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It appears Portland will get a WNBA team after all.
The WNBA is expected to grant Portland the league’s 15th franchise, according to Sean Highkin of The Rose Garden Report. The news comes nearly a year after talks between the WNBA and local entrepreneur Kirk Brown to grant Portland a team broke down in the 11th hour.
The Bhathal family, owners of the NWSL’s Portland Thorns, will lead the ownership group of the team that is expected to join the league in 2026.
The official announcement of the Portland-based WNBA franchise is expected on Sept. 10. The team’s name has yet to be confirmed. Portland’s WNBA team from 2000–2002 was named the Fire, but it’s unclear whether the moniker will carry over to the new team.
Aggressive Expansion
It’s no secret that the WNBA is in the middle of exponential growth, largely driven by the arrival of its 2024 draft class headlined by Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese. Attendance is up double-digit percentages for all 12 teams, viewership numbers are the highest in two decades, and in July, the WNBA, together with the NBA, signed a $2.2 billion media-rights deal.
League expansion is just another sign of growth, and a team in Portland would be the third franchise announced in the last 12 months after the Golden State Valkyries, who join the league in 2025, and a still unnamed Toronto club that will enter in 2026.
While expansion opens the door for long-term revenue—including the potential to add more games to the regular-season schedule—it also adds a short-term boost because of the expansion fee. Valkyries owner Joe Lacob, who owns the NBA’s Warriors, paid $50 million to join the league. Toronto franchise owner Larry Tanenbaum paid $115 million, according to the Associated Press, though the expansion fee was only a portion of that figure.
An infusion of capital is important for a league that, despite steady growth even before this year, is still in a shaky financial state. The Washington Post reported in June that WNBA is still losing tens of millions of dollars a year.
