Sports
Is the NBA expanding to Vegas? In-Season Tournament a strong sign of what could be next – The Athletic
NBA
LAS VEGAS — This week, the NBA will descend upon Las Vegas in full force. Even for a city used to spectacle, it’s bringing something novel along with it. For the first time in decades, the league will hold real, live, actual — yes, they count — regular-season games in Sin City. It is a step into the breach unlike any other for the NBA.
Advertisement
Professional basketball has come to Vegas before. There have been exhibition games, the 2007 NBA All-Star Game, NBA Summer League, even a few Utah Jazz games in the 1980s, a playoff game between the Los Angeles Lakers and Portland Trail Blazers in 1992, the NBA G League Ignite franchise since 2020 and, for the last six seasons, WNBA games. But the NBA has never put a product on display quite like the one it will on Thursday afternoon when the NBA In-Season Tournament semifinals tip off at T-Mobile Arena.
While it is a seminal moment for the league and the city, it is also one open to much conjecture and forecasting. NBA commissioner Adam Silver has tiptoed around expansion in recent years, and Las Vegas has come up as a potential home for a new franchise. This week will likely do little to silence those rumblings.
In July, Silver called Vegas “our 31st franchise;” now, everyone is waiting to see if Vegas will actually be the league’s 31st franchise if — maybe, when — it turns to its expansion following the completion of its next media-rights deals. This week may well serve as a dry run for both sides. A closer review of the relationship between Las Vegas and the NBA reveals how an idea that once seemed impossible — the home of legal sports betting actually serving as a home for an NBA team — sure seems as if it could be tantalizingly close.
“Vegas is created for professional sport, bar none,” NBA agent Warren LeGarie, who runs summer league, said last month. “It’s just one of those things that it’s like a harmonic convergence of if all things basketball came together.”
A 2003 conversation between LeGarie, his business partner Albert Hall and then-NBA deputy commissioner Silver changed everything. LeGarie and Hall had pitched the NBA on bringing a summer league to Las Vegas in the late 1990s, but they were promptly denied. Players, coaches and executives frequented the city for workouts, meetings, scouting and camps in the offseason, but the league simply wasn’t comfortable officially attaching its name to a city known for gambling, wild nightlife and nefarious activity.
Advertisement
When LeGarie and Hall made another run at Silver, however, the tenor had changed. Rather than getting caught up in the perceived negative connotation that came along with Las Vegas, Silver was greatly intrigued by the potential of the market. And after running it up the chain, Las Vegas Summer League was born in 2004.
Although support and excitement for the event was initially modest, it grew rapidly, and Las Vegas ultimately became the host city for NBA Summer League. Its success has been resounding.
The prominence of NBA Summer League, the buzz surrounding USA Basketball training camp since it came to Las Vegas in 2006 and the way the WNBA’s Las Vegas Aces have thrived on their way to winning two championship since arriving to the city in 2018 has shown there’s a significant appetite for professional basketball in the desert.
“Vegas is home to the NBA,” NBA senior vice president, event strategy & management Joseph Graziano said last month. “We’ve got a great fan base that we’re really excited about.”
The NBA In-Season Tournament will provide another opportunity for that fan base to flex its strength. In addition to Las Vegas locals, the NBA also expects significant turnout from those who travel domestically and internationally. The 150,000 fans who attended NBA Summer League this year included people from 45 U.S. states and 30 countries. The NBA believes that global interest will translate to an event featuring actual NBA contests.
According to the NBA, average attendance in November — which included both tournament and non-tournament games — was 18,208, which is the highest average attendance for the month in league history. There’s surely other factors, but that indicates that the NBA In-Season Tournament has driven increased interest. It remains to be seen, but could carry over to the semifinals in Las Vegas.
Advertisement
“This is going to show the continued interest of our Las Vegas fans to be able to experience the NBA live in real time and to be able to do it more and more,” Graziano said. “I think this is going to show the vibrancy of the market at an even deeper level.”
The follow-up question is unavoidable: If the NBA views Las Vegas as such a great market, will it bring a franchise to the city? There’s no definitive answer, but there have been signs that the chances of it happening are increasing.
In 2022, Oak View Group purchased land near The Strip for the purposes of building a privately funded, $10 billion casino resort that’ll include a $1 billion, 20,000-seat arena built to NBA specifications. OVG CEO Tim Leiweke stated this summer that construction is expected to start without a commitment from a professional franchise. It’ll be similar to the approach with OVG’s Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle, which completed a $1.15 billion renovation in 2021. Still, that doesn’t mean the company is oblivious to what doors a new arena in Las Vegas may open.
