Will 'Canada's team' approach work for Toronto WNBA expansion team?

The next steps in WNBA expansion are headed toward Toronto — but they aren't stopping there.

As announced by the league on Thursday, the WNBA's 14th franchise will begin play in 2026, following the addition of the Golden State Valkyries in 2025. 

The timing for the move couldn't be better, with the arrival of Caitlin Clark and a class of much-heralded rookies igniting a surge of interest in women's basketball.

The ownership group for the team, which doesn't have a name just yet, is also rock solid. It's led by Larry Tanenbaum, chairman of the organization that owns Toronto's NBA, NHL, MLS and CFL teams.

Toronto's franchise will technically be based in the Coca-Cola Coliseum, which is the arena where the AHL's Toronto Marlies play. But it will also be able to play occasional games at the larger Scotiabank Arena, and in a unique twist, will also play some games in other cities like Montreal and Vancouver.

The NBA's Raptors and MLB's Blue Jays are de facto rooting interests for the whole country by their status as the lone Canadian representatives in their respective pro sports. The WNBA is trying something different: a franchise that is billed as "Canada's team" by design from Day 1.

"This isn't just Toronto's team," newly minted team president Teresa Resch said to the Associated Press. "This is Canada's team. ... We're gonna play across Canada in different markets. We look forward to doing that in a way that no other professional sports team in Canada has ever done."

If fans in Montreal and Vancouver find themselves attached to the WNBA team, they'll be able to find comfort in a plan that appears guaranteed to avoid their previous pro sports heartbreak. 

It's not hard to find Montreal residents who never got over the Expos heading to Washington. Vancouver was home to the NBA's Grizzlies from 1995 to 2001 before they packed up and moved to their current home in Memphis.

The WNBA can use these barnstorming dates as a test to see if future expansion teams could flourish elsewhere in Canada. On the flip side, it will need to handle messaging to Toronto fans carefully to reinforce the idea that there's no lack of faith in that market, as well as pricing season tickets properly to reflect that fewer than 18 home games will be played there each season.

It's also fair to ask if the WNBA is moving too quickly to embrace an international market when the newly explosive demand for women's basketball in the U.S. probably isn't satisfied. 

WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert has mentioned cities like Philadelphia, Denver, Nashville and Portland as potential expansion candidates, and there is a large, historic market for the league in Houston that also has no team. 

The Toronto franchise comes at the expense of one of those places, even if the league would never frame it that way.

That said, the time for both expansion and experimentation is right now while the WNBA is dealing from a position of newfound strength. 

If its newest team plants deep roots in Toronto while also endearing itself to fans across Canada, it will be the kind of win-win that would be hard to achieve anywhere else.