The Golden State Valkyries have yet to play a regular-season game yet and the team’s expectations couldn’t be higher.
“We want to be the most successful women’s sports organization in the world,” team president Jess Smith recently said on the Front Office Sports show Redefined.
The Valkyries, the WNBA’s first expansion team since the Atlanta Dream in 2008, will open their inaugural regular season Friday in San Francisco against the Los Angeles Sparks. Since Golden State Warriors owner Joe Lacob paid $50 million for the team in September 2023, the Valkyries amassed more than 15,000 season-ticket deposits in 2024 and sold merchandise to all 50 states.
Now the franchise will try to see its success translate to the court, which is easier said than done for expansion teams. The Vegas Golden Knights were the rare expansion team to make the Stanley Cup Final in its first season, but they are the exception, not the rule.
“Part of the Golden State mindset and legacy is we want to be the best at everything we do on and off the court,” Smith said. “From Day 1, Joe Lacob was like, ‘We will win a championship in five years.’ Before we had anything. He said that before I was hired, before we had a general manager. That group likes to win and wants to win. That’s who they are.”
Smith said part of the Valkyries’ approach has been to account for both men and women when building the team’s brand.
“I think for so long, one of the things people have assumed about women’s sports is that it is a women’s product for women,” Smith said. “When in fact the audience is 50% men and 50% women. … The audience scope is actually much bigger than people have assumed all along.”
