Denver makes short list of cities for WNBA expansion franchise

In a column I penned for Denver Sports last year, I asked the WNBA to consider Denver seriously on their list of 100 possible expansion cities.

WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert reaffirmed the league is taking the Mile High City very seriously. Denver had made May’s cut to 20 cities for possible WNBA expansion and now it’s on the list of just 10.

Denver is joined by the Bay Area, Nashville, Toronto, Austin, Charlotte, Philadelphia and Portland on the list of cities where the WNBA could soon add franchises. That’s only eight named locations but the Bay Area could technically be any of three cities, meaning Denver is really stacked up against seven other sites. The league is targeting adding two for the 2025 season, according to Engelbert’s comments to Front Office Sports.

“We’re working very hard on expansion,” Engelbert told reporters on Sunday. “This is really something I think we need to do, not just because of opening up potentially 12 to 24 roster spots, but also with a league that’s the longest-tenured women’s professional league in the country by double any other, we need more than 12 teams.”

The WNBA’s media partners’ deals expire in 2025, which is why that year makes sense as a date when things will change for the growing league.

“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 Sunday. “We’re excited, capitalizing off NCAA popularity, and hopefully [will] talk more about that as we get further into the season this year.”

The WNBA like Denver and Colorado, is growing fast. TV viewership was up 49% in the 2021 regular season over the 2020 slate, according to a story released last year in the Washington Post. The Centennial State has had the Colorado Xplosion, Colorado Chill and others but none have struck around. The WNBA itself tried to expand at various points but the league wasn’t as healthy as it is now.

The mass talent in the WNBA coupled with only being in a few markets gives them a good platform to expand off of. Denver’s isn’t a slam dunk candidate with no clear ready-to-go facility and questions about who would take the ownership dive.

The WNBA will expand; it’s just a matter of time and now we have a sooner date than the one floated in the past, when the collective bargaining agreement expires in 2027.

If Colorado doesn’t get a team this time around, it does feel probable some day Denver will be home to a WNBA team.

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