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Doug Gottlieb and Sophie Cunningham have something in common.
And it’s not Caitlin Clark, despite the Green Bay Phoenix head men’s basketball coach claiming the Indiana Fever guard “fixed her shot” after he called out a flaw. The fact is that the two of them have issues with WNBA expansion. Well, Cunningham isn’t against The W expanding; she just wanted the league to expand to more destination cities. We get it, Cleveland and Detroit aren’t Miami and Nashville, but Cunningham also insisted that she never meant to disrespect the aforementioned major Midwestern cities.
Gottlieb, meanwhile, urges caution. He believes the WNBA should slow down on expansion, even as the league enjoys unprecedented momentum.
“This is the WNBA that moved from big arenas to small arenas, that had to have a salary cap, and they finally got it all under control,” he said on his Fox Sports Radio show. “And they went from just hemorrhaging money every year and losing teams to ‘Alright, they’d stabilize it.’ They still lost $40-50 million last year as a league, but generally things are piquing up because of Caitlin Clark.
“I just, I don’t see it. I don’t see the expansion of four teams. Make it so that all 14 teams are thriving. Less is more. Packed arenas… Look, whoever buys a franchise is going to have to throw in a bunch of money. That money will be spread around. So these owners that have been losing money are finally going to have some money in their pockets. But the game will become more watered down. More watered means, are there other good women’s professional players? Yeah. But you know what else they are? They’re also foreign-born, which means you’re going to have — no different than the NBA — you’re going to have more foreign players, which are harder to relate to, don’t draw nearly as many people, and they’re not named Caitlin Clark.”
Does Gottleib raise valid concerns about rapid WNBA expansion amid a league still navigating financial instability? Sure. The WNBA has definitely picked up steam — much of it thanks to the likes of Caitlin Clark — but the league is still losing money. The challenge will be finding the right balance between growth and stability so the league doesn’t overextend itself.
That being said, it’ll be a gradual process that doesn’t start until 2028.
“I’m not telling you that the WNBA can’t start to go, ‘Hey, we got some leverage, let’s get better and better deals. We got some people watching.’ Okay, but you’ve got to build around Caitlin Clark,” Gottlieb continued. “And the second, you water it down, maybe you make Caitlin Clark a bigger star because she’s going against lesser competition. But more likely, they’re just more teams that people don’t want to watch.”
Ultimately, expansion only makes sense if it elevates the game — and its stars — rather than diluting the very talent that draws fans in the first place. But it’s hard to imagine that expansion would hinder the growth of women’s basketball, even from someone who has openly questioned the competence of female referees.
