Warriors officially awarded WNBA expansion team for San Francisco

The new team is slated to play at Chase Center in San Francisco starting in 2025. They will use the Warriors’ old practice facility in Oakland as their non-game-day home. The expansion fee the Warriors paid to the league was not disclosed in the initial release.

“The Bay Area is the perfect market for a WNBA team, and we are thrilled this opportunity has finally come to fruition,” Warriors owner Joe Lacob said in a statement. “We have been interested in a WNBA franchise for several years, due in part to the rich history of women’s basketball in the Bay Area, and believe now is the ideal time to execute that vision and build upon the legacy.”

The ownership group will be led by Warriors co-owners Peter Guber and Lacob, who is a familiar face to the basketball world. Lacob got his start in professional sports as an owner of the San Jose Lasers in the American Basketball League, a predecessor to the WNBA that existed from 1996 to 1998. Since buying the Warriors in 2010, Lacob had previously tried to bring a WNBA team to the Bay Area twice through relocation, most prominently in 2014 when the Los Angeles Sparks were up for sale. 

The Warriors put the WNBA expansion bid aside to focus on building Chase Center in downtown San Francisco, which opened in 2019, and then on recovering financially from the coronavirus pandemic.

But the W is finally coming to the Bay Area, which has long been considered a leading market for an expansion team. Earlier this year, Engelbert said that it “doesn’t seem right” that the Bay Area is without a team. The region had two interested bidders, with the Warriors looking to bring a team to SF and the African American Sports & Entertainment Group seeking a team to play in Oakland.

With two local options, Engelbert and the WNBA are choosing San Francisco as the home for its first expansion team since 2008. And it likely won’t just be San Francisco, either — Engelbert has stated her intent to expand by two teams in this round and visited top candidate cities Portland, Denver and Toronto this year.

“We are thrilled about expanding to the Bay Area and bringing the WNBA to a region with passionate basketball fans and a strong history of supporting women’s basketball,” Engelbert said in a statement. “Joe Lacob, Peter Guber and their leadership team know how to build and operate a world-class organization, as witnessed by the immense success the Warriors’ franchise has enjoyed from both a business and basketball perspective over the last decade. Their interest in joining the WNBA family is yet another sign of the league’s growth potential.” 

And 2025 will now not just bring San Francisco its first-ever NBA All-Star Game. It will also bring the modern start of major professional women’s sports in the city, too.