WNBA returns to Portland after more than 20 years

After more than two decades, Portland will once again host a women’s professional basketball team. The as-yet-unnamed team will start playing in the 2026 season. The city’s last WNBA team, the Portland Fire, played from 2000 to 2002 before folding. The announcement comes roughly a year after a different deal to bring a WNBA team to the city fell through. It also comes amid an explosion of interest in women’s sports, both in the Northwest and across the country.

Sean Highkin broke the news of the expansion last month in his Substack newsletter, The Rose Garden Report. He joins us with more details on the new team and what it could mean for Portland.

Note: The following transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. The WNBA is returning to Portland. The city’s last team, the Portland Fire, played from 2000 to 2002 before folding. The official announcement of the new team came yesterday, nearly a year after another deal to bring professional women’s basketball to Portland fell through. It also comes amid an explosion of interest in women’s sports, both in the Northwest and around the country. The still unnamed team will start play in the 2026 season.

Sean Highkin broke the news of this expansion last month in his Substack newsletter, The Rose Garden Report. He joins us now with more details. It’s great to have you here.

Sean Highkin: Thanks for having me.

Miller: What was the scene at the Moda Center yesterday?

Highkin: It was pretty … well, there were two parts of it. There was the press conference, which was more of a pep rally than an actual hard hitting press conference, where they had some of us – that is the media – and then there were some Blazers’ executives, local political figures also there. And then behind us, there were probably 200, 300 people from various community organizations there as the crowd and cheering.Then afterwards, out in the courtyard by the Moda Center, the Sports Bra – the local sports bar that only shows women’s sports, it’s obviously become a big national success – they hosted this block party that [was] just kind of an extension of the celebration, and it was just good energy in the building. After what happened a year ago, people seemed just happy that this thing finally got done, and it’s officially announced, and now it’s actually happening, and it’s not going to fall apart at the last minute again like it did last year.

Miller: I want to turn to that in just a second, but one small step back – why did the WNBA target Portland? I mean, why was Portland on a short list of potential cities for expansion?

Highkin: It’s pretty hard to find a city in the country that is a better fit for the WNBA than Portland is for a couple of reasons. One is, it’s a basketball town. You look at how popular the Blazers are here. They were still kind of middle of the pack in attendance last year, even though the team was one of the worst in the league. It fell off but not by as much as you would think it would. And so the interest is still there. And then there’s the women’s sports component of it. The Thorns have led the NWSL in attendance pretty much every year that the league has existed. And the Oregon and Oregon State women’s basketball programs are also very popular and successful here in the region.

So it just made all the sense in the world for them to, as they’re planning this expansion … where Cathy Engelbert, the commissioner of the league has said that she wants to expand from 12 teams to 16 by 2028. And now they’re up to 15 with Golden State starting next year and then Toronto and Portland starting the year after that, they still got to do one more. So if they’re looking to add four teams, it would have been a pretty big failure by somebody if Portland wasn’t one of those four teams, and it ended up being able to happen.

Miller: One of those failures, though, was almost a year ago, that this effort fell through at the last minute to have a team in Portland. What was the reason that was initially given for that deal to fall through?

Highkin: Well, Cathy Engelbert sent a letter to Ron Wyden, Oregon’s senior U.S. Senator, who was a big vocal public advocate for bringing a team to Portland. And in the letter, Cathy said that because the Blazers kind of have this renovation plan over the next five years or so for the Moda Center, where they need to have a couple of summers dedicated to making updates to the building, that because that stuff was still unsettled, that they were gonna just defer the bid until there was some more clarity on that. Fast forward a year, the Blazers still haven’t decided which summers they’re gonna do the renovations between now and 2030, when the arena is gonna host the women’s Final Four and Portland still has a team. So clearly that wasn’t the issue.

I think the bigger issue – and this has kind of come out since then – is that the guy that was gonna own the team when it was gonna happen last fall is a guy named Kirk Brown, who was at one point based in Vancouver, Washington and co-founded a company called ZoomInfo. That’s a business Data Analytics company. And there were a few issues with his bid that kind of came to light near the end. One of them, the one that’s been widely reported, is that he and Cathy had disagreements about the name. He wanted to call the team the Rose City Royalty, which I think she had some problems with the royal, king, queen, monarch-like connotations, and I think that’s something she wanted to stay away from.

But the bigger issue with him ended up being that his company, ZoomInfo, stock price fell by 50% in the year leading up to his having to finalize the bid. So there were questions about whether he actually had the money to be able to run a team the way that a team would need to be run. It ended up not being the right fit. And I think it was more about that than it was about the arena renovation stuff that Cathy was talking about at the time.

