Now that the 2021 WNBA season is in the books, and with a lengthy seven-month offseason on the horizon, this is the perfect time to discuss big picture issues surrounding the league. One of the most interesting is expansion, which has been gaining steam in recent years.
On Thursday, an ownership group led by Alana Beard held a press conference detailing their efforts to bring an expansion franchise to Oakland, California. Beard, who retired in 2019 after an impressive career that included one championship, two Defensive Player of the Year Awards and four All-Star appearances, has partnered with African American Sports and Entertainment Group.
"I've always envisioned being an owner of a WNBA team and I kept track of everything that [AASEG] had been doing up until this point," Beard said. "I reached out and it just made sense to come together to partner on this to bring something special to the community."
The push to bring a WNBA team to Oakland has been going on for some time now on a local level. So far there appears to be support, especially from the municipal government. The Oakland city council recently gave unanimous approval to a term sheet that would secure Oakland Arena (formerly Oracle Arena where the Golden State Warriors used to play) as a future home for the team.
In addition, Oakland vice mayor Rebecca Kaplan is on board. "Oakland has the location, history and demographics to support a highly successful WNBA team, a great fan base and a welcoming community," Kaplan said earlier this year. "We also have an available basketball arena that's easy to get to from throughout the greater region."
But while the groundwork has been laid to bring a WNBA team to the Bay Area, that doesn't mean it's actually going to happen any time soon. Expansion is "on the horizon," as WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert put it during a press conference ahead of the Finals earlier this month, but the league is still in the research phase and there are no plans in place.
"So there's a myriad of probably 15 or so metrics that we're looking at to determine whether a market or city could be good," Engelbert said. "Then obviously you have to evaluate what ownership groups would step forward and support the team because the owners are a very important cog in this whole thing around picking cities to expand in."
"So those are all the things -- again, timeline," Engelbert continued. "I think in my state of the league at the beginning of the season, I talked about that time next year we'd be talking about a little more details on the plan. So I think I would stick with that into the spring and summer next year and into the 2022 season we'll be sharing more."
The WNBA, which began with eight teams in 1997, reached a brief peak of 16 teams from 2000-02. A number of franchises have folded since then, and the league has been operating with its current 12-team format since 2010. The last time a new franchise entered the league was the Atlanta Dream in 2008.
Given the increasing popularity of the league, it seems likely that expansion will be approved sometime in the near future. An exact timeframe is still too hard to nail down, but whenever it does happen, Oakland is going to be one of the leading candidates to secure a new franchise.
