Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes and his wife Brittany are aiming to help bring a WNBA expansion franchise to Kansas City.
“We want to get basketball to Kansas City in general and then WNBA. The success that they’ve had this last season and these last few seasons, it’s kind of a no-brainer,” Mahomes said, per ESPN’s Adam Teicher. “To try to get a WNBA team in Kansas City to this fan base — you see it if you talk about University of Kansas basketball, the Chiefs or whatever it is — the city of Kansas City is going to come out and they’re going to fill the stadium.”
Mahomes already boasts quite the ownership portfolio. He’s a minority stakeholder in NWSL’s Kansas City Current, MLB’s Kansas City Royals and MLS’s Sporting Kansas City. A WNBA franchise would be a natural next step and one that stands to be very lucrative.
The league set attendance and viewership records in 2024, and its new media rights deal worth around $200 million annually is a tangible sign of its exploding popularity.
For years, fans were beginning to get increasingly frustrated with the glacial pace of WNBA expansion. While interest in the league was growing, commissioner Cathy Engelbert remained very deliberate through the process.
However, the floodgates have opened.
The Golden State Valkyries will have their inaugural season in 2025, with new teams in Toronto and Portland to debut in 2026. The WNBA isn’t done expanding within the near future, either.
Engelbert in April set a target of 16 teams by 2028, which would mean adding one more to the current group. Earlier this month, she said around 10 to 12 are considered candidates at this stage.
Mahomes and the Kansas City group trying to woo the WNBA certainly has plenty of competition.
