{"id":237753,"date":"2026-04-10T09:08:20","date_gmt":"2026-04-10T09:08:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/10\/wnba-hits-18-team-milestone-expansion-officially-approved-for-cleveland-detroit-and-philadelphia\/"},"modified":"2026-04-10T09:08:20","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T09:08:20","slug":"wnba-hits-18-team-milestone-expansion-officially-approved-for-cleveland-detroit-and-philadelphia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/10\/wnba-hits-18-team-milestone-expansion-officially-approved-for-cleveland-detroit-and-philadelphia\/","title":{"rendered":"WNBA hits 18-team milestone: Expansion officially approved for Cleveland, Detroit and Philadelphia"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"ue-c-article--first-letter-highlighted\"><span class=\"capital-letter\">T<\/span>he Board of Governors of the <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.marca.com\/en\/basketball\/nba.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">NBA<\/a><\/strong> and <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.marca.com\/en\/basketball\/wnba.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">WNBA<\/a><\/strong> have approved the <strong>expansion of the women&#8217;s basketball league with three new franchises<\/strong> in Cleveland in 2028, Detroit in 2029 and Philadelphia in 2030, according to a statement. Although the WNBA announced almost a year ago its plan to expand to these cities, Thursday&#8217;s decision by the NBA Board of Governors makes it official that new franchises will be joining the league.<\/p>\n<p>In 2026, the WNBA, which will begin on May 8, will expand from 13 to 15 franchises with the addition of the Portland Fire and the Toronto Tempo.<\/p>\n<p>With the subsequent arrival of the three new teams in <strong>Cleveland<\/strong>, <strong>Detroit<\/strong> and <strong>Philadelphia<\/strong>, the league will reach 18 franchises by 2030, surpassing its previous all-time high of 16 between 2000 and 2002.<\/p>\n<p>In 2027, <strong>the Connecticut Sun will move to Houston for the return of the Comets<\/strong>, the historic franchise that won the first four WNBA titles, disappeared in 2008 and still remains the most successful in the league.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.marca.com\/en\/basketball\/wnba\/2026\/04\/10\/69d8bb65e2704e561b8b4578.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Board of Governors of the NBA and WNBA have approved the expansion of the women&#8217;s basketball league with three new franchises in Cleveland in 2028, Detroit in 2029 and Philadelphia in 2030, according to a statement. Although the WNBA announced almost a year ago its plan to expand to these cities, Thursday&#8217;s decision by [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":237754,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6808],"tags":[52526,46312,47651,51498,61485,46672,34008,48203,51829,34009,49245,66997,52129,66996,46023,3965,17576],"class_list":{"0":"post-237753","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-cathy-engelbert-english","9":"tag-chicago-sky-english","10":"tag-connecticut-sun-english","11":"tag-dallas-wings-english","12":"tag-golden-state-valkyries-english","13":"tag-indiana-fever-english","14":"tag-las-vegas-aces-english","15":"tag-los-angeles-sparks-english","16":"tag-minnesota-lynx-english","17":"tag-new-york-liberty-english","18":"tag-phoenix-mercury-english","19":"tag-portland-fire-english","20":"tag-seattle-storm-english","21":"tag-toronto-tempo-english","22":"tag-washington-mystics-english","23":"tag-wnba","24":"tag-wnba-english"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237753\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/237754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}