WNBA Exploring Buying Back 16% Stake Sold in 2022

January 16, 2026

Five years ago, the WNBA’s business was in a desperate place.

Fresh off a pandemic season, the effects of which reverberated well into 2021, the league needed money. Commissioner Cathy Engelbert led a capital raise that the league trumpeted as “the largest-ever” for a women’s sports property, eventually selling a 16% equity stake in the league for $75 million in February 2022. The funds were earmarked for “brand elevation, marketing, and the globalization of the WNBA,” among other infrastructure investments.

Now, a mere four years after the deal was finalized, the WNBA is exploring buying back the 16% stake, multiple sources with direct knowledge of the league’s business told Front Office Sports.

The WNBA declined to comment. Sources said the idea was still in the exploratory stages, and it’s not clear how buying back the stake would be structured or funded.

The buyers of the stake—a large group that includes several WNBA owners and Pau Gasol, Condoleezza Rice, and Nike—stand to earn back their original investment several times over.

It was widely reported at the time that the $75 million stake valued the league and its teams at $1 billion dollars. However, a source with direct knowledge of the raise told FOS the actual valuation was closer to $475 million after the influx of capital.

Team valuations have ballooned since, as the WNBA has added three new teams, with three more to come later this decade.

When the WNBA launched in 1997 every team was owned and operated by the NBA team in that market. That was the model for the WNBA’s eight original franchises, until 2002 when the NBA Board of Governors voted to restructure the league to allow independent owners to join and teams in non-NBA markets to be formed. FOS