In an interview with The Star, Larry Tanenbaum says a WNBA team was the “missing link” in Toronto and will become Canada’s team.
Updated May 23, 2024 at 12:17 p.m. | May 23, 2024
Fans cheer Minnesota Lynx forward Aerial Powers as the Lynx play the Chicago Sky in a pre-season WNBA at Scotiabank Arena in Toronto last May.
There was a sporting void here, Larry Tanenbaum saw it and filled it.
His Kilmer Sports Venture will be announced Thursday as the ownership group of a WNBA expansion franchise for Toronto, starting in 2026.
“The one thing that I’ve seen throughout my 28 years is the one missing link was truly professional women’s sports,” Tanenbaum said in an interview with The Star on Wednesday evening. “It was an obvious thing.
“We all watch the Olympic basketball, we watch Olympic hockey, we watch Olympic soccer — all women’s teams — why shouldn’t there be a professional women’s basketball team here?”
There was a sporting void here, Larry Tanenbaum saw it and filled it.
His Kilmer Sports Venture will be announced Thursday as the ownership group of a WNBA expansion franchise for Toronto, starting in 2026.
“The one thing that I’ve seen throughout my 28 years is the one missing link was truly professional women’s sports,” Tanenbaum said in an interview with The Star on Wednesday evening. “It was an obvious thing.
“We all watch the Olympic basketball, we watch Olympic hockey, we watch Olympic soccer — all women’s teams — why shouldn’t there be a professional women’s basketball team here?”
Tanenbaum, the chair of MLSE, created Kilmer Sports Venture as a stand-alone company to operate the team that will play out of the Coca-Cola Coliseum. He sees women’s professional sports as not only a wise business investment — the fee could reach $115 million (U.S.) in the aggregate value — but one with societal benefits.
“The Raptors are Canada’s team and this team will be Canada’s team, a professional women’s team,” Tanenbaum said. “It’s exactly what the NBA did for Toronto and for Canada — there was a path for the young guys playing basketball in high school, on their driveways, in college. It will do exactly the same for women.”
The WNBA has been eyeing Toronto as a possible expansion site for years. Tanenbaum’s involvement cemented it.
“He’s just been a huge advocate for women and women’s sports, he’s a big family man and he’s got the experience, expertise and infrastructure to build a really world-class organization,” WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert said in a telephone interview Wednesday morning.
“I think it’s kind of exciting that he’s building his own sports ventures and the W will be an anchor of that.”
The decision to add Toronto as the league’s 14th franchise was a no-brainer for WNBA owners. Their needs included stable, committed ownership, a solid fan base, an arena in place and a comfortable city for the players to live and work in.
Tanenbaum and Toronto met them all.
“With the demographics and psychographics of the city of Toronto, Toronto really ticked all those boxes,” Engelbert said.
Engelbert’s thoughts of a WNBA team in Toronto predated her tenure as the league’s commissioner.
“Even before I joined the league, I was interviewing for a job (and) I was actually out in the Bay Arena when the Raptors were vying for that championship in 2019 and I just remember … the Toronto fans and I remember the hype over the Raptors championship, so I’ve always had my eye on Toronto,” she said.
A sold-out Scotiabank Arena, almost 20,000 fans, for a May 2023 exhibition game that was the league’s first in Canada confirmed her instincts.
“You can look at data all you want but until you get into the market and try it out, then you see the data come to life,” she said. ”We had Toronto very high on our list from a data perspective … I think that was very helpful to have that game.”
The Toronto franchise will have its base at the Coca-Cola Coliseum but it doesn’t preclude some games being moved to Scotiabank.
A handful of WNBA teams — Washington, Las Vegas and Atlanta already — are moving games against Caitlin Clark and the Indiana Fever from smallish venues to large NBA arenas to capitalize on the hyped rookie guard.
That could be the case for games each season in Toronto.
“Larry wanted Coca-Cola as a home but I certainly suspect we’ll be moving some games to Scotiabank,” Engelbert said.
“That’s something Larry and I talked about … as we’ve grown this league, and the sheer volume of talent, these generational players that have come in, we can fill Scotiabank night after night.”
The WNBA’s ascension made buying into the league now a solid business venture.
The league expects to sign a broadcast rights deal that will dwarf its current $60-million deal. It has raised about $75 million in funding from an investor group that will go into marketing and live events. And attendance in 2023 was 1,587,488, the highest in 13 years, and the average of nearly 7,000 fans per game was the league’s best since 2018.
“We hope to at least double our rights fees,” Engelbert told CNBC in a recent interview. “Women’s sports rights fees have been undervalued for too long, so we have this enormous opportunity at a time where the media landscape is changing so much.”
Doug Smith is a sports reporter based in Toronto. Follow him on Twitter: @smithraps.