“There’s a lot of people that I know of that want to buy an NBA franchise if one becomes available in Las Vegas,” Leiweke said last year. “I’m convinced there will be people that will step up if the NBA decides to expand and chase a franchise. But what they need is the certainty of an arena. You can’t have a question mark.”
Plans don’t guarantee results. For example, the All Net Resort & Arena was proposed in 2013, but construction was never finished, and the Clark County Commission ended the project last month. With that being said, Leiweke’s track record suggests he’ll stick to his word. Plus, Leiweke has already helped produce an arena built to NBA specifications in Las Vegas. The former president of Anschutz Entertainment Group led the construction of T-Mobile Arena, which opened in 2016 and is home to the NHL’s Golden Knights.
The OVG project, when completed, could give a future NBA team its own arena, and a venue it would not have to share with any other professional sports team. That would allow it first access to dates and scheduling needs. There is hope that it’s completed in 2026. LeGarie’s Summer League could move there when it opens, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the matter, giving the arena a prime tenant.
The NBA hasn’t committed to a plan for expansion, but the sense is that it could come sometime after its current TV deal expires in 2025. In theory, that could align with OVG’s plans.
GO DEEPER
What we know about NBA expansion and the cities looking to get in the game
Even if the OVG arena becomes reality, it’s fair to question whether Las Vegas has enough room for another professional sports franchise. Las Vegas Valley has a population of just over 2.2 million and is already home to the Golden Knights, Aces and NFL’s Raiders with the MLB’s A’s set to arrive in 2025.
Advertisement
“Professional sports teams in Vegas for a long time, it was in fact a taboo; the Golden Knights sort of broke the mold and actually did so amazingly well,” said Irwin Kisher, the co-chair of the sports law group at Herrick, Feinstein LLP, and who has negotiated several team and sports media transactions. “Then followed by the Raiders. And so my point being is Vegas being such a growing, dominant market, and people getting past the wagering and the issues that were unique to Vegas for a little while, it’s clearly going to be, at least in my opinion, it’s going to be certainly a three-sport town, but probably a four-sport town too. And so the question is going to be, you know, is basketball going to expand there?”
There’s reason for optimism that Las Vegas can handle the NBA. The Golden Knights were fourth in the NHL in average attendance in 2023, the Aces led the WNBA in attendance and the Raiders were second in the NFL in annual revenue this past year. Additionally, Las Vegas has drawn large-scale events such as the Formula 1 Las Vegas Grand Prix and will host the Super Bowl in 2024.
“Vegas really grew up as a city,” LeGarie said. “They turned it into something spectacular. All of these things have made Vegas a top-notch, first-rate destination.”
Still, the NBA will have to be certain about the question of whether the market is sustainable to completely pledge itself to Las Vegas with an in-market team. The In-Season Tournament is another testing ground that could inform the answer.
Local promotion for the NBA In-Season Tournament in Las Vegas has been ongoing for weeks. Graphics have frequently been on display from the LED exterior of The Sphere to billboards along The Strip to the screens outside T-Mobile Arena, which will host the games.
Whether the tournament goes down as an endorsement of an NBA team coming to Las Vegas permanently, of course, will depend on the crowds the event is able to muster. The NBA is already a believer that the city can deliver a performance like no other. That is why the league chose it to host the tournament’s final four.
“Fans are craving more immersion and they’re craving more personalization and more customization; and I think Las Vegas has been able to do that at scale,” Graziano said. “To deliver fans something they truly can’t get anywhere else … You earmark your moment when you’re going to go to Las Vegas once a year. Now, we’ve done that with the NBA and our basketball and our in-season tournament. It’s one of those experiences. So, it’s a great marriage.”
Advertisement
If the event is a success this year, it will only build momentum toward a permanent residency for the league. Silver will undoubtedly get questions about it this week. His answers will be closely monitored as if every word contains a hint of what’s to come. Is the NBA bringing a team to Las Vegas? The city has already made a strong case.
— The Athletic’s Mike Vorkunov contributed to this story.
(Photo: David Dow / NBAE via Getty Images)
Subscribe to The Athletic for in-depth coverage of your favorite players, teams, leagues and clubs. Try a week on us.
Tashan Reed is a staff writer for The Athletic covering the Las Vegas Raiders. He previously covered Florida State football for The Athletic. Prior to joining The Athletic, he covered high school and NAIA college sports for the Columbia Missourian, Mizzou football, men’s basketball and women’s basketball for SBNation blog Rock M Nation, wrote stories focused on the African-American community for The St. Louis American and was a sports intern at the Commercial Appeal in Memphis through the Sports Journalism Institute. Follow Tashan on Twitter @tashanreed
