MLSE missed its shot
WNBA an obvious play in Toronto. Good thing Tanenbaum sees it
The WNBA is coming to Toronto, and it’s a moment. Larry Tanenbaum has been granted a WNBA expansion franchise that will start play in 2026, in the 8,000-seat Coca-Cola Coliseum at Exhibition Place. Toronto will be the league’s 14th team, after Golden State launches in 2025, with more expansion planned. It will be a project a long time in the making.
And it still could have been better. This should have been a Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment play. The muscle, the reach, and the power of that organization would have helped. Moreover, you can bet it would have been a smart financial and cultural move by the city’s dominant sports organization. Everybody could have come out with a win.
Instead, this belongs to Tanenbaum, and the spinoff division of Kilmer Sports. The franchise will be run by highly regarded former Raptors executive Teresa Resch, and it is projected to lose money at first — perhaps as much as a million dollars a year, according to sources with an understanding of the plan — and is not guaranteed to make an operating profit. There is a path to profitability, but it is not certain.
That said, with just a little vision, a WNBA team was an obvious play in Toronto. The Chicago-Minnesota game at Scotiabank Arena last year was a triumph. The sport was exploding even before Caitlin Clark came along.
And look at Toronto FC. It was bought for $10 million in 2005 and is estimated to be worth an astonishing $725 million (U.S.) today. Major League Soccer was once a very minor league but in a recent Sportico estimate of the franchise values of global soccer clubs, five MLS teams were inside the top 20, with Toronto FC at No. 28. The franchise value was always the real play here, and the Rogers guys arguing against the MLSE pursuit of a franchise last year on the basis of profitability and salary structure don’t seem to have understood that.
Alas. New MLSE CEO Keith Pelley has come into the company talking about expanding lil’ ol’ Toronto as a global brand, and the WNBA would have fit. It’s usually best to catch the elevator on the way up.
Still, Tanenbaum is the one piece of the MLSE ownership structure that truly cares about and for his franchises, and he’s the best possible choice to steward this team, at an exciting time. PWHL Toronto just drew a raucous capacity crowd at Coca-Cola Coliseum for their 4-0 Game 1 playoff win against Minnesota. There are broadcasting hours that can be filled by what is relatively affordable content, and TSN has been especially supportive of women’s basketball. Women’s soccer, with Project 8, remains a possibility.
And the incandescent Clark is already lifting the WNBA like nothing before. Her Indiana Fever drew a sellout of more than 13,000 for their first pre-season game. Some teams are moving Clark games to bigger venues. This week the WNBA announced that every team will now take charter flights.
Go back into the history of every major men’s sports league and you will recognize this milestone: The NBA didn’t start chartering flights on a widespread basis until the 1990s, and the NHL didn’t get there until the early 2000s. This is all part of the increasing professionalization of a league.
That’s one thing with the comparison between men’s leagues and women’s leagues: We tend to forget how far the NHL, NBA, MLB and even NFL had to come before they became culture-defining touchstones and multibillion-dollar brands. Gordie Howe needed all that memorabilia money that his wife Colleen socked away. Magic Johnson once redefined the NBA’s salary structure by taking a million dollars a year.
And over time, with patience, money, exposure and growth, they took off. People like sports.
Tanenbaum is connected — he is active as the chair of the NBA’s board of governors — and he had both the money and the market to get this done. Once he got the blessing of the MLSE board to pursue a WNBA team, it was going to happen. He had the vision to try this, outside of MLSE.
At least Drake, last seen being immolated in the era’s defining rap feud, probably won’t be involved with this team. At least Edward Rogers, last seen rejecting the pursuit of a WNBA team last year, won’t be involved with this team. Those are pluses.
But, really, this is another beachhead in the evolution of sports. The basketball culture of Toronto got better Friday. The young women across the country who love basketball, or who just want to see themselves in sports beyond hockey — nothing wrong with seeing yourself in hockey, of course — got something more. It could have been better and more secure, sure. It could have been bigger.
It doesn’t matter now, because it’s happening.