Over just two years, the Golden State Valkyries have not only completed the leap from a WNBA expansion team to a Finals contender, but also become the first women’s professional sports club to push annual revenue past the $100 million threshold. Such staggering growth has quickly made the Golden State Valkyries the focus of the global women’s professional sports landscape.

A new franchise that has only competed in two WNBA seasons has fought its way to the Finals.

In the early hours of October 18 Beijing time, the 2026 WNBA Finals officially tipped off. The Golden State Valkyries, which belong to the same sports group as the Golden State Warriors, hosted the Atlanta Dream at their home court, the Chase Center. Broadcast footage showed that the Chase Center was nearly sold out. For a women’s professional sports franchise in only its second season of existence, such a scene is nothing short of spectacular.

In fact, compared with the team’s on-court performance, the commercial achievements the Golden State Valkyries have made in the business field are equally remarkable. According to data released by the team, all 22 of the Valkyries’ regular season home games this season were sold out, drawing an average of 18,064 fans per game. Adding the 2025 season, the Valkyries have sold out all regular season home tickets for two consecutive seasons, drawing a cumulative total of nearly 800,000 spectators to the Chase Center.

For a team that has only played two seasons in the WNBA, such astonishing market appeal is rarely seen in the women’s professional sports sector.

Behind the red-hot ticket market where tickets are hard to come by, the Golden State Valkyries have also set a global commercial record for women’s professional sports — according to U.S. sports business media Sportico recently, the Golden State Valkyries have become the first women’s professional sports team in history to record total annual revenue exceeding $100 million, marking a new milestone for global women’s professional sports.

This figure only covers the Valkyries’ revenue during the regular season. After advancing to the Finals, the team’s total revenue for this season is expected to surpass the $130 million mark.

Over two years, the Golden State Valkyries have not only completed the leap from a WNBA expansion team to a Finals team, but also taken the lead in pushing the annual revenue of women’s professional sports clubs past the $100 million threshold. Such staggering growth speed has quickly made the Golden State Valkyries the focus of the global women’s professional sports arena.

For women’s professional sports, which has long been seen as having huge growth potential but is still exploring mature business models, how did the Golden State Valkyries turn a start-up franchise into a commercial benchmark for women’s professional sports in just two years?

01
40+ Partners Driving Revenue Past $100 Million

In fact, the Golden State Valkyries’ commercial potential did not suddenly explode this season. Last season, the Valkyries’ revenue already reached $78 million. That figure was already a new record for women’s sports at the same time last year, 48% higher than the second-ranked Indiana Fever.

Building on the success of last season, the Valkyries added 40% more staff this season, not only doubling the size of their marketing department, but also assigning dedicated Valkyries employees to manage partner relationships and hospitality operations. In addition, the Valkyries share a portion of their staff with the Golden State Warriors.

A strong lineup of commercial partners has helped the Golden State Valkyries reach new heights this season. According to SportsPro, leveraging the market appeal and commercial influence of the Golden State Warriors, the Valkyries quickly built a sponsor portfolio covering brands including JPMorgan Chase, Rakuten, Sephora and United Airlines, with more than 40 partners in total. Among them, JPMorgan Chase and Rakuten are both core sponsors of the Golden State Warriors.

Chase Bank is the patch sponsor on the Golden State Valkyries’ jerseys

However, the Valkyries’ sponsor list is not completely identical to that of the Golden State Warriors, and some brands have chosen to partner exclusively with the Valkyries. For example, in September this year, American active lifestyle brand Athleta officially became the Golden State Valkyries’ official off-court apparel partner, with the two sides planning to cooperate on lifestyle apparel, co-branded merchandise and community events.

In the view of Sports Money, apart from outstanding athletic performance and leveraging the commercial momentum of the Golden State Warriors, another key to the Valkyries’ breakthrough lies in their exceptional marketing capabilities.

