Valkyries vs. Dream WNBA Finals: How a $50 Million Bet Became $850 Million
The most valuable franchise in the WNBA meets its least valuable one in the Finals — and the gap between them is the league's expansion pitch, playing out live
The Golden State Valkyries cost $50 million. That was the expansion fee Joe Lacob and Peter Guber agreed to pay in 2023, for a franchise with no name, no roster and no fans. Three years later it’s in the WNBA Finals, tied 1-1 with the Atlanta Dream. Sportico values Golden State at $850 million, the highest figure in the league. It values Atlanta at $285 million, the lowest.
The price of admission has moved accordingly. In June 2025, the WNBA announced teams in Cleveland, Detroit and Philadelphia at an expansion fee of $250 million each, five times the Valkyries’ number, to begin play in 2028, 2029 and 2030. “Valuations have gone up considerably since we first sold this team here in the Bay,” Commissioner Cathy Engelbert said on Saturday, and she left the door open to more expansion after 2030, Sacramento included.
Golden State reported a league-record $78 million in revenue in its first season. This year it’s past $100 million, a first for a WNBA franchise. Season tickets carried much of it: more than 10,000 sold in year one, sales cut off above 12,000 this season with a waiting list behind them, and roughly 40 sponsors, among them JPMorganChase, Sephora and United Airlines.
By this season’s All-Star break, 270,960 fans had come through Chase Center to watch Natalie Nakase’s team across 15 home games. The average works out to 18,064 a night, the building’s capacity, to the seat. League-wide attendance reached 3.79 million in 2026, up more than 20 percent in a year, and Golden State’s home crowds were the largest any team drew.
Atlanta last reached this stage in 2013.
The Dream made the Finals in 2010, 2011 and 2013 and lost all three, swept each time, an 0-9 record in Finals games that stood until Angel Reese scored 30 points with 16 rebounds to win Game 2 on Monday night, 79-65. Their home is the league’s smallest building. Gateway Center Arena, in College Park, seats 3,500 and has housed the team since 2021.
So the Finals moved. The league rescheduled Games 3 and 4 so Atlanta could play at State Farm Arena, the Hawks’ building downtown, moving Game 3 from Thursday to Wednesday around a concert and Game 4 to Saturday afternoon, ahead of the Hawks’ home opener that evening. Game 3 sold out all 17,044 seats. Nearly five times Gateway Center’s capacity, for Atlanta’s first home Finals game since 2013. And the arrangement turns permanent in 2027, when all Dream home games move to State Farm Arena.
Game 1 averaged 2.1 million viewers on NBC and Peacock. It peaked at 3.0 million in the final minutes, and NBC billed it as the most-watched Game 1 of a Finals series ever, up 11 percent on last year’s record. Sports Media Watch’s historical figures show the slope: a Finals opener drew 238,000 viewers in 2019 and 729,000 in 2023.
Game 5, if the series needs it, returns to Chase Center on Monday. Where a potential Game 6 would be played isn’t settled, because State Farm Arena hosts the Hawks and the Cleveland Cavaliers that same night, October 29. The next three expansion fees are already set at $250 million each.
