WNBA expansion

[Green Chile]

Sophie Cunningham is not a fan of the expansion cities selected:
“You want to listen to your players, too. Where do they want to play? Where are they gonna get excited to play and draw fans?… don't know how excited people are to be going to Detroit or [Cleveland]."

Yikes.
I get that these people are famous and so they want to live in big markets and places that are glamorous, but this kind of entitlement isn’t a good look imo.
If Giannis can live in Milwaukee and learn to love the city, I’m sure these ladies will be alright in Detroit or Cleveland for half the year.
I mean hell, if it raises salaries it’s gotta be better than playing in Russia in the offseason right?
I don’t even think the league should care where players want to play tbh, at least not until they’re profitable.

Sophie is just there for the clicks.

An Indy player **** on Detroit and Cleveland is pretty rich.

We all know Sophie is just dicking around.

[Green Chile]

After a couple days thinking about it, something about this just doesn't sit right.
It's nothing to do with the cities or going to 18. Those things are fine.

It just feels rushed.
Not the rollout, obviously, some of this is 5 years away. The announcement and commitment to these cities/owners feels rushed.

Valkyries paid a $50M franchise fee. 2 years later, that fee jumped to $250M.
If you expect good things over the next few years, it would make sense to wait and see if they could get even more in a couple of years.

It just sort of feels like the current owners (also meaning the NBA), saw $750 million sitting on the table and said why not.

Maybe it's just a general mistrust of the NBA's handling of this league, and this is a pretty large influx of cash (40% of that 3/4 of a billion dollars goes straight to the NBA). It's obvious that these teams were always going to NBA owners, which can be fine (see Lacob), but it would seem plausible that the means maybe some better long-term potential ownership groups got overlooked. There's also the history of NBA owners not taking this league seriously and bailing.

Then you've got some of the current cheap W owners also getting a massive influx of cash (that they may be unlikely to re-invest into their teams).

I could be totally off-base.

But something about this just feels like it may be short-sighted thinking. The league is at such a critical moment, so any possibility of that seems concerning.

I could be totally off-base, but something about this doesn't feel right.

[hermes]

its very rushed

sounds like they have a long list of interested cities, so they were able to set a much higher entrance fee this time around. heck i think based on a comment i saw from the commissioner it wouldn't shock me if they weren't done. they should be for a while to see if this many teams this fast can work, but money talks

[ChiTown6rings]

The Caitlin Clark effect? Or was this bound to happen anyway?

I believe both. There were calls for expansion for about the last three seasons prior to CC. The league's talent pool was getting deeper and roster expansion wasn't a viable solution.

As far as the Caitlin Clark effect (and the draft class of 2024 to a lesser extent), we have witnessed a new excitement, a new investment into the league and the women's game itself. I'm loving it.

[DirtybirdGA]

Well, welcome Portland Fire

[zike_42]

https://www.wnba.com/news/introducing-the-portland-fire

I really like the logo, especially compared to the Tempo's terrible logo.

[cdubbz]

https://www.wnba.com/news/introducing-the-portland-fire

I really like the logo, especially compared to the Tempo's terrible logo.

Not bad. I like how they incorporated the rose to the design. They could have some cool gimmicks at the arena and cool jerseys too. The team can also get roasted hard if they're doing horrible lol.