NEW YORK (AP) Cleveland, Detroit, and Philadelphia are all expected to join the WNBA by 2030 as the league grows to 18 clubs over the next five years.
If approved by the NBA and WNBA Board of Governors, Cleveland will start in 2028, Detroit in 2029, and Philadelphia the following season. Next year, Portland and Toronto will join the league.
WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert stated, “We are excited to welcome Cleveland, Detroit, and Philadelphia to the WNBA family. The demand for women’s basketball has never been higher.” The remarkable momentum of our league, the breadth of skill in the game, and the growing desire for funding women’s professional basketball are all powerfully reflected in this historic expansion.
NBA ownership groups own all three of the newly announced clubs on Monday. Each paid an expansion fee of $250 million, roughly five times what Golden State paid for a team just a few years prior. Additionally, all three teams will increase their financial investments by constructing practice facilities and other amenities.
According to Nic Barlage, CEO of Rock Entertainment Group and the Cavaliers, “it’s such a natural fit when you already have this basketball-related infrastructure, these strategies, and cultures that you find to be successful, and combinations of personnel that you find to be successful.” It just makes sense to carry it over into the WNBA, particularly if you share our ambition to develop.
In the past, Philadelphia was home to an ABL franchise, and Cleveland and Detroit also had WNBA teams.
According to Tom Gores, owner of the Detroit Pistons, this is a major victory for both Detroit and the WNBA. The WNBA is making its long-awaited comeback to a city with a strong basketball heritage and a championship tradition today. As the WNBA reaches new heights, we are honored to rekindle the history of Detroit, which was instrumental in the league’s early development. Our plans will provide the WNBA and our city with new infrastructure, investment, and energy, as well as more resources for our community.
Sportsmen Grant Hill, Chris Webber, and Jared Goff from Detroit will own a minority share of the team.
Before deciding on the franchises’ names, the ownership groups of Detroit and Cleveland stated that the Rockers and Shock would take into account the names of the former teams.
“We are not going to commit to a brand identity at this time because we want to really get into it with our fans, do some research, and be very thorough and thoughtful in that process,” she said, adding that rockers will undoubtedly be a part of the mix.
While Philadelphia is working on a new structure that should be finished by 2030, the Detroit and Cleveland teams will continue to play at the NBA venues that are currently in place.
We inform the city that it will open in 2031. Josh Harris, a co-founder and managing partner of Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment, which owns the 76ers, stated, “We’re hoping for 2030.” We are therefore attempting to overdeliver and underpromise. However, as of right now, it is 2031, so there is a year between us, you know. They will perform at the Wells Fargo and Xfinity centers.
With Detroit and Cleveland close to one another and another franchise on the East Coast, the league will have more natural rivalries with the addition of these three teams.
Vice President Arn Tellem of the Detroit Pistons stated, “I believe there are some great historical rivalries in the NBA among these cities, and I think that will carry over to the WNBA.” Nothing would please me more than to establish a rivalry between Cleveland and Indiana, Philadelphia and New York, and all these fantastic cities, like we do in the NBA. I believe we will.
The list of towns that competed for expansion franchises, which included St. Louis, Kansas City, Missouri; Austin, Texas; Nashville, Tennessee; Miami; Denver; Charlotte, North Carolina; and Houston, impressed Engelbert.
There are many cities who bid, of course, but I wanted to specifically mention Houston because of their excellent ownership group and long experience in our league, Engelbert added. The Houston Comets, who won the WNBA’s first four titles, were just incredible. That, in my opinion, is the one that we are clearly watching. We’ll keep an eye on that. (Owner) Tilman (Feritta) has been a tremendous supporter of the WNBA.
Engelbert continued by saying that in order to avoid diluting the talent pool, she planned to spread out the expansion over a few years.
“When we ran the process last fall into the winter, we had no idea where the demand would end up,” Engelbert said. Because we’re really concerned about, you know, making sure we’re balancing the amount of roster spaces, the number of teams, we also wanted to assess, given the extremely high demand and supply.
However, one thing that really stands out to me is that, as the media market changes and we enter into new media deals, being in these three major basketball cities will benefit both the media and corporate partners.
Over the past few seasons, every metric—including attendance, television ratings, and sponsorships—has increased.
According to Barlage, you’re seeing the business’s key performance indicators as well as the social benefit of having a women’s professional sports team. Girls make up the fastest-growing portion of our Cavs youth academy, which educates 60,000 children in upstate New York and the state of Ohio. You know, participation rates are increasing at a pace of 30% annually. Therefore, we need to be able to develop role models, symbols of advancement, and ambassadors in the community who stand for each of these things.
