How the Golden State Valkyries became the WNBA’s breakout expansion team

The week of the WNBA All-Star Game, Jess Smith, president of the Golden State Valkyries, shares how the team has quickly built a brand identity in its first year in the league—breaking season ticket records, surpassing expectations on and off the court, and setting a template for future expansion teams. Smith digs into the business impact of “Caitlin-mania,” how sports is a reflection of wider trends in society, and critical lessons learned in a career that spans the MLB, NHL, Major League Soccer, the National Women’s Soccer League—and now the WNBA.

This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by Robert Safian, former editor-in-chief of Fast Company. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with today’s top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode.

We’re halfway through the Valkyries’ inaugural season in the WNBA. How’s it going so far? I mean, the team is solidly mid-table in the standings. Is that better than you expected? Were you hoping for more?

I mean, for me, I oversee the business side of the Valkyries, but I’ve known since we hired general manager, Ohemaa Nyanin, and she hired Coach Natalie Nakase that the culture they were building was one of team over self where anything’s possible when you can work together.

And I think as a fan, for me, and watching this team come together, the defense they play, how they tackle each opponent one by one has just been remarkable. And I think it’s a joy to feel what the fans feel in those surprises compared to many expansion teams, regardless of sport, just in the history of sport. For us, that has just been remarkable and it’s been quite a journey.

How important to the league and to your team’s business has Caitlin mania been? I mean, your timing for a new franchise couldn’t have been better. You broke records for season ticket sales even before the season started. Is that because of that timing or are there other things that you were doing?

So previous to my time here at the Valkyries, I was a part of building Angel City Football Club from day one. That’s the women’s soccer club in Los Angeles beside Natalie Portman, Julie Uhrman, and Kara Nortman.

So different sport, different league, different market, and same playbook to many extents where when you build unapologetically and relentlessly to serve a unique fan base that has been waiting for something powerful in women’s sports, you see the output, you see sold-out arenas, sold-out venues, record-breaking merchandise that really translates to also lifestyle merchandise. You see unique audiences pouring in.

So the growth has been here for quite some time, and no growth is linear, right? So whenever I talk about growth, I also like to make sure that I’m chatting about since Title IX, there have been so many different moments in time that have led us to where we are today where you’re really seeing this full-scale, high-level expansion, no longer, “Will the league survive?” type of commentary.

I think Caitlin—the records she was breaking in college and how she can shoot the ball, the logo threes—it’s fun, right? But what she’s brought into the league is that traditional sports fan, right? Somebody that tuned in because there was great basketball happening and then followed her into the WNBA and they’re like, “This league is great.”

And so certainly she personally has a ton of fans, as she should. She’s a great force and great athlete within this league. But I think you’re also seeing that as a part of the continued growth, right?

For us here at the Valkyries, we’re the first expansion team since 2008, and we’ve said from day one, well, maybe I’ve said and made everybody else say it, but that’s a great responsibility. People have been asking the W for more for a long time, more of everything. Right? We want more teams, we want more roster spots, we want more visibility, we want more, more, more.

Well, Golden State was the first answer to more. And so the world, as soon as that happened, kind of turned and said, “Okay, what are you guys going to do?” Right? To know that as the first expansion team since 2008, we were going to be what people looked at of what the standard would be, not just for us, not just for our fans, not just for the Bay Area, but the future state of this league.

And so I think for us it was a really monumental moment actually welcoming Indiana into Chase Center and into what we call Ballhalla. Because as I was talking to different media that week, a lot of what I said was, Caitlin’s used to obviously traveling and having a ton of fans wherever she goes, and I think she always will, but I don’t know if she was used to coming into an arena that was a sea of violet and truly there in a home court advantage that we were able to put together alongside our fans and community in a short period of time.

I’m curious about that audience differentiation. I mean, you mentioned you worked at Angel City FC, you’ve worked in Major League Baseball, you’ve worked in the NHL, you worked in Major League Soccer, you’ve been at a lot of different leagues. What’s different about the fan for the W than those other leagues, and I guess what’s different about the fan for the Valkyries specifically in your market?

Well, I think first and foremost, from the outside looking in, you kind of just assume a sports fan is a sports fan, right? If somebody is a traditional fan, they’re going to be a 49ers fan, Giants fan, Sharks fan, you’re going to kind of go through the major sports franchises. Well, sometimes that’s true. How those fans act within those different realms are much different. And every league does have profiles of demographics that are more apt to be their fans, right?

So that’s a science. The NHL and Major League Baseball are not approaching things the same way. And I think having experience in multiple different leagues gave me the confidence of understanding and in wanting to build things in a unique way, because that’s actually what makes each league powerful in its own.

And specific to the W and specific to women’s sports, but even more broadly than the W, is it’s the women’s sports fan that I think has been undervalued and understudied for a really long time, right?

So they’re not in people’s databases probably. I can’t tell you the number of people that would come up to me before we went on sale, before we really had a brand and just say, “Please sell me a premier experience. I want the club with the cool food and the floor seats. I don’t want something that assumes I want to pay less to gain more access.” Right? They wanted to be served something like they would be where you would traditionally see that in men’s sports.

We understood that really no matter what, whether it’s WNBA, NBA, MLS, NWSL, you were seeing from a ticketed fan base, from a season ticket holder really always less than 10% of a crossover, so why would you build your product that way?

So as I came to the Valkyries, I think the opportunity was so great in that Golden State, they built Chase Center, they’ve won a few championships along the way, and they’re just known to be genuinely caring and genuinely talented at whatever they do on and off the court. I feel like I’ve joined the Avengers in so many different ways when you walk in these walls.

How do you build into the innate trust of Golden State and yet build uniquely for this audience, this young diverse audience that probably isn’t closely following the NFL, the NHL, Major League Baseball? Maybe they go to games, maybe they know a little bit, maybe they’ve chosen one, but it’s an audience that is really thoughtful around right now where they spend their time and money. They want to be on things they believe is building a better tomorrow, things they believe brings them community, they want to be around like-minded organizations.

And I think for the Bay, this is a woman’s sports market. This market’s been waiting for something powerful to come. And Bay FC’s obviously done a tremendous job launching right before us as well. But this market’s also where the world looks to see what comes next. It’s innovative.

People here don’t have the mindset of needing to see something tested before they buy in. In fact, they take pride in wanting to buy in from day one and be those first and early adopters simply because of the region that we are a part of.