The league isn’t quite ready to explore expansion talks, commissioner Adam Silver revealed during a Tuesday press conference. Silver addressed the media after the league’s Board of Governors meeting.
“There was not a lot of discussion in this meeting about expansion, but only largely not for lack of interest, it was that we had said to them that we’re not quite ready,” Silver said, per ESPN’s Tim Bontemps. “It was something that we told our board we plan to address this season, and we’re not quite ready yet. But I think there’s certainly interest in the process, and I think that we’re not there yet in terms of having made any specific decisions about markets or even frankly to expand.”
Expansion has been put off while the league negotiated a new Collective Bargaining Agreement and reached new broadcast deals. With those items in the rear view mirror, the league could eventully discuss expansion in the coming months.
The first step in that process, according to Bontemps, would be forming a committee of several owners to explore the topic and determine what the next steps would be.
Here’s more from Silver’s press conference and the BOG meeting:
- He would prefer that legalized sports betting had a “federal framework,” rather than being a state competition with varying rules.
“I was in favor of a federal framework for sports betting. I still am,” he said. “I still think that the hodgepodge of state by state, it makes it more difficult for the league to administer it. I think it creates competition, understandably, among states to get — just think New York, New Jersey or a situation like that where you’re both competing for the same customer, so you can compete on tax rates and other things and a regulatory framework.”
