NBA owners seem desperate for leverage vs Seattle Sonics expansion

NBA owners sure seem to be grasping at straws to find any way to drive up the price of a bid for a potential Seattle Sonics expansion team.

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The apparent latest attempt was brought to light by Bloomberg on Wednesday with an article that reported this about the difference in value expected for a potential Las Vegas franchise and one for Seattle:

(NBA) owners, who have the final say on expansion, worry that adding a Seattle team might not yield the desired financial return, according to people familiar with (the) process who weren’t authorized to speak publicly about the talks. One owner said they have to weigh earning expansion fees with dividing up media-rights revenue with more teams and player talent being diluted. The potential payout from Vegas has also exceeded expectations, while Seattle is a question mark, according to the owner.

The report added that bids for a Vegas team are “expected to reach $10 billion,” which would result in $330 million going to every one of the current 30 NBA teams. A bid for a Seattle team, meanwhile, is expected to be in the $6 billion range, which would net “a high end of about $200 million per club,” per Bloomberg.

This isn’t the first sign of the NBA trying to cast doubt on Seattle being awarded a team when the league’s owners vote by the end of this year on whether or not to accept bids and expand specifically to Vegas and the Emerald City. And in my opinion, it’s pretty obvious what the league’s owners are doing, which is anything they can to drive up the fee for a Seattle team.

The situation with Las Vegas is unsettled, which is actually better for the NBA. There are reportedly three groups vying to win a Vegas team, and that competition means the price is being driven up. Vegas, meanwhile, doesn’t have a ready-made arena for a new team. And that’s very different from Seattle.

There is one group that is far and away the clear favorite to win a Seattle bid, and the biggest reason for that is the group – One Roof Sports and Entertainment, which is run by Seattle Kraken chair Samantha Holloway and also owns the NHL team – controls Climate Pledge Arena, which opened in 2021 and was built with bringing the NBA back to Seattle as one of the primary focuses.

The divide in the value between Vegas and Seattle “is partly driven by the lack of competition in Seattle, where Samantha Holloway has dominated discussions and driven away other potential bidders, according to some of the people familiar,” Bloomberg reported.

Any competing bid for a Seattle team would have to either go through One Roof for access to Climate Pledge or build its own arena somewhere else in the region, and there sure doesn’t seem to be real interest for that outside of BlackSun Private Equity, which has proposed building an arena on Tulalip Tribes land in Marysville (which is over 30 miles north of Seattle) and seems very unlikely to be a true challenger to One Roof.

There was speculation that losing bidders for a Vegas franchise could turn to compete for a Seattle franchise, but that never seemed to be based in reality. In fact, Wednesday’s Bloomberg report included that “people familiar with the process say it’s more likely that losing bidders” for a Las Vegas team could join the One Roof group “in a limited partner role.”

There’s no indication that any of this has shaken One Roof.

Per Bloomberg, “A person familiar with (Holloway’s) thinking said her group has been in active dialogue with the league and remains dedicated to bringing a team back to Seattle.”

Meanwhile, when NBA commissioner Adam Silver addressed NBA expansion just over two weeks ago on The Pat McAfee Show, he seemed to speak about it as a likelihood. He also dispelled some recent concern that Mexico City could compete with Seattle for a team at this time, saying the league going south of the border is “not in the immediate plans,” but “down the road I think there’s real potential there.”

I think it really comes down to this: One Roof did the work to make itself a viable choice for a Seattle NBA expansion team, but in doing so it has created leverage over the NBA that does not exist in the Las Vegas situation. So, the league’s owners are simply looking for any way to gain leverage of their own when it comes to awarding a Sonics franchise to a group that has all its ducks lined up in a row.

At every turn, One Roof has played ball. And if losing bidders for a Vegas team want to join the One Roof cause, that only means more money behind the push to put a Sonics team in Climate Pledge.

I think there’s a pretty clear solution.

If the NBA owners have their doubts that a Seattle expansion franchise won’t be worth their while financially, just say what the figure needs to be for it to be so.

Ultimately, I think that’s what the league will do. These rumors and reports trying to cast doubt on Seattle being a viable spot for an expansion team seem to just be attempts to drive up the price of a team for a group that has no real competition.

And at this point, there’s no reason to think that One Roof won’t be ready once the NBA is finally ready to name its price.

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