In terms of brand building, the Valkyries’ primary color scheme is different from the Warriors’ traditional blue and yellow, featuring a highly visually striking exclusive purple visual identity and independent brand image, successfully tapping into an entirely new fan base.

According to Golden State Valkyries president Jess Smith, the team’s marketing team uses a variety of new content distribution channels to deliver rich content to fans. The team just surpassed 100,000 followers on TikTok, and it is also the WNBA team with the largest number of followers on the Threads platform.

“We continue to go all out in advancing all our work, just as we did in the team’s first year. We have put in place strategies to ensure we can fully capitalize on the potential that the market has demonstrated,” Smith said. “Last year was just the first step in our team’s growth. We are going to be the number one in the industry, and we hope to stay there.”

02
3 Years
From $50 Million Expansion Fee to $1 Billion Valuation

Rising performance, skyrocketing ticket sales and a flood of sponsorships, a series of outstanding commercial performances have continued to push the Golden State Valkyries’ market valuation higher.

It is worth noting that the Valkyries’ valuation growth did not happen overnight. Back in their first season in 2025, Sportico already gave the team a valuation of $500 million, making it the most valuable franchise in the WNBA at the time. By May 2026, Sportico further raised the Valkyries’ valuation to $850 million, up 70% from the previous year.

At almost the same time, CNBC even gave a valuation of $1 billion, making it the first women’s professional sports team in the world to reach that threshold.

In other words, even before the Valkyries set the record of $100 million in revenue this season, or even advanced to the WNBA Finals, the outside world had already given extremely high recognition to the team’s commercial value. The capital market’s expectations for its future growth potential clearly already exceed the team’s current operating scale.

WNBA team valuation rankings listed by CNBC. Source: CNBC

Records show that in 2023, Golden State Warriors owner Joe Lacob and his partner Peter Guber paid a $50 million expansion fee to secure the operating rights of a new WNBA franchise. The Golden State Valkyries also became the first official expansion team to join the WNBA in 17 years, since the Atlanta Dream joined the league in 2008.

It is worth mentioning that the Atlanta Dream, the team that will meet the Valkyries in the Finals, is exactly the team that joined the league during the last WNBA expansion. The two teams joined the WNBA 17 years apart, and now they meet on the Finals stage.

However, one obvious difference in the commercial operations of the two teams is reflected in their home court resources.

Unlike the Golden State Valkyries, which had access to the NBA-level Chase Center from the very beginning of its establishment, the Gateway Center, the long-time home arena of the Atlanta Dream, can only accommodate about 3,500 spectators. To meet the market demand for the WNBA Finals, the Atlanta Dream finally decided to move Games 3 and 4 of the Finals to the State Farm Arena, which can hold about 17,000 spectators. That arena is also the home of the NBA’s Atlanta Hawks.

This arrangement has also created a commemorative game day for the city of Atlanta. On October 24 local time, State Farm Arena will host a historic “doubleheader” for both WNBA and NBA on the same day — Game 4 of the WNBA Finals will tip off at 1 PM that day, while the Hawks’ home season opener against the Rockets will start at 8:30 PM.

It is worth noting that the Atlanta Dream has announced that starting from the 2027 season, the team will fully move into State Farm Arena. This means that as the market demand for women’s basketball continues to grow, more and more WNBA teams are unlocking further growth potential for game day revenue by upgrading their arena resources.

From another perspective, arena size and infrastructure resources are becoming important factors affecting the commercial revenue of women’s professional sports teams. The fact that the Golden State Valkyries had access to a mature NBA-level arena and operating system from its inception undoubtedly provided a great starting point for its commercial growth.

Of course, the Valkyries’ skyrocketing valuation also coincided with a period in which the commercial value of the entire WNBA is being re-priced.

In 2025, the WNBA announced that it would add three new teams in Cleveland, Detroit and Philadelphia in the coming years, with the expansion fee for each of the three markets reaching $250 million. This means that in just two years, the entry threshold for new WNBA franchises has risen 5 times.

