Round up your retro Portland Fire jerseys! The WNBA is returning to the Rose City!
22 years after the short-lived Fire folded, the WNBA has announced that league is expanding to Portland, with the franchise set to debut in 2026.
Last fall, soon after the WNBA confirmed expansion to Golden State for the 2025 season, Portland emerged as the leading candidate for a second expansion franchise, with the bid led by billionaire Kirk Brown.
That effort fell through, but, almost one year later, the league will, in fact, find it’s way to back to Portland. RAJ Sports, which is led by the Bhathal family, owners of the NWSL’s Portland Thorns, will own and operate the team. Lisa Bhathal Merage will be the controlling owner, along with her brother, Alex Bhathal. As Alex Bhathal told ESPN:
As we were pursuing the Thorns, we became very convinced that the Portland market was a great market for sports in general and women’s sports. Having seen the media reports that the WNBA opportunity was something the WNBA wanted to do, but there were some issues with the timing and potentially finding the right ownership group, it became an ‘aha’ moment that maybe this is something that we could do as well and create a multisport platform in the market and really cement Portland as the…
