NBA owners question Seattle’s expansion upside as Ferguson meets Silver: $6–6.5 billion vs. $10 billion in Las Vegas

NBA owners are no longer treating a Seattle expansion franchise as a sure second check. Sources cited by Bloomberg this week said some of them worry that a team in the Pacific Northwest “might not yield the desired financial return,” even as Las Vegas is tracking toward a franchise fee near $10 billion. The same reporting put Seattle in a lower band of about $6 billion to $6.5 billion. That gap is the story Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson walked into on Thursday when he met virtually with commissioner Adam Silver.

Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson will meet virtually with NBA Commissioner Adam Silver on Thursday as a possible decision on NBA expansion draws closer.

The meeting comes as the league focuses on Seattle and Las Vegas as potential expansion markets.

Via @seattletimes |… pic.twitter.com/vTqJ2mTgFR

— Sports Business Journal (@SBJ) November 5, 2026

What the price gap means for the other 30 clubs

Expansion fees are split among the league’s existing owners. At $10 billion for Las Vegas, each of the 30 clubs would take home about $330 million from that market alone. At $6.5 billion for Seattle, the high end of the range now being floated, each club would get about $217 million. Drop Seattle to $6 billion and the per-club check falls to about $200 million. Owners told Bloomberg they have to weigh those checks against two quieter costs: sharing national media money with more teams, and spreading the same player talent across a larger league.

Market	Reported franchise fee	Rough payout per current club
Las Vegas	About $10 billion	About $330 million
Seattle (high)	About $6.5 billion	About $217 million
Seattle (low)	About $6 billion	About $200 million
Owners’ two-team planning figure	Combined fees that clear ~$500–600 million per club	Needs both markets, or a much higher single fee

Several teams have already budgeted as if two expansion fees are coming. Ownership sources have said clubs are planning around $500 million to $600 million apiece from a Las Vegas-plus-Seattle package, and that one Eastern Conference team has penciled in about $533 million. If Seattle stalls or is dropped, those budgets shrink by hundreds of millions of dollars overnight. That is why the softer Seattle number is not only a Seattle problem. It is a boardroom problem for every franchise that has already spent the money in its head.

Why Seattle’s bid is strong — and why the price is soft

The leading Seattle group is One Roof Sports and Entertainment, led by Samantha Holloway, majority owner of the NHL’s Seattle Kraken and the operator of Climate Pledge Arena. Melinda French Gates joined the group earlier this year. Amazon chief executive Andy Jassy and Hollywood producer Jerry Bruckheimer are among the other investors named in public reporting. Climate Pledge Arena opened in 2021 for the Kraken; Silver has said the building is viable for the NBA with limited upgrades. That package is exactly what Ferguson pointed to on Wednesday when he said Seattle “check[s] each and every box” an expansion market could want.

The same arena advantage is what is holding the fee down. Holloway controls the only Seattle building that can host an NBA team right now. A rival bidder would need a new arena that could cost more than $2 billion and would face the same political fights that helped push the SuperSonics out in 2008. Sources cited by Bloomberg said Holloway has “dominated discussions and driven away other potential bidders,” so there is no bidding war to push Seattle toward the Las Vegas number. Silver has suggested that groups that lose in Las Vegas could look west; people familiar with the process told Bloomberg those groups are more likely to join Holloway as limited partners than to launch a competing Seattle bid.

Ferguson’s meeting, and the politics around it

Ferguson’s office requested Thursday’s call. It is his third conversation with Silver this year, after meetings in February during Super Bowl week and again in March. He told reporters he remains optimistic, that he “lived” Sonic basketball as a kid near the old Coliseum, and that he does not pretend to have a crystal ball on the owner-to-owner talks. His job, he said, is to keep the line to the commissioner open.

The politics around the meeting are louder than the meeting itself. Silver previously described Seattle as “no longer a lock” after a Board of Governors session, and Mexico City has been floated as an alternate second market. Local reporting tied some of Silver’s caution to Washington’s new high-earner income tax and to a long, strained history between the league and Seattle politicians over arenas. A ballot measure to repeal that tax failed this week. Ferguson is not negotiating the franchise fee; he is trying to keep the city in the room while the fee debate plays out among owners who will vote on any expansion.

One team, two teams, or none

The NBA opened an expansion process in March and hired PJT Partners to run it. Silver has repeatedly said the outcomes on the table include one new franchise, two, or none. Adding only Las Vegas would leave the league at 31 teams, an odd number it has not carried since 2003-04. Las Vegas has drawn three serious ownership groups and a price that has already exceeded what many owners expected; we covered that climb when the Las Vegas expansion fee at $10 billion or more and when Marc Lasry remaining a Las Vegas finalist while the London Europe race ran in parallel.

Seattle’s case is different. The fan base has waited since 2008. The arena is open. The ownership group is deep. What it does not have is a second bidder forcing the number up. For owners who want a clean $500 million-plus distribution from expansion, that missing auction is the whole problem. For owners who worry about diluting media rights and the draft, a cheaper Seattle team is not automatically a better Seattle team — it is a smaller check that still adds a 32nd mouth at the national TV table.

What comes next

A decision on the Las Vegas winner is expected first, possibly within weeks. The league still says it wants a final expansion answer before the end of the calendar year, with December floated as the announcement window. Watch three things between now and then: whether any Las Vegas runner-up actually redirects capital into Seattle instead of taking a minority seat with Holloway; whether Silver keeps Mexico City on the whiteboard as leverage; and whether the Seattle fee moves off the $6 billion to $6.5 billion band that is currently making owners hesitate. Ferguson’s Thursday call does not set that price. The Board of Governors will.