discussions amongst people, but in a board meeting, zero discussion about expansion,” said one governor. “So if the clock truly starts in July with the first discussion, that’s a long process. I don’t think a year from now you have expansion resolved.”
But that doesn’t mean the debate will be tame this summer. A bevy of governors likely will be uninterested in league expansion because it would mean splitting up their media rights money two more ways. As of now, each NBA team will receive a hearty $142 million in national TV money around New Year’s Day 2026, which will help, especially if they’re in the second tax apron or have a weak local TV deal. Not to mention the $142 million figure rises 7% annually over the next decade. Some owners — and reports say the Knicks’ James Dolan is one of them — don’t want any of that money touched.
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“That’s why I don’t think it’s a foregone conclusion, honestly, that we’ll expand,” said the team governor.
On the other hand — now that Jeanie Buss and her five siblings have cut a deal for a valuation of $10 billion and the Celtics are selling for roughly $6.1 billion — the league will lean on investment bankers to determine appropriate expansion fees. The sense is a Las Vegas bid could fetch as much as $6 billion and a Seattle bid as high as $5 billion, and, if true, each of the 30 teams could waltz away with close to $400 million each. While Silver said he doesn’t think the Lakers’ number affects expansion, others believe it at least tilts the discussion.
“The young, financially savvy owners are going to say, ‘Wait, I get a $400 million direct payment today? I’ll take that money and do something else with it,’” said another team executive. “Especially if it’s guys who don’t plan on owning [a team] forever. And, by the way, give one of these owners $400 million cash — that funds your mixed-use entertainment district. Or at least gets you the cash you have to put up. The rest they can take a loan.“
The sense is a Las Vegas expansion bid could fetch as much as $6 billion and a Seattle bid as high as $5 billion, and, if true, each of the 30 NBA teams could waltz away with close to $400 million each. That’s a potential expansion game changer.
The likely result, after they debate all of this, is a push — meaning the league creates a national streaming RSN with Amazon, YouTube or ESPN by the end of next season and revisits expansion then with even more media money in its pockets. But that doesn’t change the central question in the boardroom this summer, which is what the Lakers and Celtics sales figures mean for the rest of the league.
One team executive said the Lakers’ sale price is even more transcendent than Steve Ballmer buying the Clippers for a then-record $2 billion in 2014 — which, at the time, laid the groundwork for the exorbitant sale prices for the Nets ($2.35 billion), Hornets ($3 billion), Bucks ($3.5 billion) and Suns ($4 billion). His sense is that every NBA team’s valuation will elevate even further, along with expansion fees — just not to Lakers levels.
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“I think Golden State, maybe at its peak, could [get to $10 billion], but, the truth is, the value of the brand and what L.A. is, it’s just different,” the executive said. “It really carries the league. I don’t know how much of it is LeBron, but I read and watch every national thing, and I get so pissed off. The leads are always the Lakers, whether they suck or there’s no story, because of the interest of their fan base. It drives numbers.”
For those reasons alone, the BOG this summer has to begin contemplating whether the expansion fees are a Lakers price, a Celtics price or a Suns price — or somewhere in between. Because the owners ultimately have to choose between the expansion fees and the full amount of media rights money.
“If they expand, the thought has to be, ‘I’m happy diluting the golden goose because I think I can make it a bigger return with the [$400M] cash,’” said a team executive. “But that’s what the finance guys are going to model. They’ll model 400 million today versus blank additional money over the next 11 years. It’s a math equation for those guys.”
NBA Europe
There might be a more simplistic way to make all the governors happy. It’s called NBA Europe.
Silver has conceptually referred to the proposed league as “expansion,” too, but with fewer strings attached. The idea is to cobble together 16 clubs across Europe — some established, some fledgling — and charge what amounts to an entry fee. How high a number? That’s the catch.
The existing EuroLeague clubs, for instance, are not lucrative businesses and, according to team executives in this country, need to be “NBA-ized.” There is little premium seating in their arenas and currently no way to guarantee NBA-like gate receipts. For instance, sources said the NBA Paris Games 2025 at Accor Arena may have netted around $4.5 million, but that was as a one-off. Doing that nightly probably isn’t feasible. But that doesn’t mean the NBA wouldn’t like to try, maybe with a team such as Paris Saint-Germain, which is 87% owned by Qatar Sports Investments and could afford a hefty entry fee while upgrading its arena.
If most of the European ownership groups could pay enticing entry fees — perhaps somewhere in the hundreds of millions — it would be a win-win for NBA owners. They wouldn’t have to give up a slice of their national media rights pie (like they would for NBA expansion), and make money while they’re sleeping.
“I guess one way to look at tying the two together is you’re growing your equity in the game by building a league in Europe,” said one NBA governor. “And in some ways, you’re diminishing the equity of the individual owner in the NBA by expanding in the NBA. Interesting difference.”
Silver has said NBA Europe will again be a topic at July’s BOG session in Las Vegas, and the feeling leaguewide is that this is the commissioner’s “passion project,” with a goal of commercializing European basketball and perhaps furthering his legacy.
“He’s really pushing this,” said one team executive. “The idea is: Own more content. Don’t encroach on the existing. Make a more competitive landscape in a macro world. I think Adam would say this: ‘How do we own the entire basketball ecosystem?’”
The Europe venture is led by Deputy Commissioner Mark Tatum, with help from Leah MacNab, head of the league’s international strategy and operations, and George Aivazoglou, managing director of NBA Europe and the Middle East. Indications are that the BOG will hear updates this summer from investment banks that are vetting potential stakeholders — and then begin riffing about the possibilities.
For instance, an NBA Europe could create new international media rights deals. Or dream scenarios down the road, in which NBA teams could play a portion of their seasons in Europe or have the NBA Europe champion qualify for the NBA playoffs. “I’m just making that up,” said one team executive. “But when we talk out loud, those are the fun things. Can you imagine taking a Spanish or Paris team and putting them in the mix of the NBA playoffs? If you had a magic wand, what could you do? The bottom line is: How do we leverage the master brand of the NBA?”
Once again, it’s a math equation.