The Golden State Valkyries are worth $1 billion, according to CNBC's 2026 franchise valuations released Thursday. They are the first WNBA team to clear ten figures, doing so in their second season of operation.

The franchise launched in 2024 as the league's thirteenth team, paying a $50 million expansion fee. Twenty-four months later, the markup is 20x. The Valkyries play at Chase Center, share infrastructure with the Golden State Warriors, and carry Joe Lacob and Peter Guber's ownership imprimatur. Their inaugural season averaged 15,200 paid attendance, second in the league. Year two is tracking 17,100 through May.

The valuation matters because it resets the floor for future expansion and ownership transactions. The league is evaluating bids for a fourteenth franchise, expected to command a $100-150 million fee before this number published. That range now looks soft. Toronto and Portland groups are circling. If the Valkyries are worth $1 billion with two seasons of operating history, a Toronto franchise in a top-ten North American media market with Bell or Rogers infrastructure starts at a different number. The WNBA's last public expansion fee was $50 million for Golden State in 2023. The next one will test whether this valuation is an outlier or a benchmark.

Sponsorship inventory explains part of the gap. The Valkyries launched with eight founding partners, including Accenture, Kaiser Permanente, and Rakuten, at rates 30-40% above comparable WNBA deals, per two people familiar with terms. Their jersey patch, held by cloud company Contentful, is a three-year agreement in the low eight figures. That structure is borrowed from the Warriors, where Rakuten paid $60 million over three years in 2017. The Valkyries are running the same playbook one tier down, but the percentage of league revenue is higher. A WNBA team generating $35-40 million in annual revenue at 70% EBITDA margins—the rough profile for Golden State—produces better cash flow than NBA teams twice the size running at 35-40% margins.

The rest of the league is not close. The New York Liberty, privately valued near $200 million last year, would come next, followed by Los Angeles at $180-200 million. Legacy franchises in smaller markets—Indiana, Connecticut—sit near $80-100 million. The gap between first and fifth is wider than the gap between fifth and twelfth. That creates tension in revenue sharing and league governance. The Valkyries and Liberty want faster international expansion and higher salary caps. Minnesota and Phoenix want league subsidy and territorial protection. The valuation gap makes those arguments harder to split.

Two items to track: The next expansion franchise fee, expected by August, will clarify whether buyers believe the Valkyries are repeatable or singular. And Joe Lacob's comments at the next Warriors earnings call, typically held in July. He has been public about the Valkyries as a "growth asset." If he starts using IRR language, minority stakes start getting shopped.

The Valkyries play the Liberty in San Francisco on June 12th. Courtside is sold out. Ticket face value starts at $450.