A version of this article first appeared in the CNBC Sport newsletter with Alex Sherman, which brings you the biggest news and exclusive interviews from the worlds of sports business and media. Sign up to receive future editions, straight to your inbox. This week, the WNBA revealed three new teams will be coming to the league – Cleveland in 2028, Detroit in 2029 and Philadelphia in 2030. I attended the announcement event at NBA headquarters in New York. There was a lot of excitement in the room among the principals – Cleveland’s Rock Entertainment CEO Nic Barlage , Detroit’s Vice Chairman of Palace Sports & Entertainment Arn Tellem , and Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment co-founder Josh Harris , who already owns the NBA’s Philadelphia 76ers, the NHL’s New Jersey Devils and the NFL’s Washington Commanders. The three men high-fived and fist bumped each other on stage to begin the proceedings, before making their victory speeches. Cleveland and Detroit are getting back WNBA franchises (the Rockers left Cleveland in 2003 and the Shock folded after the 2009 season), while Philly is getting a team for the first time. “The WNBA’s return to Cleveland is a win for not only our city, but for the great state of Ohio,” said Barlage. “We can’t wait to be a beacon of hope and aspiration for all the girls and women that look up to the players in the WNBA. We look forward to embracing and wrapping our arms around our community in so many different ways through this opportunity.” “This is a huge win for our city,” Tellem said. “Basketball is a unifying sport. It brings people together – more than ever in our world today.” “What a great day,” said Harris, not to be outdone. “Philadelphia, the W is coming, let’s go!” Amid all the talk about community building, as the CNBC reporter in the room, I naturally started asking those in attendance about the investment thesis. Privately, I heard a similar message – these teams won’t make money for a while, and ownership is fine with that. Most WNBA teams make very little money, if they make money at all. Forbes estimated the Atlanta Dream made just $11 million in 2024 revenue. Caitlin Clark ‘s Indiana Fever made the most in the league with $32 million, according to Forbes. For comparison, CNBC Sport estimated the NBA’s Golden State Warriors generated $781 million in revenue, net of their revenue-sharing payment, during the 2023-24 season. Instead, the investment strategy for WNBA owners is to build equity for future value gains, whether that’s through a minority stake sale to private equity or other wealthy individuals or an all-out sale down the road. The hope is equity appreciation more than makes up for the yearly cash burn. “When you look at the trajectory of women’s professional basketball in the United States right now, it’s going through the roof,” Barlage told me. “We only see this thing going one direction, which is hockey stick-like growth.” Harris agreed, noting the multiyear time horizon. “We’re in an extensional moment in women’s sports,” Harris said. “Women’s sports is exploding everywhere, and I think this is just going to keep going. I think we’re at the beginning of a long-term trend.” It’s easy to make a long-term bet when you’re a highly successful and wealthy sports team owner with a proven track record. It should therefore come as little surprise that WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert chose expansion franchises for the Cavs’ Dan Gilbert , the Pistons’ Tom Gores and the 76ers’ Harris. These are owners who are building their sports empires. It’s a growing trend throughout sports, whether it’s Fenway Sports Group or Kroenke Sports & Entertainment or Harris Blitzer. Other cities that made bids, including Nashville, Austin and St. Louis, don’t have existing ownership groups with ready-made buildings that can support a WNBA franchise. Even the winning cities will likely need to spend hundreds of millions more in locker room and practice facility accommodations to prepare for the new teams. Each franchise also paid a record high $250 million expansion fee to the league, according to a person familiar with the terms. I asked Engelbert about the upcoming WNBA collective bargaining agreement, where players will want significantly more money, larger rosters, and other benefits from their wealthy owners. Engelbert has been consistently and publicly confident about avoiding a work stoppage, and she was once again optimistic this week. “I’m confident that we’ll work through it with the players and do something transformative,” she said. “We’re in a much different place financially than we were. We were just surviving 5, 6 years ago. We’re now thriving. So absolutely, I agree with the players. We’re in listening sessions, we’re bargaining, and so I’m excited to continue the discussions. We’re really excited for what we’ve been able to transform on the business side. I’m excited for what they’ve done on the basketball side. So now, it’s just getting an agreement done.” It’s interesting to hear Engelbert talk about the league as thriving when revenue figures per team are still so low. Of course, the league did just sign a media rights deal that’s worth 6 times more than the previous agreement. That’s more money in everyone’s pocket. But the CBA expires this year, and it’s certainly possible owners balk if players’ salary demands aren’t commensurate with where the league is