Tom Friend

The Comets will broadcast all of their non-national 2027 games over-the-air, the franchise announced Thursday, blanketing the entire Houston market for their return to the WNBA.

The three groups bidding roughly $9B-to-$10B for an NBA team in Las Vegas — and also targeting perhaps $2B-to-$3B more for a new arena — are wary about pivoting to Seattle if they lose out, potentially jeopardizing a Seattle expansion process that appears to have turned stagnant.

The Marc Lasry-Steve Apostolopoulos group that bid roughly $9B to $9.5B for a Las Vegas NBA franchise has dropped out of the expansion process, sources told SBJ on Friday, after deciding the league's desired price tag of $10B-plus was too high.

Mark Walter is attempting to sell the WNBA's Sparks and its soon-to-be-completed training facility for a record $700M, Bloomberg reported Friday, as the embattled Dodgers owner continues to offload his sports franchises to address his legal issues.

The whereabouts of Game 6 of the WNBA Finals is still uncertain, with ramifications involving seven teams from three different sports leagues.

Game 6 of the WNBA Finals will be played at State Farm Arena on Thursday at 12:30pm ET, as two leagues and four teams agreed that an earlier start and a Hawks-Cavaliers doubleheader later that evening was the least disruptive route of all.

Amid reports that the NBA offered roughly $581M to buy EuroLeague -- and dangled entry fees of about $447M for EuroLeague teams to join NBA Europe -- sources said senior NBA leadership attended London's Ballon d'Or Monday night and potentially held advanced discussions with several potential franchises.

KATHY BEHRENS is exiting the NBA league office, SBJ has learned, after a philanthropic 26-year career that included the launch and evolution of NBA Cares and NBA Green.

Former Raptors owner Larry Tanenbaum is pursuing NBA Europe's London franchise, sources told SBJ, and is a potential frontrunner with a bid of roughly $1B.

Merger negotiations between the NBA and EuroLeague crystallized Thursday when EuroLeague's CEO Chus Bueno told Spanish news agency EFE that his 13 teams would want to join NBA Europe en masse rather than have multiple franchises diverted to a second-division league.