After selling out an exhibition game last year, Toronto has nabbed its very own pro women’s basketball team.
What happened: Toronto is set to be awarded Canada’s first Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) team, sources told CBC Sports. The official announcement is planned for later this month, with the team set to start playing in 2026 at the Coca-Cola Coliseum.
- Billionaire Larry Tanenbaum’s Kilmer Sports will own the team. He is also a chairman of Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment, the group that owns both the NBA’s Toronto Raptors and the NHL’s Toronto Maple Leafs.
- Other cities like Denver and Nashville were also considered for a new franchise, but Tanenbaum’s involvement allegedly gave Toronto a leg up.
Why it matters: A WNBA team will feed Canada’s growing appetite for women’s sports. Deloitte expects elite women’s sports to become a billion-dollar industry this year, while a recent survey found that two-thirds of Canadians fancy themselves women’s sports fans.
- The new Pro Women’s Hockey League set six separate attendance records in its inaugural season, and Project 8, a Canadian women’s soccer league, is also in the works.
What’s next: There’s still a lot of work ahead to get the team up and running, from securing sponsors, signing TV deals, and, of course, picking a name. Might we suggest the Huskies (a nod to Toronto’s first b-ball team), the Raccoons (already a symbol for the city), or the Traffic (self-explanatory)?—QH