Golden Knights owner Bill Foley said Las Vegas is ready for an NBA team, and he wants to be part of the ownership group that completes the addition of the final big four major league sport to Southern Nevada.
Foley, who has seen the Knights make the Stanley Cup Final three times and win the Cup once in their first nine seasons, said he’s ready to go through the expansion process again.
On Thursday, he provided his first interview since he applied for an NBA expansion franchise last month.
“We just believe we’re well-positioned,” Foley told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “It’s a long, hard slog. We recognize that. But it also was complicated getting an NHL franchise.
“We’re confident that we’re the right group.”
T-Mobile upgrades
Foley is ready to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to upgrade 10-year-old T-Mobile Arena to be able to adequately accommodate both the Knights and an NBA franchise.
“We believe we can spend $300, $400 million to improve T-Mobile and add roughly 1,000 seats, more suites, and make it NBA-ready when the NBA does decide to come,” Foley said. “It may not be the home forever for the Golden Knights and the NBA team, but it certainly is going to be an excellent place for them, for both teams to play, for several years in the future.”
Foley said if his group was awarded an expansion franchise toward the end of this year, the renovations to T-Mobile Arena could begin as soon as early next year, with the majority of the upgrades being ready for the 2028-29 NBA season. That is when the league is targeting expansion teams, including a possible new franchise in Seattle, to begin play, if the process is approved by league owners.
“Part of the renovations are adding suites and hospitality in T-Mobile itself, and those are things that could be done even while we’re playing,” Foley said. “But the addition for the NBA would be on the northwest side of the arena, attached to the arena to T-Mobile, but would not interfere with activities within T-Mobile because it would be a total add-on.
“The way the preliminary plans are structured, it doesn’t really interfere with what’s going on at T-Mobile. It just supplements it. And we believe if we get the franchise toward year end or so, we can get going and we can — maybe the first year, things are not perfect for the NBA — but by the (2029-30) season, we’d have everything built out.”
Capable team
The group Foley has assembled to help run the Knights organization is also ready and able to do what’s needed to also operate an NBA team.
“We have the infrastructure to support an NBA program,” he said. “We have to add to it, but we have the personnel that understand the NBA and we have the facilities. We want to build a world-class practice facility for the NBA.”
If Foley, who Forbes says is worth $2.6 billion, is successful in his group’s bid to get an NBA expansion franchise, he has tentative plans to build a practice facility for the basketball team and a new facility for the Knights in Summerlin.
“We have a piece of ground in mind that we’re dealing with the owner on, that we would put both a new NHL facility on that site and we’d also have the NBA practice facility on that site,” Foley said. “We’d also supplement it with orthopedics, physical rehabilitation, all kinds of medically related activities to support both teams. And Vegas is ready for that. So, we’d really be kind of a hub of sports activity and be located in Summerlin.”
The expansion fee of between $7 billion and $10 billion dwarfs the $500 million fee Foley paid the NHL for the Knights. Despite the significant increase in asking price, Foley said the group he’s assembling will have the means to absorb the financial hit.
“We’re putting together a really strong group of financially savvy individuals that are willing to make that kind of investment,” Foley said. “We would be involved, my family and myself, we’d be involved in that same process. …
“We’ve already proven that we can do it. We did it from square one. I remember when we first got the franchise for the Golden Knights, I got so many questions. How are you going to play hockey in the desert? Are you going to skate on sand? You’ll never be successful. All the naysayers, and I knew we’d be successful. I was 100 percent confident. And frankly, I think it’s going to be easier with an NBA franchise than it was with the Golden Knights.”
Foley did not want to disclose whom he is working with as part of his group’s bid. But he again assured that the people that are involved are qualified to land an expansion team.
“There’s a lot of discussion and talking to people about if they wanted to make an investment, how much would they be willing to invest,” Foley said. “The NBA is very restrictive on the number of individuals that you can have involved in ownership.
”We are dealing with very stable, well-financed individuals and family offices that are interested in an NBA franchise.”
Foley also owns the AHL Henderson Silver Knights, multiple soccer teams including AFC Bournemouth and the Indoor Football League’s Vegas Knight Hawks.
T-Mobile as temp NBA home
If Foley’s group does not win its bid and another ownership group ultimately lands a Las Vegas expansion team, he is more than happy to temporarily allow a team to play at T-Mobile Arena while a new arena is built.
“There are a lot of other groups, and many of them are affiliated with a piece of land they want to build an arena,” Foley stated. “Well, you want to build an arena, it’s a five-year process. It’s not going to happen overnight. The team needs to have some place to play that really makes sense to the NBA and that is an advantage for us in terms of getting the franchise. Or at the very minimum, we do own part of T-Mobile and if someone else plays there with an NBA team, that’s also to our benefit. So, we’re kind of good either way.”
Foley willing to team up
Foley also noted that he’s not opposed to potentially teaming up with other ownership groups in order to land an NBA franchise. He said that he’s been in contact with five other interested ownership groups, with some also open to partnering.
“Some (groups) have their own ideas and probably aren’t going to be a fit, while others, we’re kind of symbiotic,” Foley said. “But the one thing, we really are local.
“And a lot of the groups are not local. They don’t have a real sense for the community of Las Vegas and the Nevada community. We’ve been here, we’ve done it. We’ve been successful and we have terrific relationships, governmental relationships and sponsorship relationships with many, many local companies. So, we are in an advantageous position, but it’s going to be up to the league. It’s not up to us.”
Despite the hefty asking price for an expansion team, which will be valued well above the projected average $5.4 billion worth of the existing 30 NBA teams, the scarcity of major pro sports teams in the United States makes the investment well worth it, Foley said.
“There are only 124 franchises in the United States, major league franchises, not including MLS, but baseball, basketball, football and hockey, and there’s so much appreciation in the value of franchises,” Foley said. “They just aren’t created very often.
“So this is a rare opportunity to have part of a new franchise.”
Contact Mick Akers at makers@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2920. Follow @mickakers on X.
