The league remains in an expansion mode.
The Commissioner of the Women’s National Basketball Association Cathy Engelbert is getting big money people and their cash very interested in the league. Recently, the Comcast-Harris Blitzer Sports and Entertainment group announced that their combined sports business in Philadelphia not only wants to build a new arena by 2031 but the combined business wants a WNBA team in the building. Nashville investors also want a WNBA franchise. The league is in an expansion mode and as many as a dozen business groups want to spend big money to get a franchise in the league. Engelbert said her business is in no rush to add another expansion team as the WNBA will debut a team in San Francisco later this year and in Toronto, Ontario and in Portland, Oregon in 2026.
Engelbert has mentioned several markets in the past that could qualify for an expansion team. Those markets include Philadelphia, Nashville, Denver, and somewhere in South Florida. Jacksonville and Orlando could explore expansion bids. Former WNBA president Donna Orender is part of a group exploring the possibility of making a bid for an expansion team in Jacksonville, Florida. The ownership of the NBA’s Orlando Magic is doing the legwork and is “studying” the feasibility of placing a team in Orlando. The Nashville group has picked out a name for the team, the Nashville or Tennessee Summitt as an homage to long time women’s college coach Pat Summitt. Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell, who is against public spending for a Major League Baseball stadium in town, is all for a WNBA team in his city which has an arena. What is Engelbert looking for? “It’s all the same types of things I’ve been talking about, Arena, practice facility, player experience, committed long-term ownership group, city, demographics, psychographics, Fortune 500 companies based there.”
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