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Several smaller-market franchises have hosted the NBA’s annual All-Star Weekend in recent years. However, not every team is eligible to do so due to three little-known recently-imposed requirements for host cities.
According to an NBA spokesperson, to host All-Star Weekend, cities must meet the following criteria:
“1. 7,250 hotel rooms and a minimum of three five-star hotels.
2. Convention center of 650,000 square feet of exhibition space.
3. 75 nonstop domestic flights and at least 20 international flights.”
The Oklahoman’s Joe Mussatto recently outlined how the OKC Thunder, one of the NBA’s top up-and-coming teams, are ineligible to host the festivities. Mussatto noted that despite the Thunder’s plans to open a new state-of-the-art arena as early as 2029, Oklahoma City falls short of all three requirements.
Downtown Oklahoma City reportedly only has 4,919 hotel rooms and its largest convention center is only 500,000 square feet. Meanwhile, Oklahoma City’s Will Rogers World Airport doesn’t offer international flights.
Per Mussatto, Oklahoma City is one of four NBA markets that haven’t hosted All-Star Weekend. The others are Memphis, Portland and Sacramento.
With the NBA’s strict requirements to host the event, it is harder than ever to do so. Thus, the league’s smallest markets, like Oklahoma City, probably won't be eligible to be host cities anytime soon.
“I don’t want to leave you with the impression that it’s impossible to imagine us ever having it, but it’s just very challenging with us being a small market, almost the smallest market in the NBA,” Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt told The Oklahoman.
San Francisco and Los Angeles set to host next two All-Star Weekends
The last two All-Star Weekends were hosted by two of the NBA’s smallest markets in Indianapolis (2024) and Utah (2023). Additionally, in 2022, the event was hosted by a midtier market (Cleveland). However, the festivities will return to two of the league’s top markets over the next two seasons.
Next year’s All-Star Weekend will take place in San Francisco from Feb. 14-16, 2025, at the Chase Center, the Golden State Warriors’ arena.
Additionally, the following year, the festivities will transpire in Los Angeles from Feb. 13-15, 2026, at the LA Clippers’ new Intuit Dome.
San Franciso marks the NBA’s seventh-biggest television market (2.653 million homes), while LA marks the league’s second-largest TV market (5.735 million homes).
Thus, it appears that the NBA is leaning toward having its premier cities host the event as often as possible moving forward.