Miller: So that fell through, and then at around the same time, this California-based Bhathal family took ownership of the Portland Thorns, the national women’s soccer league team. What can you tell us about these siblings, this family?

Highkin: So their father Raj started a swimwear manufacturing company decades ago and that’s where a lot of their money came from. But then they’ve also diversified over the years. They have real estate stuff. They have a private equity fund that they’ve invested in all kinds of stuff. Unlike the previous ownership group, their money is in a lot of different places. So they’re not susceptible to, the stock market takes a hit one day and suddenly they don’t have any money anymore, like that. That’s not really a factor with them.

There were two things that I think were kind of working in their favor. One was that they had just bought the Thorns, so they were already invested in women’s professional sports in Portland. And so it just made a lot of sense for them to have just some synergy where they’re already owning a team in the city, so they don’t want to just buy a team just to buy a team. They actually are invested in that city and they’re committed to building in that area. So that made some sense.

I think the bigger thing that hasn’t really been talked about much nationally is that the two siblings, Lisa Bhathal Merage, and Alex Bhathal are gonna be kind of running day to day operations. They run operations with the Thorns. My understanding is they’re also going to be running the WNBA team. But their father Raj is the biggest minority owner in the Sacramento Kings and he’s Vivek Ranadivé’s alternate on the NBA’s Board of Governors. So the family has been with the NBA, kind of at an ownership level, for 10 years.

So when it came time to finalize this process and do the final vote of the Board of Governors, they didn’t really have to do much to vet them, or have anybody vouch for them, or do background, or have to check their finances to make sure that everything was good because they’re in the family, they’ve been part of the ownership group for over a decade. So everybody kind of knew them. It was easier to just kind of rubber stamp it and feel comfortable that, OK, these people have the money, they know what they’re doing and this is going to be a good situation.

Miller: And if you think about leagues as cartels, these were known quantities among the other owners.

Highkin: Yes, exactly, yeah.

Miller: So, is that your reasoning for why the other contender here, a consortium of other investors that included Damian Lillard … which you used the word “royalty” before. I mean, if there is royalty in basketball in Portland, he is it, even if he’s no longer a Blazer right now. That’s why this other group didn’t get it?

Highkin: I don’t think it was about anything they didn’t have. I think it was about what the Bhathals did have, that just made them the kind of logical fit for that. Yeah.

Miller: The Bhathals paid $125 million for this franchise. That’s a record number, right?

Highkin: Yeah.

Miller: How likely is it that that price would have been a lot lower just a year ago, before the women’s NCAA final shattered viewership records, before the two biggest college stars went pro, before just a huge increase in interest in the WNBA?

Highkin: Well, I was told that last fall, when the Golden State team got their expansion team officially awarded, the price that the Warriors ownership group (who’s going to own that team) paid was $50 [million].

Miller: Wow.

Highkin: So I think the previous ownership group was gonna probably pay in that neighborhood – $50 [million], $60 [million], somewhere in there. That was less than a year ago. That was what the price was.

Miller: And in a bigger market too.

Highkin: And a bigger market. And just to be clear about something though, the $125 million is not just the expansion fee. There’s a lot of different things that are broken out there. They made a commitment to build a practice facility for the team. Some of the money is the price of building that and it’s kind of all folded in.

The Toronto team that was announced in May was also over $100 [million], but it wasn’t as much as the $125 [million]. Because they have to get to 16 teams, so they have to add one more, I think there’s a good chance that the next team, wherever that may be, might be even more than what the Bhathals paid. So the prices are going up. Last year would have been the ideal time to get in on it before the valuations exploded. But now, this is what the price is.

Miller: I mean, we’re nibbling around the edges of this. But how has the WNBA changed both in recent years, but, say, even since the last time there was a professional women’s basketball team in Portland?

Highkin: Well, it’s still very much an evolving league and when the Fire folded in 2002, it wasn’t because there wasn’t fan support. They got over 8,000 fans a game in the three seasons that they were functional. And for the time, that was one of the better attended teams in the league. It’s just, the league had a very different ownership structure at the time and obviously, the economic situation was a lot different than it is now. And there were all these other different factors that led to not just the Fire, but a lot of other teams kind of folding around the same time. Like in its early days, the league kind of got too big, too fast and they had more teams than they could handle. That was kind of more the issue around there.

