The Golden State Valkyries are worth $1 billion, per CNBC's 2026 franchise valuations released May 4. The number lands twelve months after their inaugural season and makes them the first women's professional sports team to crack ten digits in a public ranking.
The franchise paid a $50 million expansion fee in 2023. Owners Joe Lacob and Peter Guber—who also control the NBA Warriors—now sit on paper gains of $950 million in roughly thirty months, most of it accrued before the team played a home game. The Valkyries finished their debut season 18-22, missing the playoffs. Season-ticket deposits opened in June 2023; the team has not disclosed renewal rates or average ticket yield, but Chase Center configured 11,500 seats for WNBA games versus 18,064 for Warriors contests.
The valuation hinges on three factors family offices are watching across women's sports deals. First: media rights are repricing. The WNBA's eleven-year, $2.2 billion contract with Disney, Amazon, and NBCUniversal starts in 2026, tripling prior annual fees to $200 million league-wide. Golden State's share is not public, but the deal includes a performance tier that pays playoff teams more—a structure the Valkyries did not access in Year One. Second: local sponsorship. The Warriors generated $150 million in partnership revenue in 2023-24; the Valkyries share Chase Center infrastructure and can cross-sell categories the NBA team cannot monetize twice. Third: scarcity. Twelve WNBA franchises exist. Commissioner Cathy Engelbert has said the league will expand to 16 teams by 2028, meaning four slots remain for cities that include Philadelphia, Denver, and Nashville. Toronto paid $115 million for its franchise in 2025, more than double the Valkyries' fee two years earlier.
The $1 billion figure is a comp, not a comp check. CNBC's methodology weights revenue, profit, and market size but does not disclose audited financials. The Valkyries have not filed for public debt, and California franchise disclosure laws do not require revenue reporting for limited partnerships. What the number does is set a floor for the next transaction. If an ownership group approaches Engelbert's office in June with a $90 million bid for Franchise 13, the league now points to Golden State and asks for $125 million. That is the function of a published valuation: it moves the ask.
Two items to track. First, the Valkyries' 2026 local media package. The Warriors' regional sports deal with NBCSports Bay Area runs through 2027-28 and pays roughly $30 million annually; the Valkyries are expected to negotiate separately but could attach to the same distributor for a fraction of that rate. Second, Lacob's behavior around the Warriors' next capital event. The NBA franchise is worth an estimated $8.5 billion in private comps. If Lacob sells a 5 percent stake in the parent entity that owns both teams, the Valkyries' embedded value becomes observable. Goldman Sachs and Raine Group have both pitched women's sports aggregation vehicles to institutional allocators in the past six months; a dual-team sale would provide price discovery.
The Valkyries open their second season May 16 at Chase Center against the Seattle Storm. Nneka Ogwumike, who signed a two-year deal in February, will be on the floor. The luxury suite that sold for $150,000 in Year One is already renewed.