Should Austin get a WNBA expansion team? Longhorn legend Fran Harris is making the case

During the most recent WNBA season, the league, which has been around since 1996, saw major growth in viewership, attendance and the amount of media attention devoted to women’s basketball.

That might have a lot to do with new standouts like Angel Reese from the Chicago Sky and of course, the rookie of the year, sweet shooting point guard Caitlin Clark of the Indiana Fever. Now, the league is trying to capitalize on this attention by expanding: Over the next two seasons, the WNBA will add clubs in San Francisco, Portland and Toronto, bringing it to 15 teams.

There are rumors that a 16th member could also join the W. But where to put it? Well, maybe Austin.

Working to make that idea a reality is Fran Harris, who won championships with South Oak Cliff High School, the University of Texas at Austin and the Houston Comets. Harris, who’s also a former ESPN announcer, a filmmaker and founder of multiple companies, joined the Standard to share more about her efforts.

This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:

Texas Standard: Why Austin for the WNBA? Of all the cities a team could go to.

Fran Harris: Austin is the perfect intersection of culture, sports, free agency feel. It’s a great place to live. The weather’s not too bad as long as it’s not the summer and it’s hotter than July, I mean.

But Austin has a built-in sports fan base for women’s basketball. That’s what differentiates it from the other applicants looking to bring teams to their cities.

How long have you been working on this effort?

I started officially talking to Austin in the spring of 2023, and I started talking to Austin because, as excited as I was about bringing a WNBA team possibly to Austin, Austin has to be excited about a WNBA team coming here, right?

So talked to the mayor, talked to council members, talked to people on the street, literally: “What do you think of a WNBA team coming to Austin? Do you support the women’s basketball team at Texas?” Just literally my own research.

And once I knew that Austin was excited about the possibility of bringing a WNBA team here, then I reached out to the commissioner and said, I’d like to possibly bring a group together to bring a team to Austin. And she introduced me to their legal department, and thus we were on our way.

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Do you see the league’s new blood – Angel Reese, Caitlin Clark – as being the principal reason for the WNBA’s big season, you know, an upward trajectory, or are there other things going on?

I do believe the college game in general made a huge uptick into WNBA interest. There’s no question about what’s happening with women’s college basketball exploded, and then that trickled over into the WNBA.

So the W is already growing. But when you bring literally international stars who are 21- and 22-year-olds who have their own databases, their own fan bases to the league, it’s obviously going to grow the league.

So, very exciting that the college game now has that relationship and that impact on professional women’s basketball as well.

Do you think that NIL has anything to do with this, the fact that college athletes can capitalize on their name, image and likeness? I mean, now we don’t just see Caitlin Clark shooting threes. We also see her on State Farm commercials, things like that.

Yeah, I love NIL. I wish I’d had NIL. I so wish I could’ve been a part of the NIL part of the growth of women’s basketball. But NIL and the ability to monetize your brand definitely means that athletes can proliferate their brands because they can be everywhere.

So not only do you know Caitlin Clark and Angel and JuJu Watkins over at USC because of how well they ball on the court, you know, because as you said, you see them on commercials, you see them on their own podcasts, you see them on YouTube, you see them on social media. That’s why the explosion has happened.

As you mentioned, there are a lot of cities interested in adding a WNBA franchise, not just Austin. I’ve read that folks in Houston, Nashville, Philadelphia, Kansas City all are potentially interested – and an expansion fee is going to be required by whichever city this goes to. It could be upwards of $200 million. Is it too early to ask where that money might come from?

No, it’s not. Here’s the thing: I love the interest in the WNBA. And the interesting thing about where I sit is because I’m at the intersection of being a former player and being part of an ownership group.

So while I love the explosion and I love the competition, I don’t love what the competition is doing to the franchise, because it’s making it go up and up and up. And the more these NBA teams jump in the fray, the higher it potentially can go.

But that’s the curse and the blessing of a sport that’s exploding: there’s value in it. And there’s always been value in the WNBA. And finally, the public is seeing that. And the reflection of fees is one of those reasons.

Your face has been out there as a person who is promoting the WNBA coming to Austin. Now that that’s the case, have people reached out to you and said, how can I help?

Absolutely. That was the whole point. The whole point of being in the media is to generate interest and excitement and anticipation.

So what do you need help with?

You got some money? [laughs] I mean, just literally getting the word the word out, because the more people who know about the W in Austin, the more people who believe that they should partner with the movement that is the W in Austin.

So we’re looking for partners and sponsors and advertisers and advocates and ambassadors – and any other words that begin with A; apparently I’m on a roll with the A words. We need amazing ambassadors to step up and say, hey, we want to be a part of it.

And the great thing about being in the media and having conversations like this is that different people hear it and they want to get involved, and you kind of just get in where you fit in. You know, “maybe I could be a ball girl, maybe I could do this, maybe I can introduce you to people.”

But more importantly, people start to partner with us in a way that makes the whole movement grow in the city of Austin.

We talked a little bit at the start of the conversation about what makes Austin unique. Could you say a little bit more about, as a former player yourself, why this market would be attractive to come to?

No. 1, cheeks in the seats, right? You can’t get a WNBA team to a city if you can’t promise cheeks in the seats. So fans, the fact that people are already conditioned to watching women’s basketball in Moody, is a great selling point for the city of Austin. Those two things are very important.

Number three, partnership community. If businesses don’t wrap their arms around our franchise, we won’t have a franchise. So businesses have to be doing what they’re doing now, which is reaching out, partnering. “Can we can we have naming rights?” Those conversations are starting now because those are the things that sustain a team in a city.

Not all WNBA franchises are affiliated with an NBA team, but some are. Is there any conversation about working with the Spurs on this?

Yeah. So for context, for those of you who are new to the W, when I played in the WNBA, there were eight teams in the W, and all of them were affiliated with an NBA team. And so they were kind of like our big brothers.

The great thing is that you got a big brother; the bad thing is, sometimes your big brother doesn’t want you going to the gym with him. Right? So you kind of felt like you were a hindrance and a thorn in their side.

And you felt that way?

I felt that way sometimes, yeah. We felt that way sometimes because frankly, not all the NBA teams that had WNBA teams wanted them. So that’s the good and the bad.

Now, 20-something years later, there are some NBA teams who would love to have a W team, and there are some NBA teams who are just jumping on the bandwagon because it’s good business. But it’s not going to be a plus or minus – like, the NBA teams have to get in line, just like the non-NBA cities do.

I love the Spurs, by the way. I love the Spurs for so many reasons. The culture of Gregg Popovich and their history of five championships. I know a lot about the Spurs, so I have had very meaningful conversations with them about partnership.

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