About
Why this exists
Seattle Tipoff is a transparent tracker for NBA basketball's potential return to Seattle. It turns the expansion process into a small set of visible components: league approval, ownership, fee, arena readiness, rights and branding, draft rules, and schedule timing.
The goal is signal over speculation: component-by-component status, sourced news context, and clear explanations of what would move the estimate up or down.
Who built this
One person. I'm a software engineer in Seattle, not a journalist and not a basketball insider. I started this because every time expansion came up I had to re-read the same eight articles to figure out where things actually stood. A live page felt easier.
Every number on the site is a structured expert estimate against a public baseline. The math, the weights, and the sources are all on the methodology page. The plan is to publish a quarterly track record once enough events have resolved to say anything meaningful — when I'm wrong, I'll say so there. That's the deal.
How this is funded
It isn't, yet. No ads, no affiliate links, no sponsors. The weekly briefing is free. If the site finds an audience the plan is to add sponsorships that don't involve betting platforms, ownership-group PR shops, the league itself, arena operators, or civic organizations with a direct financial stake in the expansion outcome — and to keep the dashboard itself free forever. If that changes, this paragraph changes first.
What you can do here
Read the current probability, skim the recent signals, see what I'm watching this week on the Now page, and try your own calibration on the Predict page. If you'd like the weekly briefing, the signup's on the home page.