NBA to take step toward Seattle expansion

Published 9:59 am Tuesday, March 17, 2026

It’s the biggest and best news yet for the Sonics returning to Seattle.

The NBA will vote for the first time next week at its Board of Governors meeting “to explore adding expansion teams exclusively in Las Vegas and Seattle,” ESPN NBA insider reporter Shams Charania wrote and said Monday morning.

Charania reported the vote is considered “a formality” to get the expansion process started in Seattle and Las Vegas.

No more nebulous time frames on a decision from the league on expansion.

No more listing of Louisville, Mexico City and all the other places the NBA might consider adding a 31st and 32nd franchise. No open bidding for new NBA markets.

The league reportedly is targeting two new franchises to begin play in Seattle and Las Vegas in the fall of 2028. That would be for the ‘28-29 NBA season.

The vote by the board of team owners will be during meetings March 24 and 25, Charania reported.

This is the first time the league has set a date for a vote, and set the cities to vote on for expansion. This also is the first time the NBA has given a targeted date for the new teams to begin play.

Now, “BRING BACK OUR SONICS!” is on.

Technically, the vote next week is for the processes of purchasing each expansion team to go forward. The fees could be $7-10 billion for each franchise, Charania reported.

The return of the Sonics could be one of two $10 billion franchise sales this year in Seattle. The Seahawks of the NFL are for sale. Estimates are the buyer(s) may pay $10-11 billion for the Super Bowl champions.

The richest sale of a franchise in North American sports history was last year’s purchase of the NBA’s Los Angeles Lakers, for $10 billion.

If 23 of the 30 owners that comprise the NBA Board of Governors vote next week in favor of proceeding in expansion process, they will set a threshold the bids for each new franchise must meet. If the resulting bids meet the league’s minimums, a final vote could happen later this year.

“This first step, this first vote, is looked at as a formality for the owners around the NBA to approve this vote, to go allow the league to see what those bids can look like,” Charania said on ESPN’s Get Up program Monday morning.

“This is the first of a multistep process.” The wait for the Sonics’ return

It’s been two years or more that the league has had expansion in the background.

The return of the SuperSonics has remained a tease to the city, and to the Pacific Northwest since the Sonics left in 2008. That was after Howard Schultz sold Seattle’s proud, historic, former NBA-champion franchise to a group from Oklahoma City and after a trial over its KeyArena lease ended with a settlement between Seattle city leaders and the Sonics’ new owners that allowed them to move the franchise to Oklahoma City.

Since then, the city has gained what led to the Sonics leaving in the first place: a glittering, new arena built to NBA specifications, including rich, luxury suites in downtown Seattle. Climate Pledge Arena, the 18,000-seat palace for the NHL’s Kraken and WNBA’s Storm in Seattle Center on the site of the Sonics’ former KeyArena, opened in 2021. That’s where the new Sonics would play.

NBA owners also know Seattle’s high-tech and corporate wealth make it perhaps the most attractive market in North America that doesn’t have a team.

League commissioner Adam Silver has mentioned expansion for two years, while first settling the NBA’s new media-rights contracts in early 2024.

Then it was expansion had to wait on the NBA waiting for the sales of its two most storied, highest-valued franchises, the Boston Celtics and the Lakers, in 2025.

The Sonics’ return to Seattle has been a should-be that has remained a when?

Monday’s news is the first step to the Sonics’ return being a will-be. With a targeted when.

The league obviously sees this as more than righting a wrong done in Seattle 18 years ago by Sonics buyer/owner Clay Bennett and his Oklahoma City friends.

NBA owners see a ton of money, tens of billions of dollars, they can make for themselves by returning the Sonics to Seattle.

“There is a growing majority of owners right now, I’m told, that are supportive of expansion,” Charania said.

“You think about Seattle and Las Vegas, those are two, big markets for the NHL (and) in the NFL. And could those two teams immediately emerge as top revenue generators, that’s what we’re going to see play out over 2026.”