Adam Silver's Las Vegas experiment with NBA Cup may be ending

The NBA's in-season tournament has given the league's viewership numbers a big boost. That hasn't translated to attendance for the deciding games.

Empty seats abounded for Saturday's semifinal games of the NBA Cup, which featured a classic battle between the Oklahoma City Thunder and San Antonio Spurs and a close, star-studded matchup between the New York Knicks and Orlando Magic. The games were good, but the live experience was not, leading to speculation that the Cup is not long for Las Vegas.

NBA is already doing away with the Las Vegas semifinals

2025 is the last year that the NBA will do a March Madness-style semifinal night, with two games taking place back-to-back at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. Commissioner Adam Silver's original idea was to create a destination event, much like the NCAA Tournament, though the scheduling and uncertainty of the matchups made it a tough sell from the beginning.

For one, the NBA sells tickets to the semifinals separately, meaning the arena staff has to get a full group of fans in and out between the two games. It also means that the games start awkwardly early on a Saturday — 2:30 p.m. local time — which could be unappealing for fans who partied on a Friday night in Sin City.

It's also unclear who is playing in the semifinals until three days before, which makes it a financial and logistical challenge to attend for most fans in the Eastern Conference. It's easy to get from Los Angeles or Phoenix to Las Vegas on short notice, but not to easy from New York or Orlando or even San Antonio. That's why next season, the semifinals will be at one team's home arena, instead of a neutral site.

The Cup Final might leave Vegas in 2026

ESPN's Tim Bontemps reported that the NBA might consider moving the championship game from Vegas entirely, due to their troubles selling out the games. It's not simply a financial limitation, but a matter of atmosphere. While the games were exciting and competitive Saturday, the excitement of the crowd didn't reflect that. On the Amazon Prime broadcast, they appeared to keep the crowd in relative darkness, perhaps to hide all the empty seats in the arena.

It's also one thing to have a tournament that involves a weekend in Vegas. Taking a trip that goes from Saturday to Tuesday is a tough sell for fans, particularly when it happens during what's often the last real week of work before the holidays. Knicks-Spurs is a perfectly compelling matchup to watch on television, but not exactly one you'd fly to Vegas to see.

Perhaps the chance at hosting more NBA Cup games will make the tournament even more appealing to teams, beyond the $500K per player prize. It would also give the final group games more weight, as teams wouldn't just be playing to make the tournament, but to potentially get home-court advantage in three games.

The NBA Cup's grand Las Vegas plans may have been doomed from the start. Don't be surprised if Tuesday's NBA Cup final is the last neutral-site edition of the tournament for a long time.