The WNBA is headed to the Metropolis of Roses.
Portland was awarded the WNBA’s fifteenth franchise, the league introduced Wednesday. The franchise, which is able to start play in 2026, is led by Lisa Bhathal Merage and Alex Bhathal, the house owners of the Nationwide Girls’s Soccer League’s Portland Thorns.
The crew will play within the metropolis’s downtown enviornment, the Moda Heart, which can be residence to the NBA’s Portland Path Blazers.
“We consider within the transformative energy of girls’s sports activities and are thrilled that the W will name Portland residence,” Lisa Bhathal Merage said in a statement. “We all know that Portland’s vibrant and numerous communities will extremely help and rally round this crew. Our purpose is to develop this group in partnership with the Portland group and we stay up for supporting the very best ladies’s basketball gamers on the earth once they take the ground on the Moda Heart in 2026.”