Editor’s note: This is a regular Sunday feature to wrap up news and developments in the NBA’s possible expansion to Las Vegas and Seattle by the 2028-29 season.
Officials with Desert Diamond Arena are looking to have as many conversations as possible with potential ownership groups relating to the planned NBA-ready arena project that was announced in April.
The project, being pitched by developer Chetak Development, is a proposed 21,212-seat arena, planned for the south Strip across from the Mandalay Bay.
“Our group has been trying to meet with different ownership potential groups,” Diamond Arena spokesman Tom Letizia said. “And the names keep popping up.”
The known ownership groups include one led by Walmart heiress Nancy Laurie Walton and her husband Bill Laurie; a group led by former Phoenix Suns owner Jerry Colangelo; and one fronted by Golden Knights owner Bill Foley. There is at least one more group whose members’ identities have yet to be made public.
Letizia said he wouldn’t handicap a potential winner of the NBA bid at this point, with his focus being on what is the arena platform the league will ultimately need and that Diamond Arena fits.
“I wouldn’t predict a winner for the owners at this point, but I think we’ll be hearing a lot more. September is going to be a big month,” Letizia said.
He is alluding to the scheduled NBA Board of Governors meeting this month in New York. An update on the expansion process is expected to be made there. It is not yet known what details on expansion will come out of the meeting. But with only a few months before the end of the year, the timeline when NBA Commissioner Adam Silver wants to have answer to expansion, there’s the potential for a more substantial update than there was during the NBA owners meeting in July in Las Vegas.
Diamond Arena is one of about a dozen NBA-ready arena projects floated in recent years, with one or two others potentially set to be announced sometime this year.
Where a potential NBA expansion team plays will be up to the ownership group winning the bid and who it partners with on the arena side. That said, Letizia likes where Diamond Arena stands at this point.
“But it starts this whole process with the location, and we still feel strongly that the Las Vegas Boulevard at Four Seasons Drive location across from the Mandalay Bay with … the freeway access, the airport proximity, major hotel inventory at our footsteps, the plan private aviation connection,” Letizia said. “I think things are things are going well.”
Contact Mick Akers at makers@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2920. Follow @mickakers on X.
