The Golden State Valkyries have become the first women’s sports team to generate $100 million in annual revenue, a milestone that arrived while the club is still only in its second season and still winning at Chase Center. Jess Smith said last year was only the starting point, and the numbers now show how quickly the market has scaled.
That matters now because the Valkyries are being searched as a team story and a business story at the same time. They generated $78 million in their first season, so the move to $100 million means about $22 million in added annual revenue, or roughly 28% growth in one year. In plain terms, the club added a quarter more on top of an already huge first season, and it did it without waiting for the franchise to mature.
Smith framed that acceleration as a deliberate push, saying the team treated last year as step one and kept building as if year one never ended. The club cut off season-ticket sales this year at more than 12,000, and courtside seats fetched $1,500 per game. Golden State also now has more than 40 sponsors, a sign that the revenue base is not coming from one lane alone.
The team’s commercial rise has been matched by results on the floor. The Valkyries went 17-5 at home in the regular season, won all three games at Chase Center so far in the playoffs, and finished just a game behind the Minnesota Lynx for the best regular-season record in the WNBA. They also surpassed 100,000 followers on TikTok and became the WNBA’s most-followed team on Threads, which gives sponsors a larger audience to sell against.
That is what makes the pace unusual. Joe Lacob and Peter Guber paid $50 million in 2023 for the first WNBA expansion team since the Atlanta Dream started play in 2008, and the return profile has already moved far beyond a typical debut season. The Valkyries added 40% more headcount after their opening season and doubled the marketing department, a clear sign that the front office was building for demand it already believed was real.
The unfinished piece is how far this can go before the postseason ends. A run to the WNBA Finals could push gross revenue past $130 million before the league takes its cut of playoff gate receipts, which would add another roughly $30 million from the current $100 million level. For a team that is still this new, the bigger story may be that the ceiling is not being tested by age or history, but by how long it can keep packing Chase Center and turning attention into revenue.
