The 2024-25 NBA season begins in an era of change – fresh from a new round of media rights deals, a year after a new collective bargaining agreement expired and the reigning champions are about to enter the market. Further changes are on the horizon, expansion is likely and increasing internationalization of sport is inevitable.

Below the Sportico The staff breaks down where the world's second most valuable sports league stands in six facets of its business.

New League Economics

The NBA's financial model began to resemble that of the NFL last decade, when its TV deal tripled rights fee payments to teams. Developments will accelerate following this year's 11-year, $76 billion deal, which increases the average annual payment by more than 150%. The financial spread between the top and bottom clubs is shrinking as league distributions make up a larger share of total revenue. This change and the international opportunities that are also being shared are why the entry price for an NBA franchise has doubled in the last four years.

Players share in the growth as the salary cap is tied to basketball income, which seeks a roughly 50:50 split of BRI between owners and players. The cap rose just 3.3% this season after rising 10% for years. The cap should increase by a maximum of 10% annually for the foreseeable future, rising to over $300 million by the 2032-33 season for contracts worth more than $100 million per year. Steph Curry has the highest salary in the NBA this season at $55.8 million. -Kurt Badenhausen

The next franchise sale

In early July, less than two weeks after the Boston Celtics won their record 18th NBA title, the Grousbeck family shocked the NBA by announcing that they were putting the team up for sale. Patriarch Irving Grousbeck is around 90 years old and his family has decided to liquidate their most valuable asset. They led a group that paid $360 million for the team in 2002; it is now worth more than $5 billion.

Since that announcement, the process has progressed – albeit slowly. The ownership group hired two banks to carry out the process SporticoIt is assumed that the “data room” should be opened right at the beginning of the season. At this point, potential buyers can review the team's financials and begin their own due diligence.

The Celtics will break the record for the highest valuation in an NBA control sale (currently $4 billion), but at what time? will be a closely watched question. The team has committed a lot of money to its stars, is a tenant in its arena and the NBA's new media contracts have been signed. This sale will be a good litmus test for sports valuations across the industry. -Just Novy-Williams

Possible expansion

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver previously said he would turn his attention to expansion once the league finalizes its next media rights plans. This summer, the league signed a contract package. So the conversation is back on the table: When will the league expand?

“We’re not quite ready,” Silver said in September. “There is certainly interest in the process, (but) we are not at the point where we have made any concrete market decisions or, frankly, expanded.”

Former Seattle Supersonics fans would like to know the answer as residents hope a franchise will return to Puget Sound following their club's move to Oklahoma City in 2008. Rumors are swirling that Seattle and Las Vegas may be the next two NBA cities. Meanwhile, ownership groups, including one led by Vegas Golden Knights owner Bill Foley, are eager to get involved if the league greenlights a team in Sin City.

The NBA, which last expanded in 2004, is taking a calculated approach to this matter. Silver has emphasized the complexities of league expansion, including selling equity in the league and how adding teams would impact recently signed media deals. -Eric Jackson

A lame-duck media season

Unless you're one of the advertisers who will spend a total of $1.3 billion on in-game inventory leading up to the NBA Finals, there's no point in sweating the league's TV ratings this season. The final campaign under the old nine-year, $24 billion deal with Disney's ESPN and ABC and Warner Bros. Discovery's TNT will also be the last time the NBA gets the bulk of its impressions from the moribund basic cable universe, the That makes 2024-25 the lamest of lame ducks. (Imagine the Oregon mascot riding around the Eugene campus on a mobility scooter and you're about halfway there.)

That's not to say the NBA's swan song as a cable-first offering won't make numbers; Last season, the three main TV partners averaged 1.6 million viewers per game, which is roughly the same as at the end of the 2022/23… and 2021/22 seasons. And while overall shipments have declined nearly 20% over the past 10 years, that's largely due to the league's overreliance on the out-of-favor cable package, which has lost 40% of its subscriber base since 2019.

With NBC's return after a hiatus of more than two decades, the NBA is primed for a major broadcast boost once the 11-year, $76 billion media package takes effect next fall. Comcast's over-the-air flagship will air about 50 regular-season games on Thursdays and Sundays following the NFL, a platform switch that automatically expands the league's reach by about 15.5 million households. None of this suggests that TV ratings will ever again reach the dizzying heights of the Jordan era – the ship has sailed and all crew lost – but a 12% increase to 1.8 million viewers per window is not possible from the realm of possibility.

One caveat to note as the NBA reduces its reliance on the shrinking cable bundle: The league is still leaning heavily on a man who will turn 40 at the end of the year, while LeBron James and the Lakers are seven in the 2023-24 season years old were the 10 most-watched games of the regular season. Another guaranteed draw, Steph Curry, is 36. Until the younger ones emerge and at least one newly minted superstar can make a case to succeed James as the face of the league, it may take some time before the spoils of the NBA's big retro movement settle really unfolds pop. -Anthony Crupi

Lead and repeat debates

Officiency has been a point of contention, probably since one of James Naismith's students first complained about a phone call in 1891.

Last season, NBA officials began calling about four fewer fouls per game after the All-Star break. The league says this will remain the status quo in 2024-25 after players adjust to the slightly more physical and free style of play.

“The way the game was played after that (officiating adjustment) was actually something that fans, players, GMs (and) coaches really appreciated in terms of the look of the game,” NBA president Byron Spruell said. League, in an interview. “The plan is … to keep this consistent and live up to expectations at the start of the season.”

However, there has been a change to the rules: for replay challenges involving off-field decisions, referees can now retroactively call fouls on contact that contributed to the stoppage. The update is partly a response to controversial plays at the end of Western Conference Finals Game 2 and NBA Finals Game 3. –Jacob Feldman

Historical parity

For the first time in NBA history, six different franchises have won the last six championships. “We are experiencing unprecedented parity in the NBA,” deputy commissioner Mark Tatum told media on Tuesday.

This is intentional. The league's collective bargaining agreement, which took effect in July 2023, limits the roster-building abilities of teams whose spending on player salaries exceeds certain thresholds above the salary cap. These rules make it difficult for teams with talented rosters to keep those cores together for more than a few years. We have already seen the effects of the impending restrictions; Immediately after a conference finals, the Minnesota Timberwolves traded All-Star Karl-Anthony Towns, in part because his contract would be too expensive to stay under the dreaded “second frontcourt” threshold.

The defending champion Celtics are poised for a repeat after bringing back their entire rotation. And yet their 3-1 title odds are still slimmer than any of the preseason favorites in the decade of the 2010s. After this season, Boston's finances are in turmoil as contract extensions go into effect for several starters that would bring their combined salary and luxury tax bill to around $500 million.

The era of dynasties could be over, and that's exactly how Commissioner Adam Silver wants it. -Lev Akabas

(This article has been updated in the official section with a quote from Byron Spruell.)