Nearly 21,000 WNBA fans packed Montreal’s Bell Centre on a warm July evening, breaking the league’s regular-season attendance record. Only the city doesn’t have a professional women’s basketball team.
The crowd was there to see the Toronto Tempo, which was playing a special two-game series at the venue after becoming the sole Women’s National Basketball Association franchise outside the United States this year. That vaunted status gives them the opportunity to build a national following and reap the benefits of rising interest in women’s sports .
Billionaire Larry Tanenbaum saw this coming.
The 81-year-old Canadian mogul is cashing out of the investment of a lifetime, selling Kilmer Sports Inc.’s 25 per cent interest in Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment Ltd. to Rogers Communications Inc. for $4.35 billion in a deal announced July 6. Tanenbaum’s stake in the Toronto Maple Leafs and Toronto Raptors elevated him into one of the most influential — and scrutinized — ownership figures in Canadian sports.
Now, Tanenbaum can concentrate on his next big bet: women’s basketball . In 2024, he secured the Tempo for US$115 million, including a US$50 million expansion fee.
“Over 20 years ago, when I first saw an opportunity to bring a WNBA franchise to Canada, research showed the market wasn’t ready,” Tanenbaum said in an emailed statement. “I never stopped paying attention and, in time, the market caught up to what we all knew to be true — women’s sports are good business and worth investing in.”
Former MLSE chief executive Richard Peddie, who worked alongside Tanenbaum for 14 years, called him after the Rogers deal announcement, intending to congratulate him on retiring.
“Larry says, ‘I’m not retiring,’” Peddie recalled. “He made a point of talking about how he was going to focus on women’s sports.”
The decision puts Tanenbaum at the centre of a broader wager: that women’s leagues, long under-capitalized relative to men’s, now offer some of the industry’s most compelling growth.
“The time is right, so I think that’s a smart move,” Peddie said. “Enterprise value is growing.”
The 30-year-old WNBA has historically operated at a loss, but league revenue — which excludes money flowing directly to teams — rose 177 per cent from 2019 to 2024. The average franchise is worth US$427 million, according to Sportico. That figure that doesn’t include the Tempo, which tipped off in May.
Tanenbaum is part of a rush of wealthy sports owners to enter the league. Dan Gilbert’s Rock Ventures LLC, Platinum Equity LLC chief executive Tom Gores and Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment LLC have all secured expansion franchises, bringing the WNBA to 18 teams by 2030. Each paid a US$250 million fee, or five times Tanenbaum’s cost to enter the league.
Kilmer has since broadened its portfolio, announcing a US$100 million investment in the Professional Women’s Hockey League — the first time the PWHL has accepted external capital.
“There’s never been a better time to invest in women’s sports,” said Washington University in St. Louis professor Patrick Rishe, who leads the school’s sports business program. “Women’s basketball is probably at the pinnacle of that.”
Improved revenues across the league and investor demand have driven up expansion fees, Rishe said. The clubs are attractive due to the upside potential and the relatively affordable entry compared with professional men’s sports.
“More high-wealth individuals want to get a piece of it because they realize that these are unique assets. They’ve seen the appreciation values of these teams,” Rishe said.
The WNBA does not consistently disclose revenue data, making it harder to assess how quickly rising viewership and sponsorship interest are translating into dollars. But the league inked the biggest media rights deal in women’s sports history in 2024, bringing in roughly US$200 million a year as part of a joint US$76 billion deal with the NBA. And the players’ union negotiated a collective bargaining agreement that enabled the league’s first US$1 million player salaries this season.
“The number of league sponsors rose to roughly 30 to open this season, up 40 per cent year over year,” Tanenbaum said.
The Golden State Valkyries offers a preview of the upside investors are chasing. The franchise was valued at US$850 million after its inaugural 2025 season, brought in US$78 million in revenue and sold out every home game with a crowd of more than 18,000 fans each night.
The WNBA has also seen a boost as college basketball stars go pro. Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese and Paige Bueckers — popularized in an era when the NCAA permits players to make money off their personal brands — have become household names.
“The dollars and cents make more sense now that there are more revenue opportunities for these teams on the strength of the players that have been brought in,” Rishe said. He sees parallels to the 1980s when the then-struggling NBA saw a boom due to all-stars such as Magic Johnson, Larry Bird and Michael Jordan.
A Country’s Team
So far, the Tempo has sold out all of their home games at Coca-Cola Coliseum, which seats 8,210. Sixty-five percent of those sales were to season ticket holders.
Tempo President Teresa Resch said the team is tracking brand awareness, social engagement and unique visitors as it tries to measure the success of its inaugural season. Resch was a longtime executive at the Raptors.
The Tempo has the opportunity to “plant our flag as Canada’s team,” Resch said. “That’s really unique for us and something that no other team really has the opportunity to do.”
It’s a familiar playbook in Canadian sports, and one key to Tanenbaum’s vision when he bought the Tempo. The Raptors and Toronto Blue Jays have long marketed themselves beyond Toronto, using their status as Canada’s only NBA and Major League Baseball teams to attract national fan bases and sponsorship interest. The Tempo will play two games in Vancouver in August.
Tanenbaum pursued Toronto’s expansion franchise after MLSE declined to bring the WNBA to Canada, according to the Toronto Star.
“Building world-class women’s sports organizations is how you create something that lasts,” Tanenbaum said. “I’m proud to continue to invest in it.”
The record-breaking crowd in Montreal offered an early glimpse of the national audience Tanenbaum envisioned. Tempo forward Isabelle Harrison, 32, felt it on the court.
“We’ve been years in the making, so to be living in these actual conversations, business moves — to be here, right here, right now — it’s bigger than us,” she said. “I hope Canada’s proud of us.”