Sports The WNBA is heading to Toronto, in step with media reports.
The Canadian Broadcasting Company reported that the girls folk’s skilled basketball league awarded a franchise to the Kilmer Community. The reported deal would accumulate Toronto’s WNBA personnel launch playing in Might perhaps well well also 2026.
The WNBA did no longer inform the file.
“We continue to construct up interaction in productive conversations with enthusiastic ownership teams in a bunch of markets and the granting of any expansion teams requires a vote of the WNBA and NBA Board of Governors,” the league acknowledged.
Larry Tanenbaum is the chairman and CEO of Kilmer Community and the chairman of the board for Maple Leaf Sports actions and Entertainment, which owns the NBA’s Toronto Raptors and NHL’s Toronto Maple Leafs. He also owns 25% of MLSE thru Kilmer’s holdings.
Adding a personnel in Toronto could be the first outside the U.S. for the WNBA, which begins its twenty eighth season next week.
WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert acknowledged at the league’s draft final month that she hopes to magnify to 16 teams by the 2028 season. Toronto modified into one amongst the cities she talked about when talking about its expansion. Various cities talked about by Engelbert for doubtless expansion were Philadelphia, Portland, Denver and Nashville, as effectively as the South Florida procedure.
The novel Toronto membership could be the 14th personnel in the WNBA. A spread franchise in Golden Divulge is made up our minds to affix the league in 2025.
The Toronto personnel will reportedly play at the 8,000-seat Coca-Cola Coliseum, which hosts the AHL’s Marlies and PWHL’s Toronto franchise.
Canada has hosted two supplied-out WNBA pre-season games in the previous two years. Toronto’s Scotiabank Arena modified into at means to explore the Chicago Sky defeat the Minnesota Lynx, 82-74 in 2023. Edmonton’s Rogers Place modified into also stuffed as the Los Angeles Sparks beat the Seattle Storm, 84-seventy 9, on Saturday.
The league offered on Thursday that it would accumulate charter flights starting this season, a pass that could perhaps even again in increasing to Canada.
Reporting by The Related Press.
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