Drake wants to bring a WNBA team to his hometown of Toronto.
On Wednesday morning (Nov. 3), the “Way 2 Sexy” emcee posted to his Instagram Story, “@WNBA, I need a Toronto team.” Drake is currently a Global Ambassador for the Toronto Raptors NBA team. His remark came following the news that the pro women’s league was looking to expand.
To date, no WNBA team has been based outside of the United States. However, the NBA has had a team in Canada since 1995. Last month, WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert told ESPN that conversations on expanding will happen in the near future.
Engelbert said the league is using about 15 metrics to assess a variety of places and then potential ownership groups have to be arranged.
“The data looks like it’s going to read out some interesting information for us to start having exploratory discussions with certain cities, and make sure that we can find great ownership groups to support a WNBA team and great fan bases,” the commissioner said. “So, that’s why I think looking at how those cities are already supporting the WNBA, whether it’s viewership, merch sales or other things or whether they’re supporting women’s sports or women’s college basketball are great indicators of how it would get supported if a WNBA team were to go in that market.”
Drake isn’t the only person wanting to bring a WNBA team to his city. Former Los Angeles Sparks player Alana Beard is teaming up with a Black ownership group to bring a pro women’s team to Oakland, where she has worked since retiring from the league in 2019.
“I absolutely believe there is a market,” the former WNBA All-Star said last week. “We’ve done a deep dive in the market research and understand that there is no better place in this moment in time to have a WNBA team in this market.”
Check out Drake’s post below.