{"id":162018,"date":"2026-04-10T03:54:25","date_gmt":"2026-04-10T03:54:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/162018\/"},"modified":"2026-04-10T03:54:25","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T03:54:25","slug":"wnba-expansion-in-philadelphia-cleveland-and-detroit-approved-nbc10-philadelphia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/162018\/","title":{"rendered":"WNBA expansion in Philadelphia, Cleveland and Detroit approved \u2013 NBC10 Philadelphia"},"content":{"rendered":"

Three new franchises are on the way in the WNBA<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The WNBA and NBA Board of Governors on Thursday formally approved new expansion teams coming to Cleveland, Detroit and Philadelphia<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The initial<\/a> announcement of expanding to those cities, totaling to 18 teams, came on June 30, 2025. The movement was subject to the approval, which is now formal.<\/p>\n

Cleveland will begin play first in the 2028 season, with Detroit following in 2029. Philadelphia will be last in 2030.<\/p>\n

All three cities have NBA<\/a> teams in the Cavaliers, Pistons and 76ers<\/a>, respectively. <\/p>\n

The league will have two expansion teams beginning in the upcoming 2026 season: the Portland Fire and Toronto Tempo. Both cities also are home to NBA teams in the Trail Blazers and Raptors, and the new teams participated in an expansion draft to set up their respective rosters.<\/p>\n

The NBA has also been exploring expansion moves for the future, with the most recent news involving Las Vegas and Seattle<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Those cities are awaiting formal approval, which would take the NBA to 32 teams. The league would likely realign the teams in the Western and Eastern Conferences, too, to fit two new cities out West.<\/p>\n

More details on this trio of WNBA expansion franchises will come at later dates.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOn Monday, June 30, the WNBA announced a new franchise will debut in Philadelphia in 2030. Ahead of the announcement, NBC10\u2019s Erin Coleman spoke with WNBA Commissioner and New Jersey native Cathy Engelbert about the exciting news.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Three new franchises are on the way in the WNBA. The WNBA and NBA Board of Governors on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":162019,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[69,71,70,37281],"class_list":{"0":"post-162018","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-philadelphia","9":"tag-philadelphia-headlines","10":"tag-philadelphia-news","11":"tag-wnba"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162018"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162018\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/162019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}