Mussatto: Why Oklahoma City, despite new arena plan, is far from hosting NBA All-Star Game
Indianapolis, Salt Lake City and Cleveland. The last three cities to host the NBA All-Star Game are small markets by NBA standards, so what’s keeping Oklahoma City from landing an All-Star Weekend bid?
The list is long, with almost all of the reasons relating to size.
“There’s only two NBA markets smaller than ours,” Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt told The Oklahoman. “There’s only one of these (All-Star games) every year.”
While a new downtown arena, set to open as early as 2029, will increase Oklahoma City’s attractiveness as a market, OKC doesn’t come close to meeting the NBA’s updated requirements to host All-Star Weekend.
The most significant requirements, per an NBA spokesperson, include:
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.
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Indianapolis, which just hosted the 2024 All-Star Game last weekend, does not meet the third requirement, but the hosting parameters have changed since Indianapolis was awarded its bid in 2017. Indianapolis was originally set to host the 2021 game, which had to be relocated due to COVID-19 complications.
No matter how opulent the Thunder’s new arena might be, Oklahoma City fails to meet any of the above requirements.
Despite not knowing the specifics of the hotel stipulation (how close the hotels must be to the arena, for example), downtown Oklahoma City only has 4,919 hotel rooms, according to July 2023 numbers provided by the Oklahoma City Convention & Visitors Bureau. Even if all of those rooms meet the NBA’s standard, that still leaves OKC more than 2,000 rooms shy.
The new Oklahoma City Convention Center, which opened in 2021, is 500,000 square feet — massive, but not to the NBA’s cavernous asking.
The third requirement to host All-Star Weekend is where OKC falls shortest.
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Will Rogers World Airport, despite its name, offers zero international flights. It offers 25 non-stop flights, two of which are seasonal, to 21 cities, according to the latest schedule on its website.
As the third-smallest market in the NBA, with a metro population of 1.5 million, Oklahoma City might not meet any of the above parameters, much less all three, even into the 2030s when the new arena opens.
“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,” Holt said.
Unlike comparable smaller markets like Salt Lake City and New Orleans, which have a disproportionate number of hotel rooms for cities their size, Oklahoma City is not a tourist destination — neither for skiing nor revelry.
Oklahoma City, along with Portland, Memphis and Sacramento, is one of four current NBA markets that have yet to host the All-Star Game.
The metropolises of San Francisco and Los Angeles will host the 2025 and 2026 All-Star Games. The 2026 game will be held at Intuit Dome, the $2 billion future home of the Clippers.
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Oklahoma City’s new arena will be built for a minimum of $900 million, with taxpayers footing at least $850 million of the bill. Voters approved the proposal in December with overwhelming support.
The building will be a much-needed upgrade from Paycom Center, the NBA’s smallest arena by square footage and one of the cheapest built.
“We were never really going to be in the running for something like this regardless if we’d had all the hotel rooms in the world,” Holt said. “Our arena was probably farther below standards than we had even realized until recently.”
By 2030, no longer will an outdated arena be holding back Oklahoma City from All-Star consideration.
“We are at least on the path to having an arena that we would be proud to show off and an arena that the league would find worthy of hosting such a game,” Holt said.
All of the other obstacles remain.
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Most times hosting NBA All-Star Game
1. Los Angeles, 6: 1963, 1972, 1983, 2004, 2011, 2018
2. New York, 5: 1954, 1955, 1968, 1998, 2015
T3. Boston, 4: 1951, 1952, 1957, 1964
T3. Philadelphia, 4: 1960, 1970, 1976, 2002
Joe Mussatto is a sports columnist for The Oklahoman. Have a story idea for Joe? Email him at jmussatto@oklahoman.com. Support Joe's work and that of other Oklahoman journalists by purchasing a digital subscription today at subscribe.oklahoman.com.
This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Oklahoma City fails to meet three NBA All-Star host requirements
