Around the W: Expansion is Happening

The league made an official announcement on Thursday.

Well, it is finally official. The WNBA is expanding to at least one new city. On Thursday, October 5th, the league announced that a new team will begin play in 2025 and be based out of the Bay Area.

The WNBA may have been forced to make this announcement now as The Athletic broke the story last week that the league would be expanding to the Bay Area. Per the report, the owner of the Golden State Warriors, Joe Lacob, will be the owner of this new WNBA franchise. The team will have their headquarters in Oakland but play their games at the Chase Center, the Warriors arena, in San Francisco, California.

Joe Lacob previously owned a women’s basketball team in the ABL, the San Jose Lasers, during the late 1990s.

On Thursday morning, the WNBA had an official press conference with Commissioner Cathy Engelbert, Warriors owners Joe Lacob and Peter Guber, San Francisco Mayor London Breed, and Warriors President Brandon Schneider all on stage together. They made the expansion announcement official and spoke with the media about why now was the right time to expand and bring a team to San Francisco.

While they only announced the one expansion team on Thursday, Cathy Engelbert did reiterate that the hope is to add a 2nd expansion franchise and 14th team to the WNBA in 2025.

She specifically mentioned Portland, Denver, and Toronto as options. However, from reading different reports, it sounds like Portland may end up being the other city to get a new WNBA team.

https://x.com/ArielleOrsuto/status/1709783053453947107?s=20

“The WNBA will expand tomorrow, adding two more teams for the 2025 season. Denver will not be one of them. Source close to ownership tells me the WNBA has not been in contact since the site visit in August. Another tells me the league was not happy with the idea of playing at DU.” Arielle Orsuto - a Denver Sports Anchor, commented.

Meanwhile, the Toronto Star reported that Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment (MLSE) decided to back out at the last minute for an expansion team.

Storm guard and Canadian, Kia Nurse, was disappointed in the news.

“It’s unfortunate that the bid has been pulled for Toronto, but my hope is that doesn’t close the door forever,” Kia Nurse told the Toronto Star.

“It’s absolutely incredible that the league has started the expansion process in the Bay Area and I’m beyond excited to see the growth of our game for generations to come. More roster spots, without a doubt more Canadians entering the league in the near future, and more engagement with our fans is a great step in the right direction for the growth of our game.” Nurse added.

From the reports, it sounds like there were multiple reasons the WNBA isn’t expanding to Toronto just yet. One was that the group didn’t want to pay the expected $50 Million expansion fee. While Cathy Engelbert wouldn’t state the specifics of what the Warriors paid, she said it was record-breaking for the league. Reports have stated that the Warriors are paying $50 Million over 10 years for the Golden State WNBA team. A recent NWSL (women’s soccer) expansion franchise sold for $53 Million so that would put the WNBA’s expansion fee right in line with that.

Meanwhile, The Next reports Portland will be the other expansion franchise. The Athletic have also mentioned this. Kirk Brown, a Billionaire from the Portland area, is said to be leading the group that is interested in bringing the WNBA to the Rose City.

While the Portland TrailBlazers wouldn’t own the WNBA team, it’s been said they’ve been helping Kirk Brown with his bid. A new team would likely either play at the Moda Center where the Blazers play or right next door at the Veterans Memorial Coliseum a 12,000-seat arena that hosts the Portland Winterhawks WHL team.

If the Portland expansion franchise is approved look for that announcement to be revealed before the end of 2023.

What To Expect

With new teams being added to the WNBA, that means these teams will go through an expansion draft. When a league expands, the new teams claim players off the current teams’ rosters. However, the 12 WNBA teams that we know today will be allowed to protect a certain number of players. We don’t know the total number of players teams can protect but my best guess is it’ll be somewhere between 5-8 players. I think if the WNBA wants these new teams to be more successful right out of the gate, they will limit the number of players teams can keep.

In 2008, the last time the WNBA expanded which was for the Atlanta Dream, the other WNBA franchises were allowed to protect 6 players on their roster. To me, that seems like a reasonable amount, especially if you want the expansion franchises to be even remotely competitive in their early years.

During Thursday’s press conference, Commissioner Cathy Engelbert hinted that the expansion draft would likely occur at the end of 2024. This makes sense to me as Free Agency for the 2025 WNBA season would begin in January and officially start in February. It wouldn’t make sense for teams to build their rosters up and sign new players only to have some of their players then taken away during the expansion draft.

We may also see a situation where the new expansion franchises may be allowed to sign Free Agents first before Free Agency officially begins in February of 2025. I believe the Seattle Kraken expansion franchise had a brief window where they were able to negotiate with Unrestricted Free Agents prior to NHL Free Agency officially taking place. I could see something similar in the WNBA.

It’ll be interesting to see how these two new expansion franchises will affect Free Agency in 2024. Could we end up seeing most teams only sign players to one-year deals?

It is not clear at this time where the expansion franchises would draft in the 2025 WNBA Draft. Would they make their selections after the four lottery teams, selecting 5th and 6th overall? Or could they be given preferential treatment and be awarded the 1st and 2nd overall picks to really boost these new franchises quickly?

No matter what, WNBA expansion is something the league has needed for a very long time. This will now open up 22-24 more roster spots if the league does indeed add two more teams. Additional teams should also lead to more revenue when it comes to the TV Media rights deal. That is by far the biggest thing that can help the WNBA really grow tremendously over the next several years. Live Sports are a hot ticket item and women’s sports continue to grow every year.

The WNBA currently only makes $30 million a season from their TV media deal. Per Forbes, The NFL is the King of Television and earns around $10 Billion a year on its media rights. The NBA and MLB each earn roughly $2 Billion a year while the NHL makes around $600 Million. The MLS which has very comparable ratings numbers to the WNBA recently agreed to a 10-year deal with Apple paying them $250 Million a year.

Cathy Engelbert and the WNBA must find a way to come close to that. $30 Million a season is an embarrassment considering the ratings and the quality of the product. My hope is that the league does not accept anything below at least $100 Million. If they can get around $150-200 Million a season it would mean so much to the league.

The league could finally afford Charter flights for all teams for every game. And max contracts could even surpass $1 Million. More success will lead to more growth. The WNBA is set to expand to 14 teams in 2025. Hopefully, by 2030 we are talking about 16-18 teams.