How the NBA’s media rights impact Sonics’ return to Seattle
The trigger the NBA’s chief has said will “very likely” lead to expansion is closer to triggering.
That means the Sonics’ return to Seattle is becoming more real.
More real. But, The News Tribune was told Thursday, not necessarily imminent.
Negotiations are ongoing with broadcast networks and streaming platforms on new NBA media-rights deals. They reportedly could be worth up to $79 billion over 11 years. That’s three times what the league’s current media rights are worth. Those current rights expire in 2025.
Last week, The Wall Street
Journal reported NBC is looking to re-acquire broadcast rights to NBA games for as much as $2.5 billion annually. NBC last carried league games from the 1990s until 2002, including when the Sonics played Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls at KeyArena in Seattle in the 1996 NBA Finals.
This week, the Journal reported Warner Bros. Discovery, the parent company of TNT, is “hopeful” it can retain its contract with the NBA by matching the offer by NBC and Peacock streaming service. Warner Bros.
So that process is progressing, but not done.
CLOSER, BUT NOT NECESSARILY IMMINENT
Joe Flint reported and wrote the two Wall Street Journal stories about NBC’s and TNT’s bids to get the NBA’s new media rights.
Flint told The News Tribune on 93.3 KJR-FM radio Thursday the completion of the media deals — and thus the NBA turning its attention to expansion — aren’t necessarily imminent.
“Everyone thinks this is going to be happening very soon. I’m a little more cynical on that,”
Flint told the The News Tribune on KJR about the new mediarights deals. “I think it will take a few more weeks.
“Could be two weeks. Could be two months,” Flint said. “I don’t think there’s any huge rush on this.”
That doesn’t temper expectations from people in Seattle that the Sonics are coming back.
THE NBA’S STANCE ON EXPANSION, SEATTLE
Last summer, while speaking to reporters at the league’s summer league in Las Vegas, NBA commissioner Adam Silver said: “We will turn to expansion once those new media deals are done.”
Silver also said in July 2023 of the markets for NBA expansion: “We will look at (Vegas). There’s no doubt there’s enormous interest in Seattle. That’s not a secret.”
Louisville, Vancouver, Nashville and Montreal are among other cities reportedly interested in bidding for an NBA expansion team.
This past February, Silver told TNT during the cable network’s broadcast of the NBA All-Star Game: “It’s very likely we will expand.”
The league’s commissioner
also said it’s likely the league will expand by two teams, to 32.
The SuperSonics played in Seattle from its expansion year of 1967 until 2008. That summer, the City of Seattle reached a settlement in its lawsuit and federal court case with Sonics owners. The settlement allowed thenSonics owner and Oklahoma-based Clay Bennett to move the Sonics to Oklahoma City. Bennett had bought the team in 2006 from then-Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz.
Part of that settlement that moved the team to Oklahoma said the City of Seattle retains the team name SuperSonics, the green-and-gold team colors, plus logos and trademarks — all to use should the NBA eventually return to the Pacific Northwest.
Now that the new media rights are getting closer to being finalized, it appears Seattle could have the Sonics back playing inside the NHL Kraken’s Climate Pledge Arena at Seattle Center by perhaps the fall of 2027. That would be for the beginning of the 202728 NBA season.
‘IT’S HEATING UP’
The Kraken’s owners built Climate Pledge Arena with the Oak View Group to fit an NBA team as well as the current NHL one in Seattle. The new arena has hosted NBA exhibition games. It has also hosted some Gonzaga and Seattle University basketball games and is the home arena for the WNBA’s Seattle Storm.
Two weeks ago, Kraken CEO Tod Leiweke told KJR radio’s Ian Furness on the air he expects Kraken co-owner Samantha Holloway “will be leading the charge for the NBA here, as well.”
Holloway reportedly emailed Kraken seasonticket holders last week to be anticipating “a parent brand that will umbrella the Kraken brand and prepare for other big opportunities,” the Seattle Times reported. That umbrella company is to put the Kraken and the new Sonics under one operating entity.
“I think it’s heating up,” Leiweke told KJR April 22 about the NBA returning to Seattle. “And I think something is going to happen. … We wanted to get in front of this. We wanted to build an arena that was custom-fit (for the NBA). We did a study that said our sight lines are better than two of the four NBA-only arenas.”
Leiweke told KJR two weeks ago he and his companies are ready to build an NBA team’s training center, much like they recently built the Kraken’s facility at Northgate north of downtown Seattle.
“Much of what the NBA left for (in 2008, a new arena with modern, luxury seating, a state-of-the-art practice facility) is here now,” Leiweke said. “And we have ownership that, I believe, will step up at the right time.
“And I think it’s something that’s going to happen.”
Seattle’s mayor agrees. He’s been touting it for a while now.
Bruce Harrell said in February, days after Silver’s comments the NBA “very likely will expand,” at the mayor’s State of the City address: “I’m ready to add another point to our 46 points of our downtown activation plan: Bringing the Sonics back.”
THE NBA EXPANSION PROCESS
So it’s now seen as a matter of when, not if, the NBA expands.
And that when could be after “two weeks, or two months,” as the WSJ’s Flint told The News Tribune about completion of the prerequisite league media-rights contracts.
When the league decides to expand, if it’s done as in the past, the NBA’s Board of Governors will decide which cities’ expansion bids to improve. The Board of Governors are the owners of the league’s 30 teams.
An NBA expansion franchise is likely to cost $3-4 billion. That money would get divided evenly among the owners of the league’s 30 existing teams. That would help offset those 30 owners having to divide the
NBA’s new media-rights revenues 32 ways, with two expansion teams added, instead of the current 30 shared portions of media money.
The NBA expansion process in most cases takes 2 1/2 to three years from bid submission to approval then beginning play. That depends on the availability of an arena the NBA deems suitable.
Unlike in 2008 when the Sonics left KeyArena for Oklahoma, Seattle now has a suitable NBA arena. The Oak View Group that built $1.15-billion Climate Pledge Arena did so with NBA specifications — and the eventual return of the Sonics to Seattle — in mind.
But first, the league must get its new mediarights deals done.
As Flint told The News Tribune on Thursday: “I don’t think this is going to wrap up by the end of the week or something.”