NBA expansion has been a topic of discussion for years now, but commissioner Adam Silver is pumping the breaks.
While Seattle and Las Vegas look primed and ready to host NBA franchises, there’s one thing the league wants to get in order before it expands from 30 to 32: local media rights.
Speaking with reporters earlier this week following the NBA’s latest Board of Governors meeting, Silver poured cold water on any imminent expansion. “We would be malpracticing if we didn’t figure out how local regional television is going to work before expanding,” Silver said, per Front Office Sports. “The notion that we would hand over a team into a city where we’re not currently operating and say, ‘You’re going to have to figure out how you’re going to distribute your games to your local fans,’ doesn’t make sense.”
According to recent reports, the NBA’s local rights solution might not be on the table until the 2027-28 season. At that point, as many as 18 teams will be available to bundle their local rights together and potentially sell a streamer like Amazon or Netflix a nationalized local broadcast package. Any expansion franchises would presumably join that bundle if/when it comes to fruition.
While the NBA is not as impacted as MLB by local media economics, local broadcast deals are still a significant part of a franchise’s bottom line. Many teams have been forced to take reductions in local rights fees in recent years as a result of ongoing cord-cutting gutting the regional sports network business. Certain teams have opted to forego regional sports networks altogether, instead placing local broadcasts on local over-the-air channels and streaming platforms.
The NBA is looking to simplify the local broadcast landscape and, in doing so, create a more lucrative and stable model for its teams.
Silver is right. Given the current uncertainty with local media rights, it makes little sense to add expansion franchises without a clear plan for how they’d broadcast their games.