NBA Expansion Decision Nears as Las Vegas and Seattle Take Center Stage
Right now, the NBA is edging closer to one of its biggest decisions in decades, and it’s something fans in a few cities have been waiting on for a very long time. Commissioner Adam Silver has confirmed that the league is expected to make a call in 2026 on whether to expand, and if that happens, Las Vegas and Seattle are clearly at the front of the line.
Speaking in Las Vegas ahead of the NBA Cup championship, Silver explained that the league has been quietly studying expansion for years. Several markets have been reviewed along the way, but the focus has now narrowed. After his press conference, it was made clear that Las Vegas and Seattle are the two U.S. cities receiving the most serious attention. If expansion does move forward, it would almost certainly mean two new teams, not one, which strongly points to both cities being added together.
Silver described the process as careful and methodical. The league is currently working with its existing 30 teams, trying to understand how much appetite there really is for expansion and what the economics would look like. That includes building financial projections, weighing costs against benefits, and figuring out whether adding teams actually makes sense long-term. A final determination, he said, is expected sometime in 2026.
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Las Vegas already feels like an NBA city in many ways. It has hosted the NBA Cup finals since the tournament began, it’s been home to the league’s main Summer League since 2004, and it has proven it can support major professional sports. The Raiders are there, the Golden Knights are there, the WNBA’s Aces are thriving, and even MLB is on the way with a new ballpark scheduled to open in 2028. With roughly two million people in the metro area, the city’s growth and visibility have been hard to ignore.
Seattle, on the other hand, carries history and emotion. The city was home to the SuperSonics from 1967 until 2008, when the franchise relocated to Oklahoma City. Ever since, there has been a lingering sense that the NBA never truly closed the book on Seattle. That long wait is now being acknowledged, even as Silver stressed that no one wants to give the impression that these markets are being “teased.”
The biggest hurdle remains money. The NBA currently generates around $11 billion in revenue, and expanding would mean dividing that pie between 32 teams instead of 30. Players are guaranteed 51 percent of basketball-related income, leaving just over $5 billion for owners to split. On top of that, the league’s massive 11-year, $76 billion media deal was negotiated with 30 teams in mind, so adding two more would reduce each team’s share unless new franchises can generate enough value to offset the loss. Expansion fees, potentially worth billions, would play a major role in that calculation.
Silver also made it clear that expansion and relocation are separate conversations. While rumors often swirl about teams like Memphis or New Orleans, he emphasized that the league cannot force a team to move. Relocation requires a willing ownership group and a formal process, and market size alone is not enough to justify pulling a franchise from its community.
For now, the waiting continues. But for fans in Las Vegas and Seattle, 2026 is starting to look like the year when years of speculation finally turn into a clear answer.
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