NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said the league will decide in 2026 whether to add two teams, with Las Vegas and Seattle emerging as the most likely expansion cities. Silver clarified to The Athletic that those two American cities are the ones upon which the league is most focused.
The commissioner spoke ahead of Tuesday’s NBA Cup championship in Las Vegas. He said the league has examined several markets but indicated expansion would almost certainly involve adding two franchises simultaneously.
Silver said the league is currently working with existing teams to gauge interest and understand the economic implications of expansion. The primary issue involves whether the 30 current teams have appetite to divide the NBA’s roughly $11 billion in revenues among additional franchises.
“We’re in the process of working with our (existing) teams and gauging the level of interest and having a better understanding of what the economics would be on the ground for those particular teams and what a pro forma would look like for them,” Silver said. “And then sometime in 2026, we’ll make a determination.”
Las Vegas has hosted the NBA Cup championship for three years and the league’s primary Summer League since 2004. The city of approximately 2 million already supports the NFL Raiders, NHL Golden Knights, and WNBA Aces, with the Athletics scheduled to open a ballpark in 2028.
Seattle was home to the SuperSonics from 1967 until 2008 when the franchise relocated to Oklahoma City and became the Thunder. The city has long been considered a prime candidate for an NBA return.
The league’s 11-year, $76 billion broadcast agreement with major networks and streaming services does not grow with additional teams. Governors must be satisfied that revenues from new franchises would offset losses from dividing media rights among 32 teams instead of 30.
Per the collective bargaining agreement, players receive 51 percent of all basketball-related income. The remaining pie that owners divide is slightly more than $5 billion.
“I want to be sensitive about this notion that we’re somehow teasing these markets, because I know we’ve been talking about it for a while,” Silver said.
Silver addressed routine speculation about teams potentially relocating from smaller markets like Memphis or New Orleans. He emphasized the league cannot force teams to move and called relocation a “separate issue” from expansion.
“Just because some markets don’t generate the same revenue as others, it doesn’t mean they are markets that are not worthy of NBA franchises,” Silver said. “If you look in our constitution, the factors that the owners are required to look at in making determination on whether to relocate a team is to look at the support that team has historically had in that community, the operation of that team, the competitive opportunity in that market. And we live in a big country. So I think if we were to relocate team, I don’t think the right way to do it would be to rank the teams 1 to 30 in terms of market size or economic opportunities, markets, and then just take the two teams at the bottom and say, let’s take them to markets where they could be more prosperous.”
The NBA last expanded in 2004 when the Charlotte Bobcats became the league’s 30th franchise. Silver also mentioned the league considered Mexico City as a possible expansion site alongside its dual-track plan to begin a new league in Europe with FIBA.