Sports
Is Austin Getting a WNBA Team? – Austin Monthly
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The WNBA finals are in full swing, with the Las Vegas Aces up two games to one over the New York Liberty and the squads are scheduled to face off again on Wednesday night at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn. Although the season has not quite concluded, the league already has an eye on the future. An enterprise founded in 1996 and still in its infancy, the WNBA could soon look to the capital city as its next market.
Earlier this month, WNBA officials announced that the Bay Area would be the home of a new expansion team, which will begin play in 2025. Commissioner Cathy Engelbert has expressed interest in adding yet another team to the league by that time, and Austin is one of just a handful of cities in consideration for the honor. “We need to be in some big cities in this country where all our data and information shows there’s some great markets for WNBA basketball,” Engelbert said in August, according to Front Office Sports. In addition to the Texas capital, sites that remain possibilities include Toronto, Denver, Charlotte, Nashville, Philadelphia, and Portland.
Of those cities, only Nashville and Austin lack NBA teams, with the latter being the only one in consideration that does not have a “big four” sports team. In fact, Austin is easily the largest city in the country that does not host a franchise in the NBA, NFL, MLB, or NHL. A rapidly growing metropolis that warmly welcomed an MLS club in 2021, Austin has proven itself as a ripe environment for upstart sports teams. With its progressively minded culture and abundance of transplants, it seems tailor-made for a burgeoning endeavor like the WNBA.
The lack of market competition here and the presence of major tech companies that could supply sponsorships (Google, Apple, Whole Foods, Tesla, Amazon, Samsung, Indeed, and Meta, to name a few) might be attractive for the league and a team’s potential owner. As WNBA teams play only 18 home games that don’t run concurrently with college basketball, it’s even possible that the new state-of-the-art Moody Center could host an Austin-based franchise. After all, it’s good enough for the San Antonio Spurs, which played two regular season games in the venue this past spring and will return for a pair of matchups this March.
Meanwhile, the WNBA also brings some promise for the capital city economy, as this year marked a substantial increase in national interest, thanks to breakout stars like Sabrina Ionescu drawing attention. In addition to viewership jumping 21 percent and attendance rising 16 percent over last year, the league also saw boosts in social media engagement and sports betting action. Not to mention the fact that women’s sports in general are seeing a “meteoric rise,” according to Nielsen, the famed audience measurement and data analysis company. Their research shows major growth in not only women’s basketball but also soccer and collegiate sports generally.
The stars seem aligned for the marriage of the flourishing WNBA and our own rapidly expanding metropolitan area, and Commissioner Engelbert has indicated that the league could announce another expansion team by the end of this year. One important thing to consider is that many WNBA teams have NBA counterparts, such as the as-yet-unnamed Bay Area squad’s association with the Golden State Warriors. Austin’s NBA territory rights belong to the San Antonio Spurs, and that franchise could be involved in negotiations—a reality that might even lead to some fun around naming and branding for a new WNBA team. Not that anyone asked us, but the Austin Lariats does have a nice ring to it.
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1712 Rio Grande Street, Suite 100
Austin, TX 78701
512-263-9133
© 2023 Open Sky Media
All rights reserved
Website by Web Publisher PRO
