The Celtics Just Set a Record. NBA Expansion Is Up Next

NBA owners are likely rejoicing over Thursday’s news that the Boston Celtics are being sold for $6.1 billion, the highest price ever paid for a sports franchise. Not only does it help the valuations of their own teams, but it sets the stage for the league’s expected expansion.

Though nothing formal is underway, the NBA looks on course to add multiple teams at some point in the next few years. Commissioner Adam Silver said late last year that the process had “begun internally at the league office,” with the intention to widen it to owners and potential bidders in the future.

Before that, however, certain goals had to be met. First, the league needed labor peace, which it achieved in 2023 with a new seven-year CBA. Then it turned to its media deals. The NBA signed $76 billion worth of deals last July. The Celtics sale could be viewed as a third hurdle, a new benchmark price from which to begin the conversations with potential groups looking to join the league.

The Celtics announced that a group led by William Chisholm has reached a deal to buy the team in multiple stages.

Expansion is essentially selling equity in the league. Expansion fees are shared directly among owners—to offset the dilution of NBA-wide revenue from things like sponsorships and media deals—and in this case could easily be a $150-plus million windfall for the 30 existing teams for each new franchise added.

Speaking at owners meetings in New York in September, Silver slow-played the expansion process.

“There was not a lot of discussion in this meeting about expansion,” he said. “It was something that we told our board we plan to address this season, and we’re not quite ready yet. But I think there’s certainly interest in the process, and I think that we’re not there yet in terms of having made any specific decisions about markets or even frankly to expand.”

It’s unclear if expansion will be a topic at owners meetings in New York later this month. That said, for many in the league it’s a matter of when, not if. And Silver has said that if it were to happen, he would expect it to be two cities.

Seattle and Las Vegas are by far the most discussed potential landing spots. Fenway Sports Group, owners of the Red Sox and Liverpool FC, are interested in Vegas as an NBA market. So too is Golden Knights owner Bill Foley. In Seattle, the $1.15 billion renovation of KeyArena, now Climate Pledge Arena, was viewed as a significant hurdle cleared.

The NBA last expanded in 2004, when the then-Charlotte Bobcats became the league’s 30^th franchise. The fee at the time was $300 million. Previous reporting has speculated that the NBA’s next expansion fee might be in the $4 billion to $5 billion range,  but that was back when the highest price ever paid for control of an NBA team was $4 billion.

The NHL has added two teams in the past decade—the Golden Knights ($500 million expansion) and the Seattle Kraken ($650 million). The latest expansion teams in MLS have been Charlotte FC ($325 million), St. Louis City SC ($200 million) and San Diego FC ($500 million).