Portland welcomes WNBA expansion team to tip off in 2026

The WNBA is experiencing a surge in popularity, prompting the league to seize the opportunity for expansion.

Wednesday, the WNBA made formal the long-expected: The league will add a 15th team in Portland, starting play in 2026.

PORTLAND, OREGON #WelcometotheW pic.twitter.com/SZlvcHn42H

— WNBA (@WNBA) September 18, 2024

The Portland franchise will be owned by RAJ Sports, run by Lisa Bhathal Merage and Alex Bhathal. Lisa Bhathal Merage will serve as the controlling owner and WNBA Governor. The family has experience owning professional teams, they are investors in the Sacramento Kings and are the controlling owners of the National Women's Soccer League's Portland Thorns (who average 18,000 fans a game).

"This is huge for Portland. We are so honored and humbled to be the vessel that delivers this WNBA franchise to Portland," Lisa Bhathal Merage told the Associated Press. "And that's really how we consider ourselves. Portland is this incredibly diverse, enthusiastic community. We saw the passion first-hand when we started looking into the Portland Thorns and this is Basketball City. So we're very excited about the future.”

Portland had a previous WNBA team, the Fire, which played for just two seasons and folded in 2002. It's not yet decided if the new franchise will keep that name or get a new one. The team will play at the Moda Center, also home to the Portland Trail Blazers.

"As the WNBA builds on a season of unprecedented growth, bringing a team back to Portland is another important step forward," WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert said in a statement announcing the new team. "Portland has been an epicenter of the women's sports movement and is home to a passionate community of basketball fans. Pairing this energy with the Bhathal family's vision of leading top-flight professional sports teams will ensure that we deliver a premier WNBA team to the greater Portland area.”

This season, 12 WNBA teams are fighting it out down to the final day (Thursday) for eight playoff spots, but in two years, that will jump up to 15 teams in the W. The league had already announced two expansion teams — the Golden State Valkyries, which starts play in 2025, and a Toronto franchise to begin in 2026 — and Portland adds to that. The league has made it clear it wants to add a 16th team that would start play by 2028 (Philadelphia, Denver, Nashville and Miami are among the cities being considered).

It was initially expected Portland would be announced as an expansion team last fall with a different owner, ZoomInfo co-founder Kirk Brown. However, Brown backed out late in the process, forcing the league to look for new owners. Engelbert blamed the change on upgrades to the Moda Center at the time but quickly walked back those statements.

Despite the setback, the league was focused on Portland because of the passion for women's sports there — at the University of Oregon and Oregon State, the professional sports teams in the region like the Thorns, and it's the city with a dedicated women's sports bar called The Sports Bra.

"When you look at our numbers, not just the Thorns' off-the-charts attendance, which is incredible, what you've seen, in Eugene, what you've seen in Oregon State, we knew that this was going to be one of the great moments in sports for Oregon," U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden told the Associated Press. "We saw, February of 2023, what was possible. So I can tell you that right now there are women playmaking in Portland. They're rebounding in Roseburg, they're hooping in Hermiston. Every nook and cranny of our state is into this."