The WNBA is set to expand in the very near future.
Commissioner Cathy Engelbert recently spoke to the Athletic and confirmed that the league is planning on adding two new expansion teams by as early as the 2024 season and Engelbert is hoping to pinpoint which cities will get teams by the end of 2022 at the latest.
Per The Athletic, the WNBA is narrowing its search down to 10-12 cities after almost 100 locations were initially in the mix. The league is basing it off five specific data categories: demographics, psychographics (market research or statistics classifying population groups according to psychological variables), sports benchmarks, viewership and fan data.
This is what Engelbert had to say about the expansion plan:
“There’s no crisp or clear formula, but you see cities that rise to the top pretty quickly,” Engelbert said. “And we’re also looking at our current WNBA franchise cities and comparing what lessons we’ve learned and what’s worked and not worked over the last 25 years. We really want to set up new owners for success.”
Engelbert noted the WNBA is hoping for an 18-month to a 24-month timeline for announcing a new team to them actually starting their first season in the league. The last expansion team in the WNBA was the Atlanta Dream in 2008. Needless to say, it's a long time coming.
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