WNBA: Is the big expansion news actually good news?

The Golden State Valkyries are racing through the league. The Toronto Tempo are on pace. WNBA Portland is expected to soon accelerate.

WNBA fans had been waiting for news about the league’s final expansion team, which would take the league to Commissioner Cathy Engelbert’s announced target of 16 teams. Would it be Cleveland, Nashville, Detroit, Denver or one of the other cities with expressed interest?

Instead, the WNBA is going into expansion overdrive. On June 30, Engelbert announced that the league will add three more teams, expanding to 18 teams by 2030 with Cleveland launching in 2028, Detroit debuting in 2029 and Philadelphia joining in 2030.

In the expansion presser, Engelbert proclaimed:

The demand for women’s basketball has never been higher, and we are thrilled to welcome Cleveland, Detroit, and Philadelphia to the WNBA family. 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.

So, what are the implications of this announcement? Should fans be excited, anxious or somewhere in between? Here are three big takeaways about the WNBA’s big news:

1. The WNBA is opting for NBA owners

All three owners of the WNBA’s new teams are also NBA owners.

Rather than charting a different model of professional sports ownership, one that, possibly, could be more attuned to the priorities of women athletes and, in turn, actualize a more equitable, inclusive culture, the WNBA is all in on the current, hyper-capitalized world of pro sports, for better or worse. As Englebert emphasized, “[B]eing in three big basketball cities is going to help from a media perspective, a corporate sponsorship perspective.”

In short, the big guys with the big bucks got the new teams. A $250 million expansion fee, which is five times as much as the expansion fee paid by the Valkyries, was the buy-in price for Cleveland (Rock Entertainment Group; Dan Gilbert), Detroit (Tom Gores) and Philadelphia (Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment; Josh Harris).

All three teams will play in NBA arenas, with Cleveland in Rocket Arena, Detroit in Little Caesars Arena and Philadelphia in a new arena that is scheduled to open in 2031. The Philly squad is slated to share a practice facility with the 76ers, while the Cleveland team will occupy a renovated facility that is currently being used by the Cavaliers; Detroit is planning to build a new facility.

2. The South is out

A biased Southerner here. Still, the geographical imbalance of WNBA expansion is striking.

The Atlanta Dream remain the only team in the Southeastern US. And even if Engelbert’s hint that the WNBA’s eventual return to Houston is on the longer horizon, the Dream would remain rather isolated in Atlanta, with Nashville, Charlotte and Miami submitting unsuccessful bids.

It’s especially disappointing that the Nashville-based Tennessee Summitt will not be joining the W. The bid featured the kind of branding—honoring the late, legendary Pat Summitt—that was intentionally grounded in the history of the sport, providing an important connection to the game’s past as the league races into the present and future.

3. Don’t let the Valkyries fool you

The Valkyries are a great advertisement for WNBA expansion. Possibly, too good. Way too good.

Instead of experiencing the struggles expected of a new franchise, struggles projected by many prognosticators, Golden State is thriving, compensating for a perceived talent gap with the smart strategy and strong culture established by head coach Natalie Nakase. But unless there are more Nakases out there, it could get ugly for the W’s future franchises.

Even as fans bemoan favorites who fall victim to roster cuts, a look around the league suggests that building a team with 12 (or 11) quality players is a challenge. Whether its a lack of pro-caliber talent, a failure of player development or a combination of those factors and others, a number of teams just don’t have enough good players. The withering away of the Las Vegas Aces is the prime example, as the lack of reliable depth that prevented their three-peat in 2024 seems likely to deny them a true shot at a championship in 2025. Depth is question for another contender in the Seattle Storm, while would-be playoff hopefuls, such as the Los Angeles Sparks and Chicago Sky, have stumbled due to a deficit of positive contributors. And then there’s the troubles of the Dallas Wings and Connecticut Sun.

That the league will have opportunities for up to 216 players by 2030 is great. But, the conditions have to be there for those players to be great. And the conditions that allow more players to be great don’t generate the revenue that the league appears to be prioritizing. At the expansion press conference, Engelbert expressed that the league preferred adding more teams, rather than expanding the rosters of existing teams, because “individual players don’t create additional revenue, but adding more teams does.”

So, the WNBA is opting to make a splash over establishing something sustainable.

Expanded rosters that allow young players time to grow with a team. A developmental league that gives un-rostered players a stateside opportunity to work on skills valued by WNBA teams. Franchises establishing developmental processes that are as fancy and forward-looking as their much-celebrated facilities. Those things will not bring in the big bucks and big headlines. But, they would make the WNBA and its players better.

Accelerated expansion without such infrastructure risks doing the opposite. An 18-team WNBA can be packaged and promoted as bigger, better product, but the cost of such pomp and circumstance cannot be the on-court product—the most important product.

Additionally, the seemingly icy state of CBA negotiations, with the WNBPA voicing frustration with the league’s first proposal, does not inspire confidence that a bigger league with more teams will make decisions that respect players’ priorities. As the Phoenix Mercury’s Satou Sabally said in response to the expansion news, “Maybe focus on the teams also that find excuses continuously to lack investment into their players before we focus on adding more…”