Las Vegas’ NBA dreams are within reach, but are expectations soaring too high?

NBA expansion to Las Vegas has been steadily gaining momentum for several years, and new reporting from ESPN this week has indicated that the league will choose a winning bid from three finalists in “the very near future”, meaning by the end of the year.

The report pegged the final bidding range for the expansion franchise and a new arena at around $12-13 billion, which would place it near the top of the current market. An investment group headed by Josh Kushner and former Disney CEO Bob Iger bought the Los Angeles Lakers, one of the NBA’s most storied franchises, for a league record $12.5 billion in August. The Lakers’ arena is owned by Anschutz Entertainment Group and was not included in that deal.

ESPN, citing sources familiar with the matter, said the three finalists include:

• Nancy Walton Laurie and Bill Laurie
• Steve Apostolopoulos and Marc Lasry
•  Bill Foley and Jerry Colangelo

All three groups either have previous experience owning professional sports franchises or have attempted to purchase teams in recent years. In March, NBA owners voted unanimously to approve Las Vegas and Seattle as potential expansion sites, but ESPN is reporting that the league is “closing on Las Vegas before Seattle” because the former has “a livelier bidding market with higher offers”. The bidders are also said to be more interested in building a new arena rather than using the existing Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle.

Las Vegas’ relationship with the NBA has increased significantly over the last 20-plus years. Sin City has hosted the NBA’s annual Summer League tournament since 2004, and the semi-finals and finals of the NBA Cup in-season tournament have been held in Las Vegas since it began in 2023.

Up-and-down data

The NBA would be the last remaining major sports league to expand to Las Vegas — the NHL’s Golden Knights debuted in 2017, the NFL’s Raiders came to town in 2020 and the MLB’s Athletics will begin play in 2028. If approved, Las Vegas would be the smallest of the 12 existing metro areas with all four major leagues.

Expansion talks are coming at an interesting time for the city’s economy. From 2020-2024, Las Vegas had its best stretch of performance of all time, but tourism and visitation metrics have fallen since the start of 2025 while gaming revenue has vacillated.

In August, gross gaming revenue for the Strip was up slightly (+0.7%) year-over-year to $684 million, according to the Nevada Gaming Control Board. The Strip’s pace for the fiscal year is now 2.2% ahead of last year. Clark County as a whole, which includes Las Vegas and other southern Nevada markets, was up 2.8% in August and is +2.1% for the fiscal year.

Visitor volume for the month, however, was down 4.3% to 3 million, per the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, which represented the biggest YoY decrease so far in 2026. Average daily room rates for the Strip decreased 11% and revenue per available room decreased nearly 16%.

Total air traffic to Harry Reid International Airport slid 9% YoY to 4.1 million passengers, which brings the year-to-date total to -7%. Domestic and international traffic are both down 7% so far this year, and this comes after overall traffic also fell 7% in 2025.

NBA value vs. NFL

Las Vegas has turned to sports as its primary economic growth vehicle in recent years. In addition to the pro sports franchises, the city has attracted premier events like the F1 Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Super Bowl, the NCAA College Football Playoff, March Madness and more.

It has become common for events like these to approach or exceed $1 billion in economic impact, and the valuations of all the city’s franchises have increased substantially since their debuts. This is even true of the Athletics, whose valuation has risen from $1.2 billion in 2024 to $2 billion now despite being two years away from launch, per Forbes.

But even with all this growth, the market is still unproven for an NBA franchise. This is especially true if the price reaches or exceeds $10 billion with at least $2 billion more for an arena. The NFL is the unquestioned leader in US sports business, with an average team revenue of over $660 million per season compared to about $416 million for NBA teams, according to Forbes. Yet the record NFL sale price is $9.6 billion, set in July when a group led by Vinod Khosla purchased the reigning Super Bowl champion Seattle Seahawks.

At the G2E 2026 conference in Las Vegas this week, local officials were bullish on the NBA’s prospects in the market. Janis Burke, chief sports officer of the LVCVA, told iGB that “Vegas owns basketball”, adding that the buzz surrounding Summer League was “unbelievable” this summer.

“You’ve got every shoe company and tournaments looking to come here, you’ve got the NCAA interested, the NBA, AAU. I mean basketball is huge here,” Burke said. “I think having the NBA full-time is just going to bring a whole new dynamic and put a stamp that we really do want basketball.”

T-Mobile or bust?

As the race for the winning bid continues, the arena for the would-be franchise remains perhaps the biggest unanswered question. Several NBA-spec arena projects on the Strip have popped up and fizzled out in previous years but the discussions are getting more serious in light of the NBA’s expansion probe. Stakeholders from the north and south ends of the Strip are furiously making their pitches for the chance to develop some of the few remaining plots along Las Vegas Boulevard.

The league has reportedly circled a 2028-29 debut for the expansion franchise, which would seem to indicate that T-Mobile Arena would be an interim home while a permanent arena is built. T-Mobile is the home of the Golden Knights and is co-owned by MGM Resorts, AEG and Knights owner Bill Foley, who is a finalist for the NBA franchise. There are several MGM properties in close proximity, including Park MGM, New York-New York and the Aria.

The arena currently hosts the NBA Cup tournament games but would need significant upgrades to host a team full-time. Foley has pledged to fund these upgrades if his bid is selected, but that is no guarantee. With such a massive purchase price for the team, it seems likely that the incoming owners would want a new arena to host other events and generate as much income as possible. This was the case for the Golden State Warriors, whose ownership built the lucrative Chase Center in San Francisco and now lead the NBA in revenue.

Matt Prevost, chief revenue officer of MGM subsidiary BetMGM, told iGB at G2E that they’d “love to see” the prospective team in T-Mobile, “but if it ends up in a different place in the long run, that’s fine too.”

Matt Rybaltowski contributed to this report.