{"id":163694,"date":"2025-09-23T11:44:12","date_gmt":"2025-09-23T11:44:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/163694\/"},"modified":"2025-09-23T11:44:12","modified_gmt":"2025-09-23T11:44:12","slug":"wnbas-tempo-add-to-ownership-group-two-regular-season-games-in-montreal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/163694\/","title":{"rendered":"WNBA\u2019s Tempo add to ownership group, two regular-season games in Montreal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Even before Toronto was awarded an WNBA franchise, Geoff Molson wanted to get into the business of women\u2019s basketball.<\/p>\n

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The co-owner of the\u00a0Montreal\u00a0Canadiens and Larry Tanenbaum, co-owner of the Toronto Maple Leafs, had discussed the possibility of bringing the WNBA to Canada years ago. When Tanenbaum\u2019s Kilmer Group had its bid for a team approved in May of 2024, Molson was one of the first people he called.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven though we compete on the ice, we\u2019re very close with Larry Tanenbaum and the MLSE organization,\u201d Molson told The Canadian Press. \u201cWe talked about the WNBA and how it\u2019s performing and growing and how important it would be to get a team to Canada.<\/p>\n

\u201cLarry took the lead knowing full well that we were very interested and when he finally, got around to getting his bid approved he called me and wanted to make sure that the\u00a0Montreal\u00a0market was represented and so we gladly invested in this venture with the Tempo and we\u2019re excited about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Molson and fellow Groupe CH executive France Margaret Belanger officially joined the Toronto Tempo\u2019s ownership group on Tuesday as the WNBA team also announced it will have two of its regular-season games in\u00a0Montreal\u00a0in its inaugural 2026 campaign.<\/p>\n

The Molson family owns Groupe CH, whose primary business is the NHL\u2019s Canadiens but includes the American Hockey League\u2019s Laval Rocket and running venues like Bell Centre in downtown\u00a0Montreal.<\/p>\n

Molson is Groupe CH\u2019s president and chief executive officer while Belanger is its president of sports and entertainment. Kilmer Group is the majority stakeholder in the Tempo, but the ownership group also includes tennis superstar Serena Williams, comedian Lilly Singh and technology leader Sukhinder Singh Cassidy.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCanada\u2019s first WNBA team to be named Toronto Tempo\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Molson and Belanger say basketball is very popular in Quebec and they wanted to keep the sport growing in the province.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe\u2019ve seen it firsthand. We\u2019ve organized over the years, a few pre-season games of the Raptors here,\u201d said Belanger. \u201cI\u2019ll always remember, that we started the tickets sale and all those tickets for the Bell Centre, which is, you know, 21,000 people, got sold in nine minutes.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\"For<\/p>\n

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\u201cSo there is huge interest and we try to do as much basketball here as we can. This was a unique opportunity for us to actually, not only be promoters of basketball, but also to have a part in this ownership group, which is truly fantastic.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tMore on Sports
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Coca-Cola Coliseum at Toronto\u2019s Exhibition Place will be the Tempo\u2019s home arena when it begins playing in the WNBA in 2026. The team had previously announced it will also hold two regular-season games at Vancouver\u2019s Rogers Arena.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt was always our intent to be Canada\u2019s team and to play regular-season games outside of Toronto,\u201d said Tempo team president Teresa Resch. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of partnership that has to work and be in place in order to make those things happen, both on the team level, the league level, as well as our hosts in the different cities.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s been really encouraging is that everybody\u2019s really excited and everybody\u2019s really supportive of making this happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

That intention can be seen in the team\u2019s name as Tempo has the same meaning in both English and French. Resch said that when team management was down to the final 12 submissions for possible names the issue of language came up.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWhat is this in French? What does this look like? How does this sound?\u201d she said. \u201cWe liked Tempo anyway and then when it has the same meaning in French and English, we liked it even more.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was definitely something that was top of mind. It was not the deciding factor, but we were really excited that it could work really well (in both official languages.)\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t5:49
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tGeneral Manager of the WNBA\u2019s Toronto Tempo discusses new role\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t&copy 2025 The Canadian Press\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Even before Toronto was awarded an WNBA franchise, Geoff Molson wanted to get into the business of women\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":163695,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[49,48,82,45963,630],"class_list":{"0":"post-163694","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wnba","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-toronto-tempo","12":"tag-wnba"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=163694"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163694\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/163695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=163694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=163694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=163694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}