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The WNBA is exciting. If you haven’t taken the time, watch some highlights, and you’ll be transported to an era when the NBA was a hard hitting physical league that still had a little underdog attitude.

At the heart of it, it feels like a non-corporate product about the put on its corporate clothes. There are unrehearsed moments, media training mistakes, and rivalries and hatred that feels like catnip for social media.

Now it’s gonna expand, and we think the WNBA is about to go on a 10-year generational run.

Is it going to supplant baseball as our favorite summer sport?

Probably not.

But it sure as hell is going to try, and the league is probably gonna win some battles in the end.

So we wrote a corporate brief - a 2-page/30 second skim on the expansion.

Go ahead and skim this like you were a CEO right before a panel of luminaries. Take the template and use it for your job if you want.

Why the memo? Feels appropriate since the league is about to do a level-up in the next 3-5 years with all this expansion.

Let’s go.

oh!

We were on the Talkin Game Podcast a few weeks ago!

Thanks Tony!

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WNBA Expansion: Too Much, Too Soon?

Snapshot (where things stand)

• Expansion cadence: GS Valkyries (2025, active), Toronto + Portland (2026), Cleveland (2028), Detroit (2029), Philadelphia (2030) → toward 18 teams by 2030.

• Demand trend: ESPN/ABC just posted the most-watched WNBA regular season ever (avg. 1.3M, +6% YoY; record 2.7M for Sky–Fever 5/17). League attendance set modern records; GS smashed inaugural-season attendance marks.

The CBA & Charters: why they’re the swing factors

Charters (travel)

• Official shift: League announced a full charter program for 2024–2025 “as soon as practical,” signaling intent to make charters a baseline rather than a perk. This materially improves player health, recovery, and competitive quality—especially as travel legs grow with expansion.

• Why it matters now: Expansion increases total trips, back-to-backs, and cross-border travel (Toronto). If charters aren’t codified beyond 2025 (or funded centrally), costs can boomerang back to teams and undercut on-court quality—fuel for the “too soon” argument.

• Analyst view: Coverage through 2024 framed charters as a long-overdue competitiveness lever—and noted players could use CBA leverage to make them permanent. That’s exactly where the league is now.

Why these are the two core risk factors for expansion

1. Charters = product quality + player health + schedule integrity.
   Expansion increases travel complexity (especially cross-border with Toronto). If charters remain a central, guaranteed entitlement, you protect player recovery and the TV product. If not, teams face a cost squeeze or uneven standards—exactly when new markets need a pristine launch.
   

2. CBA = rules of the road (salaries, calendar, travel) right when new clubs launch.
   
   A 2026 work-stoppage threat—even a brief one—could derail expansion drafts, training camps, ticketing momentum, and local sponsor activations for Toronto/Portland. The ESPN coverage has been explicit: the expiring deal and open issues make this the topic of 2025.

CBA (labor economics)

• Status: Players opted out after the 2024 Finals; the existing deal expires Oct 31, 2025. Negotiations in 2025 have focused on higher salaries, revenue sharing, cap growth, and travel standards, with players calling at least one league proposal “unsustainable.”

• What has to get done:

  1. Codify charters league-wide (not ad hoc) and define who pays (central vs. club).

  2. Raise the cap & max salaries in step with revenue growth, so new teams can field quality rosters without pinching depth.

  3. Re-tune “prioritization” and calendar rules so international/USA commitments don’t hollow out rosters as the league footprint expands.

Bottom line: With ratings/attendance momentum and sequenced market adds, expansion is not “too much, too soon” if the CBA locks in charters and updates the economic model. Miss those, and the answer flips quickly.

What to watch out for (next 6–12 months)

• CBA signing & details: charter permanence/funding, cap/maximums, any revenue-share triggers, and tweaks to prioritization.

• Toronto/Portland launch KPIs: STH conversions, arena readiness, local sponsors, travel ops (cross-border lessons).

• Rights/commerce prints: whether ESPN/ABC gains translate into bigger central guarantees (production + travel underwritten).

• Operational learnings from GS: record attendance + playoff berth sets a replicable expansion template.

Supplement: The status of ‘Real Dollars’

Charter flights (travel ops)

• The WNBA committed ~$50M over two years to run a full-time charter program (roughly $25M per season) beginning in 2024 and fully in 2025.

• Prior to the full rollout, the league had spent about $4M on limited charters in 2023.

Why that matters for expansion: $25M/year is a new baseline that scales with the schedule and the footprint. Add teams (more legs, longer routes, cross-border flights to Toronto), and either the league’s central bill or team reimbursements grow accordingly. If that cost isn’t reliably centralized and guaranteed beyond 2025, it becomes a line-item uncertainty just as new clubs are ramping up.

CBA (labor economics)

• Players opted out in Oct. 2024; the current deal runs through Oct. 31, 2025. Negotiations in 2025 center on charter permanence/funding, salary cap & max raises, and revenue-share mechanics. A work-stoppage risk exists if there’s no deal ahead of the 2026 season.

Why that matters for expansion: 2026 is the year Toronto and Portland debut. If the CBA isn’t done (or travel/salary rules are unsettled), you risk a rocky launch window—free-agency freezes, expansion-draft rules in flux, or worse.

Expansion dollars (context for “owners can afford it” vs cash flow now)

• The league announced three more teams for Cleveland (2028), Detroit (2029), Philadelphia (2030), each reportedly paying ~$250M expansion fees—about 5× the Golden State Valkyries’ ~$50M fee “a few years ago.”

• These are one-time equity checks; they don’t automatically fund recurring operating costs (charters, staffing, facilities) in future seasons.

Audience tailwinds (why players expect salary growth)

• 2025 was ESPN/ABC’s most-watched WNBA regular season ever (avg 1.3M viewers; up +6% YoY; record 2.7M for Sky–Fever). League-wide viewership across networks also set modern highs.

• In-arena demand is real: Golden State set all-time attendance records in its 2025 debut (total ~397,000; avg 18,064), with Indiana and New York also topping 300k.

Translation: Ratings + attendance support raising the cap and maxes tied to revenue growth—but that only works if the CBA formalizes a clear revenue-share trigger so payroll scales with media and sponsorship gains, not just at owners’ discretion.

Have a great week!