Yeah, I would be careful with those "they wouldn'ts." I'm sure lots of Sonic fans had a bag of they wouldn'ts too.
Completely different scenarios, and on top of that, the Sonics were sold for 350 million dollars vs the Blazers being valued at over 10X that amount.
These are much more valuable commodities now. The relocation fee for the Thunder was 30 million. It's probably a (very) safe bet the relocation fee now would be significantly higher than that.
So for 380 million dollars, the Thunder ownership was able to buy and move the Sonics. In 2025, that wouldn't even get a 10% ownership in the franchise.
On top of that, there is zero chance that an owner in Seattle would make up the difference in $ in Seattle vs Portland to justify the move and alienate the region.
Let's be 100% real here. The differences between Portland and Seattle (in as far as an NBA team is concerned) is not worth spending 4.5 billion dollars to move up there (in addition to the relocation fees to the league, and the $ that the city would want to recoup), to make up the loss of the Portland market as a whole, in addition to the fact the league has openly admitted they made a mistake by having the Sonics leave Seattle and won't correct that by alienating the Portland market.
ESPECIALLY considering the Blazers were one of 2 teams that voted *against* the Sonics leaving.
Not to mention, the arena situations are not even *remotely* the same. Key Arena, even after it's remodel, was an absolute dump. The city of Seattle had just put aside tax money for the Seahawks new home and the Mariners home.
We don't have that issue.
It wouldn't take a *billion* dollars to upgrade the Moda center like it did Key Arena.
Also, the talk of the expansion not being popular is horse shit. There is no way that the league would rather piss off the Portland market to move a team to Seattle, because they don't want to split anywhere from 8 to 10 billion dollars among each other.
For comparisons sake, the amount of $ each franchise would get immediately is almost the same amount as what the Thunder ownership group paid *in total* to buy and move the team.
You know who gets the $ if the Blazers move? The Paul Allen estate.
You know who gets the $ if the league expands and opens up the markets in Seattle and Vegas?
The league and the owners.
Which makes more sense?
They aren't concerned about watering down the talent base. FFS, they now have 15 players on each roster + g-league teams. There are approx 125 (about 25% of the league) that are foreign born.
This is just a way to squeeze more out of the potential expansion team ownership groups.
Just saw this: The TV contract is 76 billion over 11 years. Or 247 per team per year for 11 years. Adding 2 teams drops that to 215 per team.
Think of it this way. The league expands and adds 2 teams. Each expansion fee is 5 billion (that # has been thrown around).
10 billion split among 30 teams is 333 million each team.
The loss of income for the teams, if they expand to 32 teams (with the TV contract) would go from 247 per team to 215.
And since the new teams won't come in for probably 2 season (at least) that means for the first 2 years, the #'s stay the same.
So years 3-11, the amount each team gets is 215.
Example:
Years 1 and 2: 494 million (2 years)
Years 9-11: 1.935 billion (9 years)
For a total of 2.429 billion over the life of the TV contract (with 32 teams).
Vs: 2.717 billion if they keep things the same (11x247).
For a grand total difference OF: 288 billion over 11 years, or ~26 million a season.
That 288 billion is *less* than what they'd make if they expanded the league to 32 with the expansion fee.
