The NBA says it’s ready to hear from bidders on possible expansion teams in Seattle and Las Vegas.
At least one group in Seattle plans to put forth a bid, with seemingly two in Las Vegas and maybe more. The league believes there will be multiple bidders in both markets.
Despite all the buzz there are looming questions about how this whole process is going to play out and if a final decision will come from the league to go ahead and expand. And one of the biggest questions that remains is who can afford to pay an expansion fee that is expected to be north of $6 billion and could be upward of $10 billion?
Until groups come forward and start laying out their ownership structure plans that uncertainty will linger over the entire process. At the same time, it’s worth looking at what the NBA’s current ownership rules dictate and how a group could be structured with the ability to afford such an audacious price tag without one individual being asked to shell out billions upon billions of dollars.
Of course, if someone did have the individual wealth and desire to do that, it would make it a simpler process. See Steve Ballmer and the Los Angeles Clippers as the most recent obvious example. But as Bloomberg’s database points out, there are only 327 people in the world with the net worth of $10 billion or more. And the guess is not all of them are interested in a basketball team.
So it will likely have to be a group, or a consortium, or a conglomerate, or a bunch of super-duper rich folks who want to be a pro sports owner that throw together a bid that will meet what the NBA requirements are for how their ownership groups must be structured.
Here’s a look at the rules and how it could break down. We decided to use $8 billion as the price tag for the expansion fee as it seems likely to land above $6 billion but also seems unlikely to reach the $10 billion number that’s been floated.
Principal owner
Each franchise must designate a principal owner who serves as the primary representative for the NBA’s Board of Governors.
This person is generally the face of ownership. Think James Dolan with the Knicks, Josh Harris and David Blitzer with the 76ers, Micky Arison with the Heat, Alex Rodriguez and Marc Lore with the Timberwolves or Steve Ballmer with the Clippers. They are the person most thought of — generally — when it comes to team ownership.
While the principal owner almost always holds the largest stake of ownership in a franchise, league rules don’t require that to be the case. NBA rules stipulate that a controlling owner only needs to own at least 15% of a team. That means on an $8 billion price tag, a controlling owner would need to put forth $1.2 billion as part of the ownership structure.
That’s still an absurd amount of money for one person and the expectation is a principal owner would hold a more significant investment. But it also opens the pool of possibilities.
In terms of the only publicly known group expected to bid on a team for Seattle, that number seems to make it more plausible. One Roof Sports and Entertainment is headed by Samantha Holloway. While it’s unclear what her net worth is, her father David Bonderman was believed to have a net worth of over $7 billion at the time of his death in December 2024 according to Forbes.
So, no, one person doesn’t need to front the entire cost or even the majority of the cost to make it work.
Institutional funds
Also known as private equity, institutional funds can hold upward of 30% of a franchise.
What exactly is private equity in the realm of pro sports ownership? Essentially, private equity in sports means firms raise money from outside investors and use those funds to invest in teams. But while most individual members of ownership groups try to stay in for the long haul, private equity investment usually is for a shorter term with the idea of selling their stake for a profit.
It’s become a fashionable option for ownership groups and PE firms to turn toward in recent years as the rise in franchise valuations have in some ways outperformed the S&P 500.
According to PitchBook, 20 of the 30 teams in the league had some sort of private equity investment in their ownership structure going into the 2025-26 season. The use of private equity as a vehicle toward team ownership is only expected to increase across all of sports as franchise valuations climb.
The only NBA teams currently without any private equity investment: Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Memphis, Miami, Orlando, Toronto, New York and the Los Angeles Clippers.
The NBA has strict rules on private equity involvement. They can’t serve as the governors with voting privileges. Equity groups can only hold stakes in eight different teams and they can hold only 20% of a specific team. But two equity groups can be used to reach the 30% benchmark — one has 20% and the other 10% or 15% and 15%, etc.
But they can make up a significant total of a hefty price tag like the expected expansion fee. At 30%, private equity could be on the hook for $2.4 billion.
A controlling owner at $1.2 billion and private equity at $2.4 billion equals almost half the needed total of an $8 billion investment.
Minority partners
One of the biggest issues of the previous ownership of the SuperSonics — aside from selling the team to out of town interests under the belief there would be good-faith efforts to keep the team here — was there were so many owners.
The Basketball Club of Seattle was led by Howard Schultz, but it included roughly 45-50 total members as part of its ownership group. While it ended up being the executive board of the ownership group that voted 5-4 to approve the sale of the Sonics to Clay Bennett’s group from Oklahoma City, there were a multitude of voices involved in the entire series of events that led to the decision to sell.
This time around, there can’t be that many voices, according to how NBA rules on ownership have evolved.
The NBA has limited the number of minority investors in a franchise to 25, while instituting a floor of 1% they must invest in order to be considered part of the group. That means an individual must be willing to invest $80 million. That’s a hefty floor one must reach for the chance to have a minuscule voice or just claim they are an “owner.”
At the bare minimums of investment from other parties, $80 million among 25 minority investors adds $2 billion to the pot, which leaves a shortfall of just over $2 billion. If a principal owner isn’t able to invest upward of 30% or more in the expansion fee, then there still needs to be a whale, or several whales, involved among the minority investors to reach the $8 billion mark.