WNBA Expansion Continues

The WNBA announced another expansion team today, adding Portland to Toronto as new teams for the 2026 season after the Golden State Valkyries take the court next year. This represents major growth for the league after not expanding since 2008, when the Atlanta Dream joined the league, followed by the Houston Comets being contracted after the season and the Sacramento Monarchs being contracted the next year to get to the current number of twelve teams. Expansion is expected to continue, although not on the same timeline as the announced teams, with a number of potential markets being mentioned in recent years. The growth that has allowed for expansion to finally be in the league’s plans again looks set to continue, but there could still be bumps in the road for new teams and there is a lot of uncertainty around the logistics around the process.

Expansion Roster Rules

With the Valkyries being the first team up in expansion, there has been a lot of impatience around the league not announcing expansion and entry draft rules around them joining the league. Since more teams are joining soon, it makes sense that all parties are trying to figure out what solutions may help the league as a whole while minimizing the harm to existing teams. Whatever rules are negotiated and implemented for the Valkyries will then likely be the rules that the next set of teams are following so there are concerns that they will be too beneficial to the expansion teams or not help them enough to become competitive quickly and hurt their commercial viability.

The expansion draft is scheduled before free agency and the entry draft so that is the first area of concern. Teams have been allowed to protect six players in the past, which seems to be a reasonable compromise in terms of making some good players available without running the risk of a team depleting their roster between losing players in the draft and free agency. Expanding by three teams in two years certainly will challenge all teams in keeping their depth though. The league did expand by four teams from twelve for the 2000 season, but it was in a different place in terms of player pool at that point with the ABL, including the San Jose Lasers, folding before the 1999 WNBA season.

The entry draft rules are of particular interest due to the hopes of teams to find a foundational talent through that process. While fans of the expansion teams will certainly be hoping that the automatic awarding of the top pick to recent NFL, MLS, and NWSL expansion teams will be implemented, it is more likely that their picks will follow something along the lines of recent WNBA and NBA examples. That could mean that the Valkyries will pick fifth after all of the non-playoff teams get their picks or even third after the picks that actually awarded in the lottery process. That might make more sense as further expansion could leave those teams with picks that are too low to give them a good chance at a star. The NHL added their last expansion team to the lottery itself with the third best odds and a guarantee that they would not drop below the third selection.

Commercial Opportunities

Since the four most established American sports leagues have not needed significant expansion recently, there is a lot of uncertainty from the fan perspective surrounding the process. The NHL continues to try to stabilize at their existing teams, the NFL seems set until major structural changes while MLB and the NBA do talk about trying to match to match their number, but have been stable at around the same levels for years. As a result, the only recent comparable leagues to study in expansion have been from American soccer with MLS and the NWSL and both have success stories that show a path forward for the WNBA.

Expansion teams in soccer have successfully attracted new fans in their markets by either giving them their first top division American team or by taking advantage of apathy or hostility of the locals towards existing teams. The Valkyries have already gotten strong results from their ticketing process that shows that interest exists for the team. That existing relationship between residents and teams has also shown that it can be harder for a team that has already alienated local fans through poor results or bad venue experiences to recover and get given another chance to prove themselves. While the league has not had expansion in a while, the relocation that led to the Las Vegas Aces has been a success so far as well as the New York Liberty changing ownership and moving within their market.

The league adding a Bay Area team gives them one of the top ten US media markets that they were missing and adding Toronto next certainly increases their potential fanbase in Canada. As discussions and speculation continue about the next expansion team to be announced, there will certainly be talk about the two missing top ten markets in Philadelphia and Houston while trying to figure out whether Connecticut successfully draws from the Boston market or not after they played a regular season game there. While the bigger markets obviously provide large opportunities, there will also continue to be discussion about whether to seek out markets below the top group that have less competition from other sports.

Possible Obstacles

The timing is excellent for the Valkyries to join the league, but there could be a lot of uncertainty for the 2026 newcomers to navigate before they take the court. Both the owners and players have the ability to announce that they will opt out of the remainder of the existing CBA, but either side must do so before deadline at the end of next month in order to end the agreement after the 2025 season. It is widely expected that the players union will vote to end the agreement at that time due to the growth arc of the league since the last negotiation.

The opportunity for players to get higher salaries and greater benefits follow the last negotiation, which was in a period of more steady growth, and the negotiation before it, which was in a period of concern about the league’s short-term health. The players side of the negotiation is likely to ask for substantial improvement in terms while owners will at least state concerns about the sustainability of the growth trajectory in trying to give less concessions. With the figures at stake this time and the expansion teams being a clear sign of the league being in a healthier place, it is possible that negotiations could drag on and possibly affect the start of the 2026 season, which would be very difficult for expansion teams trying to build momentum in the runup to their debut.

The growth in teams means a growth in the player pool, something that has been highly anticipated by those who want the league to have more room to develop players as well as those who lament that some popular players are not able to maintain a spot in the league. There is not really a mechanism that ensures that all of the talent gets evenly distributed as the number of teams increases though and a major complication factor for the 2026 season is that many veterans have intentionally negotiated contracts that do not run past the 2025 season, leading to the possibility that many players will be changing teams at that time. That degree of chaos could change how many existing fans feel about their teams when favorite players leave and some teams could be especially hard hit as there are disparities in facilities and benefits available across the league right now. The Valkyries already having an infrastructure established by that point could be of great help to them in attracting players at that point, especially if they prove to provide a good player experience and strong basketball operations in their first season, which could be difficult for less established ownership groups to match.