WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert will visit Denver, Colorado on Wednesday to meet with investors and tour potential facilities as the city vies for an expansion team, according to the Denver Post. The WNBA will be expanding at some point in the next few years, though specifics have not been announced.
The investment team heading up Denver's push for a team includes multiple prominent businesspeople based in the city, including Robert Cohen, Navin Dimond and his daughter, Ashley Dimond. Cohen, who sits on the board of the U.S. Olympic Museum and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Foundation, and Navin Dimond were previously involved in a failed effort to have Denver host the 2030 Winter Olympics.
Engelbert has made it clear time and again that she wants to add new teams to the league, but the timeline and location has often shifted.
- In June of 2022, she told The Athletic that the league had narrowed down the list of cities to 10-12, and hoped to announce the expansion teams by the end of the year in order to begin play in 2024.
- That target came and went, and in December of 2022 Engelbert said in a new interview with The Athletic that expansion teams would not join until 2025 at the earliest.
- In February of 2023, during an event in Portland, she declared the league was "not in a rush" and expansion was "two to four years" away.
- Then, in May of 2023, she told the Sports Business Journal that the list of cities had been narrowed down to 20 -- more than double the short-list she cited a year prior -- and that the league was "not far down the road with any one."
- Most recently, Engelbert told reporters on Aug. 6 that the league is "working very hard on expansion" and that she would like to get it done because of the need to expand the number of roster spots. "We need more than 12 teams," Engelbert added.
Denver has previously been mentioned as one of the cities on the short-list, though it has not been thought of as a favorite. If Engelbert is making a trip to meet with investors and tour a potential arena, however, that could be changing. The delay and fluctuating logistics suggests that the league is still open-minded about a landing spot.
It may ultimately be too late in the game for Denver to get a team in this initial round of expansion, but this meeting will only help its case for the future.
