NBA to turn to ‘consideration of expansion’ after media rights deal done

LAS VEGAS — The NBA will turn to a “consideration of expansion” after the league’s media rights deal is completed, commissioner Adam Silver said Tuesday in Las Vegas. Silver said the league will start thinking about expansion in the fall.

The Athletic reported last week that the NBA and network executives finalized contracts that will make NBC and Amazon Prime Video new partners, while maintaining ABC/ESPN as the home of the NBA Finals, under agreements that will extend for 11 seasons and be worth $76 billion.

While the language was agreed to, incumbent TNT Sports had threatened to match. The CEO of TNT Sports’ parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery’s David Zaslav, has publicly stated he may attempt to use language in the current contract to remain involved with the NBA. If Zaslav goes through with that, he is expected to target Amazon’s package.

Silver said Tuesday the NBA’s media deals were discussed earlier in the day at the Board of Governors meeting.

“We did approve this stage of media proposals,” Silver said, but he cautioned that the process is not done and there were details he wasn’t able to mention.

Silver didn’t say Tuesday whether the five-day window for Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) to match had begun.

“I don’t have a sense of that,” Silver said, regarding how hard the next stage of the media rights deal process will be as he waits on a potential WBD match. “Much of it is outside my control. We’ll see.”

Regarding expansion, a steady, if informal, buildup had already started among prospective buyers for the next round of available franchises to hit the market, The Athletic reported in December 2023.

At the time, Seattle and Las Vegas were believed to be the front-runners to land new NBA teams, and each city was considered to be a strong market. Silver had also previously talked up Mexico City and said the league would be “looking seriously” at the city. He previously said Montreal and Vancouver have each shown interest in having an NBA team.

This will be updated.

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(Photo: David Dow / NBAE via Getty Images)