WNBA Cleveland expansion announcement expected within the week
As early as this week, Rock Entertainment Group is set to announce the beginning of the new WNBA Cleveland franchise. Learn about the bid, what is going on with the Rockers name and more.
On November 20, 2024, news broke that Dan Gilbert's Rock Entertainment Group, which also owns the NBA's Cleveland Cavaliers, prepared a big to secure the 16th WNBA franchise. On February 16, 2025, Sports Business Journal reported that the bid, which broke a league record at a reported $250 million, landed Cleveland a WNBA team for the first time since 2003. Now, according to sources, the official announcement of the new WNBA Cleveland expansion from Rock Entertainment Group could come as early as this week.
Original reports said that the formal announcement of the franchise would come "no later than March" but it's now potentially coming within the week.
Cleveland re-enters the league following seven seasons as the Cleveland Rockers, one of the original eight WNBA franchises. The Rockers, then owned by former Cavaliers owner Gordon Gund through his Gund Arena Group, had a 108-112 overall record and were the first of four original WNBA teams to fold in the early years of the country's top professional women's basketball league.
However, Rock Entertainment Group submitted a bid during a vastly different time in the league's history. The WNBA is in an era of unprecedented growth that stretches to all of women's sports. For the WNBA, the 2024 season alone featured league records in ratings on ESPN, attendance at games, merchandise sales and online engagement.
There is no word on if the Rockers name comes with the announcement since the upstart Women's Basketball League filed for the rights to the name back in the fall of 2023. The WNBA filed to get the Cleveland Rockers name back on Feb. 3, 2025, trying to secure the name after the WNBA abandoned it in April of 2021.
There is no word on if the delay of the announcement is due to the naming right trademark concerns.
Regardless of what Cleveland's team is called, the new WNBA franchise has an arena and training ground. Gilbert's Rocket Arena will host both the WNBA and NBA, along with the Cleveland Monsters of the American Hockey League.
The Cavaliers are moving to a new training facility on the Cuyahoga River, which opens up the Cavaliers previously used accommodations in Independence, south of the city.
Once announced, Cleveland will be the fourth expansion franchise slated to start in the span of three seasons. This year, the Golden State Valkyries became the first expansion team since the Atlanta Dream in 2008, with relocations since then giving the league the Dallas Wings and Las Vegas Aces.
Golden State is a similar ownership situation to Cleveland, with the same ownership group controlling the Golden State Warriors and now the Valkyries. This season, the Valkyries are 2-1 and lead the league in average attendance at 18,064 per game. The Valkyries color scheme of violet and black, which does not match the Warriors of the NBA, also shows that the Cleveland franchise may not simply copy and paste the look of the Cavaliers, like WNBA teams did in the early years of the league.
Before Cleveland joins, the Toronto Tempo and an unnamed Portland expansion team will begin competing on the court in the 2026 season. The new franchises not only give international and college players more opportunities to compete at the highest level, but give Cleveland women's basketball fans the chance to root on a local team, with the Indiana Fever being the closest team to Northeast Ohio at nearly five hours away.
