It’s a new era of pro basketball in the Pacific Northwest.
With the sale of the Portland Trail Blazers becoming official at the end of March and the league exploring expansion to Seattle, NBA fans could have a lot to look forward to in the coming years.
The State of Oregon pledged north of $300 million to secure the team’s future in Portland. Those funds will be contingent upon the team’s new ownership signing a 20-year lease, which would keep the team in the Moda Center through at least 2050. Now it’s up to the City of Portland and Multnomah County to come up with their own funding. The Trail Blazers are looking for around $600 million dollars for the renovation of the Moda Center, so the only question remaining is how much of the rest the public will be on the hook for. Some would prefer to see the team’s new ownership group contribute to the pot. The team’s new ownership group would prefer to be on the hook for none of it.
No matter how much the public winds up on the hook for the Moda Center renovation, the future of the Trail Blazers appears secure. The NBA would not have held a vote on exploring expansion to Seattle and Las Vegas if that were not the case. The only real leverage the team had in its negotiations was the threat to leave Portland. With the ship having now sailed on expansion in Seattle and Las Vegas, the threat appears to have very little teeth left.
How real was the possibility that the Trail Blazers would leave? To be clear, the team was never “as good as gone” as one major sports columnist claimed. The team may never have been as far as getting a toe out the door. But the NBA made sure to hold off on voting to explore expansion to Seattle and Vegas until they had wrung public dollars out of Oregon for the Trail Blazers. Had the team not received public funding, the expansion vote would not have happened, and the State and the team’s ownership would have been in a standoff, each trying to get the other to blink before the team’s current lease expires in 2030.
While putting $600 million that could have gone to schools or affordable housing into an entertainment venue isn’t a great look, neither is the potential loss of Oregon’s premier sports franchise. No politician wants to be known as the “one who lost the Trail Blazers.”
In any event, the Moda Center will go from a slightly aging building that hosts the Trail Blazers, Fire, Winterhawks, major concerts, NCAA tournaments, monster truck shows, and Disney on Ice … to a refreshed arena that does the same thing.
Among NBA owners, Rip City Rising, the Tom Dundon-led group that now owns the team, ranks near the bottom in terms of net worth. Dundon’s net worth is “only” around 2 billion dollars. For reference, outgoing owner Jody Allen was worth $20 billion. That both makes it understandable that he doesn’t want to contribute much to an arena, but also means he doesn’t have much leverage in a threat to move the team.
Would Dundon really have wanted to take the financial hit of burning a successful market and then sinking money into launching in a new one? We’ll never know. With the NBA narrowing its focus to Las Vegas and Seattle for expansion, any other potential NBA market would, at best, be a lateral move in relocating the team. Moving the Trail Blazers to Seattle would be insane for numerous reasons, and the NBA has deep pockets waiting to put a team in Vegas. For Dundon, it’s now likely Portland or bust, no matter what sort of deal gets worked out.
While the Blazers are now likely to be in Portland for decades, they may have a chance to rekindle their old I-5 rivalry with the Seattle Supersonics.
Last month, the NBA board of governors voted to explore expansion bids for Seattle and Las Vegas. While Vegas could potentially have numerous ownership group bids, Seattle may have only one. But they may be all that’s needed.
One Roof Sports and Entertainment owns the NHL’s Kraken and is also the majority owner and operator of Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle.
They have the inside track to any NBA team in Seattle.
The only real decision that the NBA needs to make in exploring expansion bids is whether owners who want to receive the expansion fees from franchises in Seattle and Las Vegas, which could be nearly $20 billion combined, are worth more than the loss of dividing yearly revenues by 32 pieces instead of 30. It certainly will be.
The NBA’s latest media deal brings in $7 billion per year. Split that by 30, and each team gets approximately $230 million each season. If it’s divided by 32, it would be around $218 million. The owners must decide whether $12 million per year over the next 11 years is worth more than the $700 million (or more) they would each get upfront in expansion fees.
Should they decide a pile of money from expansion fees is worth it, the new franchises would probably start play in the 2028-29 season.
Potentially having a shiny new rival team and a team in a shiny new arena is a dream scenario for Portland basketball fans, a dream that has been a long time coming.
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