Philadelphia and its famously indefatigable, fanatical followers of all things pro sports, you have a test coming at you with the speed of a Tyrese Maxey breakaway.
In 2030, the City of Brotherly Love will debut its own WNBA franchise.
At last.
Then will come the test. Can, and will, Philadelphia and its often-notorious rabid fans land on the right side of the WNBA story, embracing not only a specific team, but the general concept of women’s professional sports?
Billie Jean King, for one, has thoughts.
In two interviews, King — one of the most celebrated sports icons of any generation and an inductee into multiple Halls of Fame — explained how she planted roots in Philadelphia long ago and has yet to pull those roots up. Yes, she’s moved around the globe, with stops at Wimbledon, Roland Garros, Australia, and beyond. She is a fixture at the U.S. Open every summer in New York, a whirling dervish who refuses to slow down, even at 82 years old.
She wants to see Philadelphia become the next successful chapter in the chronicles of the WNBA story, proving all the more, even more that women can succeed on basketball courts, by measuring success one purchased ticket at a time.
“I just hope that comes true,” said King of a pro team other than the Eagles, Phillies, Sixers, and Flyers lighting up South Philadelphia’s sports complex. “If it does come there, then the fans better make sure they support it because the other [new] teams now, they really have great support.”
Her conversations about the possibilities of basketball’s best women playing for Philadelphia have been ongoing for seemingly a lifetime. “We’ve been talking to people about that forever on that subject,” King said, mentioning her wish that famed Philadelphians like Wanda Sykes and others from the entertainment industry help draw attention to the sport. (As for ownership, she again points to Sykes, and Sykes’ wife, Alex, saying “I know they’d love to invest.”)
Having just helped establish the Professional Women’s Hockey League, having dabbled in ownership of tennis tournaments, King knows what lies ahead for ownership of a new franchise and for a fan base that is particularly particular.
“Philadelphia, it’s a rough market,” King said, “because notice when the Phillies are winning, everybody shows up. When they’re not winning, very few show up. What you need is an organization like the Cubs, whether they win or lose, they fill the place. That’s what Philadelphia has to do. That’s what you need the fans do. They gotta have to want to do that to support their city.”
Her presence is not just the stuff of tennis lore. She is not a fixture in baseball, ensconced in the major leagues as a part-owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers. When not seated in the front row near the Dodgers’ dugout at Chavez Ravine, chatting it up with Magic Johnson and Sandy Koufax, she could be seen standing next to Shohei Ohtani and Mookie Betts on podiums as she and her team celebrated the last two World Series championships.
And for King there is no offseason. She sits on the board of directors for the 3-year-old PWHL, a creation of the Dodgers’ ownership. She applauds its million-plus ticket sales per season as heartily as she celebrates baseball championships.
She also is closely following the startup of the new women’s professional baseball league being backed by Major League Baseball. King has no stake in that league. Yet. But upon learning that none other than Mo’ne Davis, the multifaceted Philadelphia athlete of Little League fame, was attracted to the new league’s tryouts certainly attracted King’s attention.
Yet as King began the second of our interviews for this article, she leaned into the Zoom video camera and declared that she was wearing the Phillies’ maroon, a transplant from the West Coast stubbornly proud of her adopted city.
King remembers watching the Phillies play at Veterans Stadium, falling back on the dreams of a little girl who wanted to play baseball as much as did her brother, Randy Moffitt, a former big league pitcher who died earlier this year.
King also reminisces about Coaching 101 conversations she’d have with Sixers great Billy Cunningham while the two watched the Flyers skate their way to Stanley Cup championships. Just two Hall of Famers talking hoops. King also wished to have played the sport, but for that glass ceiling that limited girls’ and women’s access to the game.
That so many memories of teams rooted in Philadelphia can make her smile reminds one to never doubt how much Billie Jean King still has invested in emotions, heart, and soul in this city after six-plus decades.
“As a child, when I was growing up, I read everything I could on the history of women’s tennis and men’s tennis,” King said. “And there is so much history in Philadelphia. … And the junior championships used to be there. If you wanted to be the No. 1 junior in the world, you had to play at the Philadelphia Cricket Club. They had the junior nationals, and you had to win that tournament to be No. 1 in the country. I never won.”
That didn’t mean the city failed to win over King. “I’ve been going there since I was 15,” she said fondly. And when she returned as an adult, she did so as a world-renowned champion, coming back to play for and coach the Philadelphia Freedoms in 1974, the inaugural season of the World Team Tennis league.
These ventures make it feel like coming home whenever she passes through Philadelphia, she said. And now, she sees a city she loves about to take on a fight she’s waged her whole life.
Like many a WNBA team, their NBA counterparts will be counted on greatly to help the Philly team take flight. The franchise owner is Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment, owners of the Sixers, with Comcast Spectacor holding a minority stake.
Yet King cautions, too, that “in Philadelphia, you’ve got to have the big bucks. You’ve got to be in it for the long, long haul.”
Why that matters is this: The WNBA has shuffled the deck in four expansion eras in its 29 seasons. Philadelphia will join as part of its fourth expansion.
The league’s history on moving or disbanding franchises is no secret. Neither is its willingness to go in another direction quickly, no matter the size of the market the league chooses to flee.
The league has relocated and rebranded five teams. Only three of the original eight teams remain. As the WNBA looks to grow to an all-time high of 18 teams by 2030, it is betting much on Philadelphia — the only city among the nation’s six largest metropolises to have never had a WNBA team.
Right now, the model every future expansion team will be chasing is the Golden State Valkyries.
The Valkyries set a record for victories in an expansion team’s first season and made the playoffs, another first for an expansion team, all while selling out its slate of home games.
“So they did it right, and you’ve got to do it right,” said King of the team fronted by the NBA Golden State Warriors.
“You’ve got to have enough money and then you’ve got to set up everything right. Like, where are they going to play? Make sure they get good dates,” she said, noting that WNBA franchises often are second, third, or fourth in pecking orders in arenas often shared by other teams. “It’s a very difficult world to be in sports, financially, especially if you’re trying to help get a new sport in the area.”
That largely sums up what fans of women’s sports can expect when the WNBA lands here.
Can it work? Will it work? For Billie Jean King, just trying will be worth the effort as she keeps endorsing getting women not only on the courts, ice, playing fields, but in the seats of power.
“I’ve been in business forever,” she said. “My former husband and I owned tournaments from 1968. I always did the business side. It really helped me to lead. I said yes [because] the way to do it was to embrace it with everything I’ve got. The way to do it is to know all sides of something, and not because I’ve been an owner, a coach, a player. I’ve been in a lot of situations not only to have a better life, but to create opportunities for others. It’s just more enriched when you have a life where you have empathy and compassion for each person’s situation.”
In King’s world of sports, it’s always a must that fairness be made available to women. It won’t be long until the City of Brotherly Love gets its opportunity to agree with one of its most famous adopted sisters. At last.
