Cathy Engelbert: WNBA Expansion News Expected 'In the Coming Months'

Despite the effort falling through last year, Portland continues to be one of the cities vying for an expansion team.

📸: Sarah Stier, Getty Images

Ahead of Saturday night’s All-Star Game in Phoenix, WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert gave her annual state-of-the-league press conference. Much of the affair centered around the league’s recent explosion in popularity thanks to a star-studded rookie class headlined by Caitlin Clark, as well as the impending media-rights deal that could finally make the WNBA profitable.

But the subject of expansion came up, too, and on that front, Engelbert said there will be news on added teams “in the coming months.

WNBA-to-Portland Efforts Still Alive, But Obstacles Remain

Engelbert didn’t name any specific cities in the running on Saturday; every time she has in the past year, Portland has continued to be included in that group. Locally, there is still great optimism that women’s professional basketball is not far off from returning to Portland for the first time since the Fire folded in 2002.

Engelbert has said multiple times this year—including again on Saturday—that her goal is to grow the WNBA from 12 teams to 16 by 2028. They’re already halfway to that goal, with the Golden State Valkyries set to start playing in San Francisco in 2025 and an as-yet-unnamed Toronto franchise launching in 2026.

Portland’s expansion team was supposed to join Golden State in playing their first season in 2025, to the point that a date was set for a press conference last October to announce it. As we’ve covered extensively, those plans fell through at the last minute when ZoomInfo cofounder Kirk Brown, who was in line to own the Portland team, backed out. At the time, Engelbert publicly blamed the Blazers’ plans for upcoming Moda Center renovations; she’s since walked that back.

As we reported in May, there are two groups interested in bidding on a Portland WNBA team now that Brown is out of the picture. One is led by Monarch Collective, a women’s sports-focused venture capital fund that recently sold the NWSL’s Angel City FC to Disney CEO Bob Iger and his wife, Willow Bay. The other is led by the Bhathal family, who bought the Thorns from Merritt Paulson earlier this year for $63 million. The Monarch bid has had numerous celebrities with local ties connected to it, including Damian Lillard.

Both groups have plenty of money and various pros and cons; my educated guess as of right now is that the Bhathals would have the edge, given that they’ve already invested in women’s professional sports in Portland and that, as minority owners of the Sacramento Kings, they’re already a known quantity to the NBA’s board of governors, who would have to vote to approve the expansion team.

If the Bhathals ultimately win the franchise, multiple industry sources have suggested that they would look to expand the practice facility they’re planning to build for the Thorns to also house a practice facility for a WNBA team under the same roof.

It is not known what the current buy-in price would be for an expansion fee. According to sources, both the Golden State and Toronto franchises cost in the ballpark of $50 million. When Brown was in talks to launch a team in Portland last fall, his price would have been similar. But in the year since that deal fell apart, the WNBA has skyrocketed in mainstream attention and popularity, and is set to get a massive increase in media-rights fees on its next national television deal. The league would certainly be justified in asking for more money today than they would have asked for a year ago from prospective new owners.

When the Portland team was set to be announced last fall, the plan was for its first season to be in 2025, alongside Golden State, to keep the WNBA at an even number of teams. Now that those plans fell through, the league will grow from 12 teams to 13 next summer with the addition of the Valkyries. If plans are finalized before the end of the year, a Portland expansion team could play its first season in 2026 alongside the Toronto team starting that same year.

That would leave the WNBA to add one more team in this round of expansion to reach Engelbert’s stated goal of 16 teams. Philadelphia, Charlotte, Nashville, Denver and Miami are among the cities that have been floated by league and industry sources in recent months.

Nothing is done until it’s done, and that’s especially true in the case of Portland and the WNBA after what seemed like a sure thing last fall ended up not happening. But with two interested ownership groups with real money and a proven track record of fan support for women’s sports in Portland, people I’ve talked to close to the process still say it will be a surprise if this doesn’t ultimately happen. It’s just a matter of when and who.