At the same time, with the new round of broadcast rights agreements officially taking effect, the WNBA has ushered in record-breaking national broadcast arrangements covering 216 games and key events in the 2026 season. Along with the growth of broadcast exposure, commercial sponsorship and on-site attendance demand, WNBA teams are gradually becoming high-potential assets that attract widespread attention in the U.S. sports investment market.

The Golden State Valkyries advanced to the Finals in their second WNBA season. Source: Golden State Valkyries social media

According to Sports Business Journal, all ad inventory for the 2026 WNBA Finals on NBC and USA Network has been sold out. NBC revealed that nearly 80 brands purchased advertising resources through the WNBA’s TV and digital broadcasts this season, which reflects the league’s appeal to brand partners from the side.

In the view of Sports Money, against this industry backdrop, the Valkyries’ skyrocketing valuation is not only the result of its own successful commercial operations, but also a microcosm of the rising market value of the entire women’s professional basketball sector.

03
The Golden State Valkyries’ Annual Revenue Equals 3.5 Times That of Arsenal Women

If we compare the Valkyries’ commercial achievements against the global women’s professional sports market, the revenue record they have set stands out even more prominently.

Taking top-tier European women’s football as an example, according to Deloitte’s *Football Money League* report released in January 2026, Arsenal Women ranked first in the Deloitte Women’s Football Revenue Rankings for the 2024/25 season with a revenue of €25.6 million (approximately $28.7 million), representing a 43% year-on-year increase.

This means that the Valkyries’ revenue of more than $100 million this season is roughly 3.5 times that of top-tier European women’s football clubs.

WNBA average home attendance per game. Source: Sportico

Although the two teams differ in their respective sports, revenue accounting standards and game schedules, this set of data still provides a noteworthy reference for observing the commercial scale of top women’s professional sports clubs in Europe and the United States: compared with Europe, top U.S. women’s professional teams have already demonstrated a higher ceiling for commercial revenue.

In the view of Sports Money, one of the reasons behind this is the unique development model of European women’s football.

As is widely known, many top teams in European women’s football are affiliated with traditional men’s football giants. Relying on the mature brand influence, commercial partners and infrastructure of men’s clubs, women’s football has obtained important development support.

Deloitte data shows that in the 2024/25 season, the total revenue of the 12 Women’s Super League clubs in England was 90 million pounds, of which intra-group revenue accounted for 27%.

Under this model, the commercial rights and revenue of women’s football are often tied to the entire club, leaving room for further improvement in independent brand development and commercial monetization capabilities.

On the other hand, women’s professional leagues such as the WNBA adopt the mature franchise model of U.S. professional sports, where teams have more prominent attributes as independent commercial assets. Under this system, investors not only focus on the team’s athletic performance, but also place greater emphasis on the growth potential of the club in brand marketing, ticketing, sponsorship, media rights and asset valuation.

At the same time, the mature sports consumption market in the United States also provides more abundant monetization opportunities for women’s professional sports. Compared with only 11 league home games per team in the 2024/25 Women’s Super League, WNBA teams have 22 regular season home games in the 2026 season.

More game days mean more opportunities for teams to sell tickets, luxury suites, catering and merchandise. Of course, European women’s football also has excellent market appeal. Arsenal Women had 5 games that drew more than 35,000 spectators in the 2024/25 season, with total game day revenue reaching €7 million for the year.

This set of data fully shows that European women’s sports is not lacking in fans and commercial potential, but there is still room for further development in terms of how to convert huge market attention into stable revenue.

Arsenal Women ranks first in revenue among European women’s sports. Source: Arsenal Women social media

In response, the Women’s Super League and some women’s football clubs are also trying to explore new operating models. In 2024, the FA Women’s Super League and Women’s Championship officially separated from the direct operating system of the Football Association