The WNBA tips off its 30th season on Friday, but across those three decades, it has never experienced anything like the Golden State Valkyries, on the court or off it. Last year, the Valkyries became the first expansion franchise in league history to reach the playoffs in its inaugural season and sold out all 22 of their home games to set a league record with average attendance of 18,064.
By the end of the regular season, Golden State had generated $78 million in revenue, not only breaking another WNBA record but also surpassing more than half of the clubs in a more mature men’s league, MLS. As the team enters its second season, the Valkyries have raised prices yet managed to expand their season-ticket base by 2,000 seats, to 12,000, proving that there is still room to run—and helping them race to the top of the WNBA’s most valuable teams, worth an estimated $780 million.
The Valkyries are not the only ones on a financial fast break, however. The 2025 WNBA season also saw the three next-best revenue totals in league history—the Indiana Fever’s $58 million, the New York Liberty’s $43 million and the Las Vegas Aces’ $34 million, according to Forbes estimates—and no team is now worth less than $250 million.
In fact, seven franchises outrank the most valuable clubs from every other women’s league in the world—including Angel City FC, No. 1 in the NWSL at $340 million—and the WNBA’s 13 existing teams (excluding the Portland Fire and the Toronto Tempo, who begin play this season) are collectively worth nearly $5.4 billion.
To put that big number a different way, WNBA teams are now valued at an average of $414 million, up 52% from 2025’s $272 million. In the 29 years that Forbes has valued professional sports teams, only one published ranking has ever featured better year-over-year growth: the NBA’s 74% during the 2014-15 season, after Steve Ballmer’s $2 billion purchase of the Los Angeles Clippers reset the market for clubs.
The WNBA hasn’t had a single inflection point like that, but its momentum has been building. Seven years ago, the Liberty sold for a reported price between $10 million and $14 million, and the Aces went for $2 million in 2021. Now, billionaire Tilman Fertitta has an agreement to buy the Connecticut Sun for a reported $300 million—slotting them in at No. 11 in Forbes’ valuation ranking—with plans to move them to Houston, where he already owns the NBA’s Rockets.
Expansion fees have similarly spiked, from the $50 million that Valkyries owners Joe Lacob and Peter Guber reportedly paid in 2023 to the $250 million that Cleveland, Detroit and Philadelphia agreed to shell out last year for franchises set to take the court in 2028, 2029 and 2030, respectively. At least two of the new groups have also recently brought in additional investors at even higher valuations—$290 million for Cleveland and $325 million for Detroit—according to Sportico.
Those gains appeared to be under threat the past few months amid contentious collective bargaining agreement negotiations between the WNBA and its players’ union, with stars including Minnesota Lynx forward Napheesa Collier publicly criticizing commissioner Cathy Engelbert and league leadership. The sides avoided a work stoppage, however, and came to a compromise in March that, through a new revenue-sharing model, more than quadruples the salary cap this season, to $7 million, and raises player pay at the top of the scale to $1.4 million, from about $250,000 in 2025.
The changes will weigh on teams’ balance sheets, but team executives Forbes spoke with were generally optimistic that continued revenue growth at both the national and local levels would keep franchises on the path to profitability—a goal that a few clubs, unlike some more established men’s teams, are already achieving. “The math maths,” one league insider says of the financial reality under the new CBA. “Both sides feel this deal is sustainable.”
Broader trends in team valuations are fueling the WNBA’s ascent, with prices in the major men’s leagues reaching such stratospheric heights that investors desperate to break into sports have begun to turn to more affordable opportunities in emerging leagues. But women’s basketball has its own tailwinds.
Of course, there is the so-called Caitlin Clark Effect, the surge in the WNBA’s popularity attributed to the All-Star point guard since she was drafted by the Fever in 2024. But insiders are quick to point out that the pro game’s upward trajectory began when Clark was still at the University of Iowa, and while her presence on the court continues to boost ticket sales around the league, the WNBA’s record-setting 2025—a season in which Clark missed 31 of 44 games because of injuries—was an important signal that the league’s success doesn’t rest on any one player’s shoulders.
Total regular-season attendance jumped 34% year-over-year to 3.15 million, according to Sports Business Journal, and viewership rose 3% for games on ABC, ESPN, CBS and ION, to an average of 969,000, giving the WNBA its best mark since 1998 and handily beating the NHL’s average for nationally televised games. For the finals, the WNBA’s average TV audience climbed to 1.5 million, and it hit 2.7 million for one opening-week game featuring Clark and fellow superstar Angel Reese.
The increases come as the league begins its new 11-year national media rights package this season, a set of agreements that were initially worth $2.2 billion—an average of $200 million a year, reportedly six times the value of the previous ESPN deal—and have been elevated to $3.1 billion thanks to new pacts with CBS, ION and Versant. ESPN will also begin featuring WNBA games in prime time as part of its new “Women’s Sports Sundays,” and a record 216 of the league’s games and events will air nationally in 2026, including all 44 Fever games.
Over the course of the new collective bargaining agreement, the league’s regular-season schedule is expected to swell to 52 games, from 44, creating more inventory to sell to broadcasters as well as ticket buyers. And even as the WNBA’s primary focus remains domestic growth—for instance, sponsorship spending was up 45% in 2025, according to research firm SponsorUnited—it is beginning to think globally as well. The debut of the Tempo this season opens up the Canadian market, with Bell Media taking on media rights in the country, and both Engelbert and commissioner Adam Silver of the NBA, which owns 42% of the WNBA, have expressed a desire to see games played outside of North America. In addition, new rules will allow WNBA teams to partner with two foreign sponsors and market themselves in those companies’ home countries.
“I can’t tell you how many external interested parties I have politely turned away within the last year,” one team co-owner says of the investing landscape amid the business boom, “many of them offering sight unseen to come in at numbers well beyond the $250 million [expansion fees].” In a sign of that bullishness, Forbes values the 13 existing WNBA franchises at 12.5 times their average 2025 regular-season revenue—a multiple that slightly trails the NBA’s 12.9x but comfortably outpaces the NFL (10.7x), the NHL (8.9x), MLS (8.9x) and MLB (7x), as well as the NWSL (11.1x).
At the top of the WNBA ranking, Golden State is valued at a relatively modest 10 times its 2025 revenue amid skepticism by bankers and investors that anyone would pay a premium for a franchise when many of its league rivals are just starting to get traction. But even with that note of caution, expectations for the Valkyries are high.
“They have an actual season-ticket base that looks like an NBA team,” one league insider says. “Their revenue is real. They will be the first $1 billion women’s sports team, for sure.”
THE WNBA’S MOST VALUABLE TEAMS 2026
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To rank the most valuable WNBA franchises, Forbes examined recent transaction data and spoke to more than two dozen industry insiders, including team and league executives, team owners and investors, investment bankers, advisors and consultants.
Revenue figures are estimated for the 2025 season and are rounded to the nearest $1 million. Playoff games were excluded from the revenue calculations.
Valuations include the economics of the team’s arena but not the value of the arena real estate itself. The valuations similarly take into account ancillary revenue streams that are captured in the team’s financial statements, such as income from sponsor signage or events at the team’s practice facility, without directly measuring the value of those other assets.
Two expansion teams that are set to begin play this year, the Portland Fire and the Toronto Tempo, were omitted from the ranking. Future expansion teams in Cleveland, Detroit and Philadelphia—beginning play in 2028, 2029 and 2030, respectively—were also excluded.
No percentage value increase is listed for the Golden State Valkyries, who were not ranked last year in their inaugural season.
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