But now you’re seeing the popularity in the mainstream kind of explode in the last year with the whole Caitlin Clark phenomenon that’s become huge. She’s arguably the biggest name in all of sports over the last year. Like that’s a huge thing. And then you’ve got others, and there’s more coming behind her. Angel Reese too, [and] like Paige Bueckers from UConn is coming into the draft next year and she’s supposed to be the next one. A couple of years from now JuJu Watkins from USC is the next one after that.

Miller: And that could be the year that Portland starts its team. That is the year.

Highkin: That is within the realm of possibility, that that is how that ends up shaking out and it would be huge. I mean, I think the team is going to do well in Portland no matter what, but if they’re able to get somebody like that in their first draft, that would just take it to a different level.

Miller: What does this announcement mean for the ongoing questions that you’d alluded to earlier about the renovation of the Moda Center itself? And then the larger questions about the redevelopment of that whole area, the Rose Quarter?

Highkin: Well, that stuff is all still ongoing. The Blazers and the city of Portland agreed in February to a five-year extension of their lease, which was supposed to be up in fall of ‘25. And that’s gonna buy them time to work out a new long-term lease for the building. There’s still two more summers worth of renovations that they have to do … because it’s a pretty old building. It’s almost a 30-year-old building at this point and it’s still in pretty good shape for its age, but it’s not up to the standards of some of the newer NBA arenas that are being built. So there’s some things that have to be updated with it and have to be brought up to current standards, and there’s a couple of summers where they’re going to have to do that.

They want to get it all done by 2030 when Portland is going to host the NCAA Women’s Final Four. So there’s gonna be a couple of summers between now and then that the WNBA team is gonna maybe have to play at the Veterans Memorial Coliseum temporarily, while those renovations are going on. It’s not going to be in their first season. They’ve said on the record, they announced yesterday [that] they’re gonna play their first season in 2026 at Moda Center. That’s happening. But then it is just a matter of, is it gonna be ‘27 and ‘28 that then they do the renovations or is it gonna be ‘28/‘29, ‘27 … ?

There’s a lot of that stuff that is kind of still up in the air. But the idea, I think, is that there are going to be two summers between ‘27 and ‘30 that the WNBA team is temporarily going to have to play at the Memorial Coliseum, while those renovations happen.

Miller: What have you been hearing about potential names?

Highkin: I don’t think anything’s been decided yet. I know there’s a lot of local push to bring back the Fire. I don’t know how much of a possibility that is. They said yesterday at the press conference that they’re gonna open it up to public suggestions and go through kind of a whole open process, solicit feedback and kind of make it a community-based thing – which is kind of what you have to say.

Miller: You have to say. But if you spend $125 million dollars …

Highkin: You probably have a pretty good idea.

Miller: You make your own decision in the end.

Highkin: Yeah, exactly.

Miller: All right, before we say goodbye, I just want to turn briefly to the Blazers. The NBA season starts in a month and a couple of days. What do you think would constitute a successful season as the “rebuilding” continues? I mean, I guess I’m wondering what you see is the best that Blazers’ fans could realistically hope for?

Highkin: So the record is going to be probably similar to what it was last year.

Miller: Meaning, one of the worst records in the NBA?

Highkin: 21 and 61 was their record last year, fourth worst record in the league. But I think that what you hope for, if you’re a Blazer fan this coming season, is that they stay healthy enough to know what they have and what they don’t have. You wanna know whether Scoot Henderson is actually a guy that you can build with going forward. You wanna know whether Shaedon Sharpe, some of these other young guys that they have, are what the people think they’re gonna be. They have to stay on … the team was so decimated last year by injuries that, not only did they lose a ton, you weren’t even able to see any of those core young guys stay healthy enough to know how good they are or aren’t. So just having guys stay on the floor enough to be able to have some answers on some of that stuff by the end of the season, I think is the goal for this year.

Miller: Wow. It’s a low bar.

Highkin: This is what rebuilding is.

Miller: Yeah. And it’s not a one year process.

Sean Highkin, thanks very much.

Highkin: Thanks for having me.

Miller: Sean Highkin is the founder of the Substack newsletter, The Rose Garden Report. He joins us to talk about the official news, as of yesterday, that Portland is going to get a WNBA team. They’re gonna start play in 2026.

Contact “Think Out Loud®”

If you’d like to comment on any of the topics in this show or suggest a topic of your own, please get in touch with us on Facebook, send an email to thinkoutloud@opb.org, or you can leave a voicemail for us at 503-293-1983. The call-in phone number during the noon hour is 888-665-5865.