The Golden State Valkyries are worth $1 billion, according to CNBC's 2026 franchise valuation survey released this week. The team tipped off its inaugural season three months ago.
No other WNBA franchise has crossed ten figures. The Valkyries entered the league as the 13th team in May 2025, playing home games at Chase Center under a lease structure with the Warriors. Joe Lacob and Peter Guber own the franchise through the same holding company that controls the NBA club. The valuation reflects the asset before a single playoff appearance, before a single jersey retirement, before the team has logged 50 regular-season games.
The number tells you more about facility economics than basketball operations. Chase Center generates $2.1 million per event across 18,000 seats, luxury suites, and courtside inventory priced to Silicon Valley tax brackets. The Valkyries share that infrastructure without paying construction debt. They sell sponsorships into the same corporate pool that bought Warriors patches and naming rights—Rakuten, JPMorgan Chase, SAP—brands already writing eight-figure checks and now buying a second team in the same building for incremental spend. The media rights picture is murkier but improving: the WNBA's 2026 deal with Disney, NBC, and Amazon pays the league roughly $200 million annually, triple the prior contract. The Valkyries get an equal share despite contributing zero years of ratings history.
Go through the rest of the league and the math is thinner. The New York Liberty play at Barclays Center, but Joe Tsai bought that franchise for $50 million in 2019. The Los Angeles Sparks share Crypto.com Arena with the Lakers but haven't filed for a valuation reset since before the current media deal. Chicago, Phoenix, and Las Vegas franchises sit in strong markets with weaker venue deals and less patient ownership capital. The Valkyries walked into a constructed machine.
Franchise buyers watch this. The valuation gap between the Valkyries and the next-closest team will likely exceed $400 million when the full CNBC list publishes. That gap is the cost of not having an NBA partner with a 10-year-old arena lease and a season-ticket base that renews at 96% annually. It's the difference between building a business and inheriting one. The WNBA has talked about adding a 14th and 15th team by 2028; bidders will now point to the Valkyries and argue that the league's pricing model has reset. Expansion fees for the last two teams—Golden State and the Toronto franchise set to enter in 2026—were pegged at $50 million and $115 million, respectively. The next bid will start at $150 million or won't be taken seriously.
What to watch: the Liberty's next capital raise or minority stake sale, expected in the back half of 2026, will test whether New York can command a comparable number without the Warriors' facility leverage. Portland, Philadelphia, and Houston remain the three cities named most often in expansion discussions; Houston has an ownership group that includes Tilman Fertitta, who already runs the Rockets and Toyota Center. If Fertitta files paperwork before July, the $150 million floor becomes real.
The Valkyries are 11-6 through 17 games. Lacob has not taken a single question about profitability.