The NBA has widely been expected to explore expansion following the sale of the Boston Celtics, which came in at a $6.1 billion valuation and will help set the benchmark for a potential expansion fee. The NBA, however, continues to take a slow approach towards expansion and cited the ongoing regional sports network issues as a reason for being cautious.
“The short answer is no new developments,” said Adam Silver. “But I would only say in terms of looking at this year, I think we’re still in the process of digesting the Celtics’ transaction. There’s no doubt that a major transaction like that becomes relevant to expansion.
“That deal has just been presented to us, so we’re still analyzing it. My sense is once we’ve been through that process that we’ll turn to it in a more serious way.
“The league office has continued to model what potential expansion could look like over the last year or so. And again, that included both understanding dilution from an economic standpoint — we now have a better understanding of that now that we have our national deals in place — and also from a player standpoint.
“I’d just add the last component, which also is giving me just a bit of pause, is that we’d like to have a better sense of where we’re going with local media. Bill Koenig is here, our head of media. He made a fairly lengthy presentation to the board on that. It’s well known that we’ve seen some significant declines there. Virtually two-thirds of our teams are now dealing with RSNs that recently experienced bankruptcies or have shut down.
“I think while we understand the national media landscape now, to the extent we’re looking at expansion domestically, I think we’d really like to understand what that opportunity for local media is, because it’s a pretty critical component of our teams’ economics.”
