The WNBA on Wednesday introduced it has awarded Portland because the league’s fifteenth franchise.
The transfer comes lower than 11 months after WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert wrote a letter to U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), saying that Portland’s bid for a brand new membership can be “deferred” because of the upcoming transforming of town’s NBA enviornment.
Portland beforehand entered the WNBA because the growth Hearth in 2000, nevertheless the franchise folded after the 2002 season.
The brand new workforce will start play in 2026 and is owned and operated by RAJ Sports activities, led by controlling proprietor and WNBA governor Lisa Bhathal Merage and alternate governor Alex Bhathal. They’re additionally the bulk homeowners of the NWSL’s Portland Thorns.
“Because the WNBA builds on a season of unprecedented progress, bringing a workforce again to Portland is one other necessary step ahead,” Engelbert mentioned. “Portland has been an epicenter of the ladies’s sports activities motion and is residence to a passionate neighborhood of basketball followers. Pairing this vitality with the Bhathal household’s imaginative and prescient of main top-flight skilled sports activities groups will be certain that we ship a premier WNBA workforce to the higher Portland space.”
Stated Bhathal Merage: “For many years, Portland has been the worldwide epicenter of sports activities life-style and at the moment, we at the moment are the worldwide epicenter of girls’s sports activities. We consider within the transformative energy of girls’s sports activities and are thrilled that the W will name Portland residence. We all know that Portland’s vibrant and numerous communities will extremely assist and rally round this workforce.”
Portland is the third growth franchise awarded by the WNBA throughout this spherical of growth, following the Golden State Valkyries and a Toronto franchise. The Valkyries will start play in 2025 on the Warriors’ workforce enviornment in San Francisco, whereas the Canadian workforce will be a part of the league in 2026 and contest its residence video games at Coca-Cola Coliseum at Exhibition Place in downtown Toronto.
–Area Stage Media