Marc Lasry says he’s still a Las Vegas finalist but ‘the other side’s higher,’ as Larry Tanenbaum joins the $1 billion race for London

Marc Lasry wants everyone to know he never left the Las Vegas race. A week after reports said his group had effectively dropped out of the bidding for the NBA’s planned expansion team, the former Bucks co-owner said on Wednesday, Oct. 28, that he and Canadian billionaire Steve Apostolopoulos are still one of the finalists.

“We’ve always been in, the question is what’s the price,” Lasry said in a television interview. “So, we bid, we’ve been told by the NBA that we’re one of two or three of the finalists. So we’re going through the documentation. I think the other side’s higher, but I don’t really know.”

That last sentence is the important one. Lasry did not say he would raise his offer, which he put at between $9 billion and $10 billion. He said he believes at least one rival has already gone above it, and that a winner could be chosen “within the next two to four weeks.”

Why the ‘still in’ and the ‘won’t raise’ stories both hold

The two versions are less contradictory than they look. Last week’s reporting said the league had told every bidder the franchise would cost $10 billion or more, and that the Lasry-Apostolopoulos group had answered that it would not pad its number. That was never a formal withdrawal: the bid stays on the table at its current level and wins only if neither rival pays more.

Lasry is still doing a finalist’s paperwork while openly casting himself as the underdog on price. The other two groups are the one led by Walmart heiress Nancy Walton Laurie and her husband Bill Laurie, which added Silver Lake co-CEO Egon Durban earlier this month, and a group pairing Golden Knights owner Bill Foley with former Suns owner Jerry Colangelo. Insiders see the Walton-Laurie bid as the front-runner.

Marc Lasry says his group is still in hunt for Las Vegas NBA expansion team, but may be outbid https://t.co/prSS829ssb #vegas #nbaexpansion #nba

— Mick Akers (@mickakers) October 29, 2026

The Lakers set the price

Lasry tied the Las Vegas price directly to the record sale of the Lakers, which Bob Iger and Josh Kushner agreed to buy from Mark Walter at a $12.5 billion valuation. Iger and Kushner had been chasing the Las Vegas expansion team themselves before they switched to an existing franchise. Lasry called that switch “brilliant.”

“You knew where Vegas was going to trade at, which was going to be around nine or 10 (billion),” he said. “Would you pay 25 percent more for the Lakers? The answer is yes. So, I think what Josh and Bob Iger did was brilliant in getting that, and I would tell you I think they’re going to make a fortune of money on that team.”

At $10 billion, a brand-new Las Vegas team with no players, no arena and no history would cost 80% of what one of the league’s two biggest brands just sold for. Lasry argued that the gap is smaller than it looks. “The Lakers are unique; the Knicks are unique; those are the two big franchises,” he said. “I think Vegas can be the third one.” He added that “Vegas is a little different than Milwaukee” and could become “one of the most profitable franchises.”

Meanwhile, the price of London

Lasry also pointed to the league’s growth abroad, including NBA Europe, and that market produced its own bidding news this week. Larry Tanenbaum, who recently finished a nine-year run as chairman of the NBA Board of Governors, is pursuing the London franchise in the planned NBA Europe league with an offer of roughly $1 billion or more, and is seen as a possible front-runner, industry reporting said on Wednesday.

Tanenbaum has fresh cash to spend. His company, Kilmer Sports, formally sold its 25% stake in Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment, the parent company of the Raptors and Maple Leafs, to Rogers Communications for $3.1 billion this month. It also matters under league rules. Current NBA ownership groups cannot buy NBA Europe teams, because the NBA, its teams and FIBA are set to own 52% of the new league in its first year. Someone who holds less than 5% of an NBA team can still take a minority share of a European club.

London is the most crowded race. Other groups reported to be interested include one built by former Tottenham Hotspur chairman Daniel Levy with Liberty Global and MSP Sports Capital, a group linking the Lewis family that controls Tottenham with former Knicks and Jazz executive Dave Checketts and the Eccles family, a technology-investor group led by Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora, former Chelsea chairman Todd Boehly, and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. Paris Saint-Germain is seen as the leader in Paris.

People close to the process expect the winning bids in London and Paris to go above $1 billion each, with other European cities in the $500 million to $1 billion range. The open question is the EuroLeague, whose board turned down the NBA’s reported offer of about $581 million to buy and merge with the league earlier this month and is part of why the franchise sales on hold are taking longer than planned.

What to watch

In Las Vegas, the key number is whether either the Walton-Laurie group or the Foley group commits to $10 billion or more. If one does, Lasry’s own words suggest he is out. If neither does, his offer becomes the best one left. Any winner still needs the votes of at least 23 of the 30 current owners, who split the expansion fee among themselves, worth about $333 million per team at $10 billion.

In London, the test is whether Tanenbaum’s offer pushes the price clearly past $1 billion and sets the ceiling for the rest of NBA Europe. If Lasry’s timeline holds, Las Vegas will be decided first, by late November.