Abstract
Since 1949, several new franchises had their team playing in one or more regular seasons and postseasons of the National Basketball Association (NBA). Six of them joined the league in the 1960s, four in the 1970s, five in the 1980s, two in the 1990s, and one in the 2000s. Among the group, 11 are at home at their original sites while the other seven moved from cities in metropolitan areas to different locations. Regarding the former teams, the least and most recent of them ranged, respectively, from the Chicago Bulls in 1966 to Charlotte Bobcats in 2004, and for those that relocated, they extended in years from the Chicago Zephyrs to Baltimore, Maryland in 1963 to Vancouver Grizzlies to Memphis, Tennessee in 2001.
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Notes
- 1.
In the Appendix, Table A8.1 contains the populations and population ranks of ten potential sites for NBA teams. To compare them, San Diego and Seattle, respectively, are the most populated cities and metropolitan areas while Pittsburgh and Louisville, respectively, are the least populated cities and metropolitan areas. For those with a metropolitan area population greater than two million, the likely sites for a new NBA team are Seattle and St. Louis assuming these cities have a new or renovated arena. For sites with a population less than two million, the most attractive of them are Nashville and then Jacksonville and Louisville. Based on factors besides population, the least attractive sites are Baltimore, Kansas City, and Las Vegas. That is because former NBA teams failed in Baltimore and Kansas City, and gambling is legal in Las Vegas. Other than the US, the league may expand and locate a new team in a large foreign city such as Berlin, London, or Madrid.
- 2.
See “NBA Returning to London For Regular Season Matchup” at http://www.nba.com cited 21 March 2014.
- 3.
Eddie Sefko, “Mark Cuban: NBA expansion Will Happen Before Relocation, If the Price is Right” at http://www.mavsblogdallasnews.com cited 14 April 2014.
- 4.
The NBA Kings and city of Sacramento have been working for more than a decade to replace the aging Sleep Train Arena, which opened in 1988 and located outside downtown. The team’s new 18,500-seat arena, which cost about $448 million to build with a $190 million contribution from the Kings, will be downtown on the site of an old mall. Finalizing the arena project with new Kings Owner Vivek Ranadive was central to the deal to keep the team in Sacramento after a Seattle-based group made a strong bid to buy and relocate the franchise in 2014–2015. Ranadive’s group formally purchased the land for the arena, known as the Downtown Plaza, for an undisclosed sum. Construction will begin in the summer of 2014. New York based Turner Construction, which is general contractor for the arena, is popular in the Sacramento area having built the new Terminal B at Sacramento International Airport and other projects on time and under budget. Regarding details about the arena and other aspects of the project, there are articles in the Sacramento Bee online at http://www.sacbee.com.
- 5.
For more information, see Bob Condotta, “Which Struggling NBA Teams Could be Next on Seattle’s Target List?” at http://www.seattletimes.com cited 22 March 2014; Maxwell Ogden, “5 NBA Teams Most Likely to Relocate to Seattle Before David Stern Retires” at http://www.bleacherreport.com cited 22 March 2014; Ted Leroux, “Milwaukee Bucks Destined to Relocate to Seattle or Las Vegas” at http://www.bleacherreport.com cited 23 March 2014.
- 6.
“It [Milwaukee Bucks] has the characteristics one would look for in saying that’s a team ripe for ownership change and quite possibly location change,” Swangard said in an interview with The Seattle Times. See “Time to Start Talking About a New Arena” at http://www.jsonline.com cited 27 March 2014. After 4 months of negotiation, Bucks owner Herb Kohn reportedly sold his franchise for $550 million in April 2014 to Wall Street money managers Marc Lasry and Wesley Edens. These wealthy men are lifelong basketball fans and enticed by the prospect of building a new arena for the team over the next 3 years. For more details about the deal, read Mike Spector and Juliet Chung, “Billionaires Lay Out Bucks For NBA Team,” Wall Street Journal (17 April 2014), C3.
- 7.
In 2013, the Bucks ranked 30th in estimated market value at $405 million and revenue at $109 million. While the club had operating income of $11.5 million, player expenses were less than $70 million. See Kurt Badenhausen, Mike Ozanian, and Christina Settimi, “NBA Team Values: The Business of Basketball” at http://www.forbes.com cited 6 February 2014. Regarding NBA expansion in the future, Forbes senior sports business editor Kurt Badenhausen wrote me and declared, “I don’t believe the NBA is expanding anywhere in the next 5 years. Would seem tempting with franchise values soaring, but the tradeoff is a smaller slice of TV money. Seattle is the obvious candidate for the next franchise through either expansion or relocation, but I don’t think anything is imminent. Assuming the Bucks stay in Milwaukee with new ownership, I think the next most likely candidates for relocation are Atlanta and Minnesota if I had to pick two. I think both are long shots to move, but any changes in ownership down the road could trigger something.”
- 8.
According to a recent financial report published in early 2014, the Grizzlies ranked 24th among all NBA teams in market value at $453 million. In addition, the club’s revenue was $126 million and operating income $11.2 million. For this and other financial statistics, see the Grizzlies data in the Forbes article “NBA Team Values: The Business of Basketball.”
- 9.
During April 2014, Director of Academic Programs for Sport Management at the University of San Francisco Dan Rascher forwarded me a reply to my question about expansion and relocation in the NBA. He said, “I do think that the NBA will allow either a relocation or expansion into Seattle (and maybe elsewhere like Las Vegas) in the future. First, it didn’t allow the Kings to move to SEA because it didn’t want a privately financed arena in SEA to set a precedent. The league does want a team there though. Also, as profits continue to rise (and population continues to grow) in the NBA, the marginal city will become viable and the league will want to cash it on the expansion fee.” Regarding global expansion by the NBA, Professor Rascher remarked, “I don’t think the international divisions will work too well. I can see the winner of the NBA maybe 1 day playing a three-game series against the winner of the Euroleague or something, but not league integration. There could be brand extension where the NBA brands the Euro league, but true within-season games (other than some token games) against Europe still seems remote.”
- 10.
Canada’s National Basketball League (CNBL) opened in 2011 with seven teams. The Halifax Rainmen, Saint John Mill Rats, and Quebec Kebs moved from the country’s Premier Basketball League to the CNBL while the other four were expansion teams including the London Lightning, Moncton Miracles, Summerside Storm, and Oshawa Power. For the 2012–2013 NBL season, the Windsor Express joined the CNBL while the Kebs relocated to Laval. However, before the Kebs played any games there, the league terminated them after issues with their management. The league then replaced the Kebs with a team based in Quebec called the Montreal Jazz. In the same season, the league announced Ottawa Skyhawks as a new team for 2013–2014. Following the 2012–2013 season, the Oshawa Power relocated to Mississauga and renamed the Mississauga Power while the Summerside Storm moved to Charlottetown to become the Island Storm. During August 2013, the CNBL Board of Governors announced that the Jazz would participate in the 2013–2014 season after failing to secure new ownership. See “NBL Canada Basketball (Men).” http://www.usbasket.com cited 27 March 2014, and “NBL Canada: It’s Showtime.” http://www.nblcanada.com cited 27 March 2014.
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Jozsa, F.P. (2015). Future Strategies. In: National Basketball Association Strategies. SpringerBriefs in Economics, vol 84. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-10058-6_8
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