Boston, MA – September 23: Boston Celtics owner Wyc Grousbeck, right, and president of basketball … More operations Brad Stevens spoke at a press conference to address the suspension of their head coach Ime Udoka. (Photo by John Tlumacki/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)
Boston Globe via Getty Images
A group led by Bill Chisholm has agreed to purchase the Boston Celtics for a record $6.1 billion, ESPN’s Shams Charania reported Thursday. That price point was right in line with Forbes’ latest valuation ($6.0 billion) of the Celtics from December.
As Forbes’ Justin Teitelbaum and Brett Knight noted in October, the NBA’s new national TV contracts—worth roughly $76 billion over the next 11 years—along with record attendance and sponsorship are causing the value of the league’s franchises to skyrocket. They estimated that no NBA team would sell for less than $3 billion now.
Now that a sale agreement has been reached for one of the league’s preeminent franchises, the NBA can turn its attention to expansion. Tom Friend of Sports Business Journal reported Thursday that the league “is expected to begin exploring expansion in earnest” in the wake of this sale. ESPN’s Tim Bontemps added that it “could have an impact on the potential timeline” for expansion.
“For months, sources have said that process wouldn’t move forward until there was clarity on Boston’s situation, and where this sale price wound up,” Bontemps wrote. “Now that there is clarity—and at this kind of number—the league could revisit that timeline.”
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver told reporters in September that there “was not a lot of discussion” about expansion at the league’s board of governors meeting, “but only largely not for lack of interest.” Instead, the league office told governors that they weren’t “quite ready” to entertain those discussions.
The board of governors typically meets in the spring as well, so the timing of this sale figures to spark a new round of expansion talks in the coming weeks.
The Expansion Timeline
This past September, Bontemps and ESPN colleagues Kevin Pelton and Brian Windhorst reported that both “league sources and people who are working on forming bidding groups” are aiming to have expansion teams up and running in the 2027-28 season. “Although starting in 2026-27 isn’t impossible, it has become more unrealistic,” they added.
At the time, they estimated that “a pair of new expansion teams could net the league north of $10 billion combined—meaning every team would receive a check for over $300 million as the new teams come into the league.” Given the NBA’s current rate of growth and the potential markets it could tap for expansion, that might wind up being on the low end.
Prior to the sale of the Celtics, the average value of the league’s 30 franchises had already jumped by 15% within the past year to $4.4 billion, per Forbes. The Golden State Warriors ($8.8 billion), New York Knicks ($7.5 billion) and Los Angeles Lakers ($7.1 billion) all had higher valuations than the Celtics, while the Los Angeles Clippers ($5.5 billion) and Chicago Bulls ($5.0 billion) weren’t far behind.
Once the NBA decides on how many expansion teams to add—it’s widely expected that it’ll add two in this round—cities and ownership groups will begin to place bids. After the league office finalizes the new teams, the next step will be to hold an expansion draft.
The expansion teams will be working with a smaller budget than the rest of the league’s teams for their first few seasons, which will put them at a disadvantage early on. They’ll have a salary cap worth 66.67% of the NBA’s salary cap in their first season and 80% in the second season. In the third year and beyond, they’ll have the same salary cap as every other team.
Contenders For Expansion Teams
Seattle and Las Vegas are considered the “heavy favorites” to land expansion teams, according to John Hollinger of The Athletic. Silver told ESPN’s Pat McAfee last February that “Vegas is definitely on our list.”
In July, Randall Williams and Kim Bhasin of Bloomberg reported that the “total price tag, including building a new arena, has the potential to hit $7 billion” if the league does award a team to Las Vegas. They added that the group that owns the Seattle Kraken is the “heavy favorite” to land an NBA team if the league expands to Seattle, but “the Vegas team appears very much up for grabs.”
Tim Booth of the Seattle Times noted that David Bonderman, the father of Kraken majority owner Samantha Holloway, was a minority owner of the Celtics prior to this sale. “The sale would divest the Bonderman family from any additional NBA ownership stakes as would be required in order to have ownership in another franchise,” he added.
After news of the Celtics sale broke Thursday, Holloway released a statement hinting at her ownership group’s interest in bringing the NBA back to Seattle.
“We understand that today’s news will pique the interest of NBA fans in Seattle,” Holloway said. “As we have said before, our ownership group is ideally positioned for an NBA team with Climate Pledge Arena and the incredible fans in Seattle, but we will always be respectful of the Commissioner’s process and timeline.”
Bontemps, Pelton and Windhorst reported in September that “the widespread belief among league and team sources” is that “Seattle and Las Vegas are the logical landing points for a pair of new expansion teams,” but other cities could always hop into the mix. They mentioned Mexico City, Montreal, Vancouver, Kansas City and Louisville as other possibilities.
Once the sale of the Celtics gets finalized, that figures to bring the NBA one step closer to adding a pair of expansion teams, whether in Seattle, Las Vegas or elsewhere.
Unless otherwise noted, all stats via NBA.com, PBPStats, Cleaning the Glass or Basketball Reference. All salary information via Spotrac and salary-cap information via RealGM. All odds via FanDuel Sportsbook.
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