The WNBA – and women’s basketball as a sport – is experiencing a tremendous period of growth right now. In the college game, the women’s national championship game between Iowa and South Carolina drew a record 18.9 million viewers, topping the men’s title game by about four million.
Tickets to the WNBA Draft sold out within minutes, arenas are being filled at an unprecedented rate, and WNBA viewership records are being shattered. And a new league, Unrivaled, is coming online soon too, with stars like Angel Reese and Paige Bueckers already signing up.
Expansion teams are on the way for the WNBA as well, with the Golden State Valkyries launching next season and a team in Toronto coming in 2026. Expansion is likely to continue for the WNBA through 2028, with commissioner Cathy Engelbert previously saying that she wants 18 teams in the league by then.
Where will the WNBA go next? It’s unclear. Nashville, Philadelphia, Denver and other cities have all been discussed and debated as potential options.
But it’s beginning to seem less likely that the WNBA will return to the city of Charlotte, North Carolina.
In an interview with the Charlotte Observer, the new President of the Charlotte Hornets, Shelly Cayette-Weston said “we are not in current conversations to bring a team here,” when asked about the WNBA.
She added:
“We are not currently not looking to bring a team here. But you can know that for us, we absolutely support the women’s game, the WNBA and we’ll continue those conversations as they arise… There’s so much demand for getting a WNBA franchise that it’s actually really competitive right now. So the decision is not just (wanting to) get it. There is a long line in waiting for the next franchise that’s going to be awarded by the league, which is a great thing.”
In the past year, Gabe Plotkin and Rick Schnall became controlling owners of the Hornets, buying Michael Jordan’s majority shares.
The Charlotte Sting were one of the WNBA’s original eight franchises when the league launched in 1997. The team had some great players – like Dawn Staley, Andrea Stinson, Tracy Reid, Charlotte Smith and Vicky Bullett – and went to the playoffs six times, making the Finals in 2001 when they were coached by Anne Donovan.
But the future of the team fell into limbo when the Hornets relocated to New Orleans in 2002. Soon after, Robert Johnson was announced as the owner of a new expansion NBA franchise in Charlotte and he bought the Sting too. Citing low attendance and loss in revenue, Johnson’s ownership group attempted to sell the Sting to a group in Kansas City in 2006, which would’ve saw the franchise relocate. The deal fell apart and Johnson relinquished control of the team to the WNBA. By January 2007, the team had folded, its players sent to other squads in a dispersal draft.
Despite the departure of the Sting, women’s basketball remains incredibly popular in North Carolina, which led some to believe that a return of the WNBA to the Tar Heel State was possible.
N.C. State, for example, has already sold out its season tickets in Raleigh’s Reynolds Coliseum for the upcoming season and averaged north of 5,200 fans per game last year. In Greensboro, the ACC said that 67,081 people attended games for its 2024 women’s basketball tournament across five days at the Greensboro Coliseum, which is the highest total attendance the tournament has drawn since 2009.
And in Charlotte last year, an announced crowd of 15,196 fans came to the Spectrum Center to watch Virginia Tech vs. Iowa in the Ally Tip-Off, which broke the record for the highest attended egular season women’s college basketball in the state, surpassing the mark of 12,722 set in 2009 when UNC-Chapel Hill hosted UConn at the Dean Smith Center.
That game was put on by the Charlotte Sports Foundation, and they’re running it back this year with a doubleheader of women’s college games as Virginia Tech will play Iowa again, and N.C. State and South Carolina will have a rematch of their Final Four clash. Miller Yoho, the Director of Communications and Marketing at the Charlotte Sports Foundation, said “It’s common sense to invest in women’s sports.”
But without the involvement or endorsement of the Hornets, bringing the WNBA back to Charlotte seems like unlikely.