NEW YORK — The WNBA is expanding to 18 teams over the next five years, with Cleveland, Detroit and Philadelphia all set to join the league by 2030.
Cleveland will begin play in 2028, Detroit in 2029 and Philadelphia the season after, assuming it gets approval from the NBA and WNBA board of governors. Toronto and Portland will enter the league next year.
“The demand for women’s basketball has never been higher, and we are thrilled to welcome Cleveland, Detroit, and Philadelphia to the WNBA family,” WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert said. “This historic expansion is a powerful reflection of our league’s extraordinary momentum, the depth of talent across the game, and the surging demand for investment in women’s professional basketball.”
WNBA expansion teams
2028: CLEVELAND
Majority ownership group: Dan Gilbert, who owns the Cleveland Cavaliers
Where they’ll play: Rocket Arena, home of the Cavaliers
Practice facility: Retrofit a facility in Independence, Ohio, that is currently used by the Cavaliers
2029: DETROIT
Majority ownership group: Tom Gores, who owns the Detroit Pistons
Minority owners: Grant Hill, Chris Webber, Jared Goff
Where they’ll play: Little Caesars Arena, home of the Pistons
Practice facility: Building a new facility
2030: PHILADELPHIA
Majority ownership group: Josh Harris, who owns the Philadelphia 76ers
Where they’ll play: A new arena being built in downtown Philadelphia
Practice facility: The 76ers have a practice facility in Camden, New Jersey
— The Associated Press
All three new teams announced Monday have NBA ownership groups. Each paid a $250 million expansion fee, which is about five times as much as the Golden State Warriors dished out for the Valkyries a few years ago. All three teams will also be investing more money through building practice facilities and other amenities.
“It’s such a natural fit that when you already have this basketball-related infrastructure, these strategies, cultures that you find to be successful, combinations of personnel that you find to be successful,” said Nic Barlage, CEO of Rock Entertainment Group and the Cleveland Cavaliers. “Extending that into the WNBA is just a natural next progression, especially if you have a desire to grow like we do.”
Both Cleveland and Detroit had WNBA teams in the past, and Philadelphia was the home for an ABL team.
“This is a huge win for Detroit and the WNBA,” Pistons owner Tom Gores said. “Today marks the long-hoped-for return of the WNBA to a city with deep basketball roots and a championship tradition. Detroit played a key role in the league’s early growth, and we’re proud to reignite that legacy as the WNBA ascends to new heights. Our plans will bring new energy, investment and infrastructure to our city and the WNBA, and additional resources to our community.”
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Detroit sports stars Grant Hill, Chris Webber and Jared Goff will have minority ownership stakes in the team.
The Cleveland and Detroit ownership groups said the Rockers and Shock — the names of the previous teams — would be considered, but they’d do their due diligence before deciding on what the franchises will be called.
“Rockers will be a part of the mix for sure, but we are at this point, we’re not going to commit to a brand identity because we want to really get into it with our fans, do some research, be very thorough and thoughtful in that process,” Barlage said.
The Detroit and Cleveland teams will play at the NBA arenas that currently exist, while Philadelphia is planning on a new building that will be completed hopefully by 2030.
“We tell the city it’s going to open in 2031. We’re hoping for 2030,” said Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment managing partner and co-founder Josh Harris, who owns the 76ers. “So we’re trying to underpromise and overdeliver. But right now it’s 2031, so that we have a year gap, you know? We’ve got the Xfinity center, the Wells Fargo, they’ll play there.”
Adding these three teams will give the league more natural rivalries with another team on the East Coast and Detroit and Cleveland near each other.
“I think there’s some great historical rivalries in the NBA among these cities, and I think that will carry over to the WNBA,” Detroit Pistons vice president Arn Tellem said. “I would love nothing more to have a rivalry like we do in the NBA with Cleveland and Indiana, Philadelphia and New York and all these great cities … and I think we will.”
Engelbert said she was impressed with the number of cities that bid for expansion teams, a list that included St. Louis; Kansas City, Missouri; Austin, Texas; Nashville, Tennessee; Houston; Miami; Denver and Charlotte, North Carolina.
“There are a variety of cities that obviously bid, and one of those I wanted to shout out — because they have such a strong history in this league and their great ownership group — is Houston,” Engelbert said. “The Houston Comets were just an amazing one, the first four inaugural championships in the WNBA. So I would say that’s the one, obviously, we have our eye on. (Owner) Tilman (Feritta) has been a great supporter of the WNBA, and we’ll stay tuned on that.”
Engelbert went on to say that she wanted to spread out the expansion over a few years to not dilute the talent pool.
“We didn’t know the demand would be where the demand ended up when we ran the process last fall into the winter,” Engelbert said. “Given the very high demand and supply, we wanted to evaluate, too, because we’re very careful about, you know, making sure we’re balancing the number of roster spots, the number of teams.
“But one thing I’m very struck by as we get into a new media deal, as the media market evolves, you know, being in these three big basketball cities is going to help from a media perspective, a corporate partners perspective.”
All the metrics, such as attendance, television ratings and sponsorships, have been on the rise the past few seasons.
“You’re seeing the key performance indicators around the business, but then also just the communal impact of having a women’s professional sports team,” Barlage said. “The largest growing segment of our Cavs youth academy, which serves 60,000 kids across the state of Ohio and upstate New York, the fastest growing segment is girls. You know, it’s growing at a 30% clip year over year in participation rates. And so for us to be able to create role models, to be able to create symbols of progress, to create having ambassadors within the community representing all of these things.”