today, rather than where it may be in 3 or 4 years when that media rights deal is reevaluated after the 2028 season. The WNBA bet from the owners’ standpoint is very much a future play. It’s a gamble that the popularity of Clark, Angel Reese , Paige Bueckers and others will lead to generations of kids who are inspired to play basketball, raising the talent bar each year. “I went to the McDonald’s All-American game this year. These are high school seniors. A bunch of them could come right into the W today,” Engelbert told me. “The talent pool coming in over the next five years, from what we can see, is extraordinary. It’s probably the highest level of talent. Elite talent.” On the record With WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert … We stitched together my interviews with Engelbert, Barlage, Tellem and Harris for this week’s “On The Record.” One thing worth pointing out – the day was a win for old-school American basketball cities over several southern cities that are often cited by guests on CNBC as being the new centers of business growth (Miami, Austin, Nashville, etc.). That point wasn’t lost on Tellem, who grew up in Philadelphia and now takes pride in working for Detroit. “I love it that we beat the hot, sexy southern cities,” Tellem told me. “Michigan and Ohio, in particular, we always struggle to have these kinds of wins when we’re competing against these hot, sexy cities. And I love it today that we stuck it to them and we won.” Watch those four interviews here . Or listen here and follow the CNBC Sport podcast if you prefer the audio version. A bonus for podcast listeners – I also spoke with CNBC Sport valuation guru Mike Ozanian about not just the WNBA but the ramifications of the $10 billion L.A. Lakers sale announcement a couple of weeks ago – and if the top sports teams are getting so expensive that we’re now on a path to private equity majority ownership or even IPOs of teams to pool capital. CNBC Sport highlight reel The best of CNBC Sport from the past week: Nike shares have surged this week after CEO Elliott Hill told investors, “From here, we expect our business results to improve. It’s time to turn the page.” Fears over the Trump administration’s tariff policy, which would affect manufacturing hubs like China and Vietnam, have pummeled Nike shares in recent months, reports CNBC’s Gabrielle Fonrouge. The administration struck a trade deal with Vietnam Wednesday, Trump posted on Truth Social. The English Premier League has struck a five-year deal with Microsoft to tap into their AI capabilities. The agreement will “integrate Microsoft’s Copilot AI into the English Premier League app, offering fans access to more than 300,000 articles, 9,000 videos and statistics from the league dating back to its founding in 1992,” writes CNBC’s Frank Holland . The big number: $144 million In last week’s newsletter, we told you tracking data suggested Apple’s “F1: The Movie” would probably open between $59 million and $75 million. Well, turns out those estimates were low. Very low. The racing movie, starring Brad Pitt , generated $144 million worldwide in its opening weekend – with $55.6 million coming from North America. That’s great news for not only Apple but also potentially Formula One, which hopes to capitalize on the movie’s success by bringing in new fans as it negotiates a new TV rights deal. Quote of the week “The settlement does not include a statement of apology or regret.” — Paramount Global settled its lawsuit with the Trump administration over a “60 Minutes” episode with then-presidential candidate Kamala Harris. Importantly for the news division, the settlement doesn’t include any admission of wrongdoing for misleading editing or anything else. While Paramount has said before that the lawsuit “is completely separate from, and unrelated to, the Skydance transaction and the FCC approval process,” the settlement is likely one of the final hurdles for deal approval. When and if that happens, Skydance Media CEO David Ellison will become the new CEO of the company that owns CBS and CBS Sports. Around the league Good story in The Athletic this week by Ben Pickman and Sabreena Merchant about Caitlin Clark’s value to the WNBA and how it dwarfs her compensation. “The idea that she (is) maybe worth 1,000 times her salary in franchise value is not inconceivable,” according to Judd Cramer , an economics lecturer at Harvard. If the WNBA adding five more teams between now and 2030 wasn’t ambitious enough, Engelbert hinted Houston may be next during her press conference this week. The NBA’s Rockets are owned by Tilman Ferttita . “One of those I wanted to shout out because they have such a strong history in this league, and they’re a great ownership group — Houston. … That’s the one we have our eye on,” Engelbert said. “Tilman has been a great supporter of the WNBA, and we’ll stay tuned on that.” The Athletic’s Andrew Marchand reported this week that Major League Baseball is back in talks with ESPN about keeping the sports media giant as a future broadcast partner, both with local rights and pieces of its current “Sunday Night Baseball” package. ESPN opted out of “Sunday Night Baseball” earlier this year, refusing to pay about $550 million for the next three seasons of games. MLB has been in discussions with NBCUniversal (CNBC’s parent company) and Apple, among others, about replacing ESPN as its primary Sunday Night partner.
