What the Golden State Valkyries Teach Us About Valuing Women’s Sports

In 2023, Joe Lacob and Peter Puber paid a then-record $50 million expansion fee to bring a WNBA team to the Bay Area. In its second season, the Golden State Valkyries became the first WNBA franchise valued at $1 billion. Lacob’s investment has grown roughly 1,600 percent by that measure, and the team also leads the league in revenue that drives valuations. 

The Valkyries did not get there by accident. They sold out all 22 home games in 2025 and sold out an estimated 12,000 season tickets for 2026. They did it with the same level of advertising and organizational backing as the Warriors. The same owners, arena, and front-office marketing operation that built the NBA’s flagship brand promoted the Valkyries as flagship property from the beginning. But, the Valkyries had their own separate identity, with separate branding, a separate sponsorship portfolio, and separate colors, mascots, and “Ballhalla” nickname that fans embraced. 

College basketball shows the flip side of this lesson. In 2021, a law firm hired by the NCAA concluded that the association was “significantly undervaluing women’s basketball as an asset.” The women’s tournament was bundled with 28 other championships in a package paying about $34 million a year. An independent analysis valued the women’s tournament alone at $81 to $112 million annually beginning in 2025. The report recommended using the “March Madness” brand for both tournaments, and the NCAA adopted it in 2022. The NCAA’s 2024 deal with ESPN valued women’s basketball at about $65 million a year. Even so, media-rights experts told Front Office Sports that the NCAA ignored other recommendations, including selling the women’s tournament as a standalone package. They said value was left on the table. 

The Valkyries’ and NCAA’s stories are correlated. The women’s NCAA tournament was not worth less than the men’s because of the product on the court. It was worth less on paper because of how it was packaged, branded, and sold. The Valkyries are an example of what happens when the owners invest sufficiently in marketing women’s teams.

Valuation, media-rights structure, trademark and branding decisions, and sponsorship terms determine what women’s sports are worth. Counsel for leagues, teams, and governing bodies should treat women’s sports as premium assets and negotiate accordingly. 

Valuation also has to reach the athletes. The Times reported that Valkyries players struggle to make a living wage by Bay Area standards even as the franchise soars. As franchise values climb, how revenue is shared will be one of the most important legal issues in women’s professional sports. 

Sources: 

Heather Knight, Inside the Most Valuable Team in Women’s Sports, Hawaii Tribune Herald (Sept. 14, 2025). 

Sanjesh Singh, 2026 WNBA Franchise Valuations: Golden State Valkyries Are First $1 Billion Team, NBC Sports Bay Area (May 4, 2026). 

Nathan Canilao, Valkyries Repeat as WNBA’s Most Valuable Franchise, Surge to $850 Million Valuation, Daily Gazette (May 1, 2026). 

Amanda Cristovich, ‘More Value to Be Had’: Were Women’s March Madness Media Rights Undersold?, Front Office Sports (March 23, 2025). 

Alex Donaldson, In the Boardroom with the Golden State Valkyries, Sportcal (Nov. 7, 2024). 

Simon Kaufman, NCAA Fails on Gender Equity, Undervalues Women’s Basketball, Scripps News (Aug. 4, 2021). 

David Cobb, Combining Men’s, Women’s Final Four Locations Among Recommendations Listed in NCAA Gender Equity Review, CBS Sports (Aug. 3, 2021).