Fran Harris walked onto the Houston Comets court in the team’s inaugural season in 1997, and the feelings of playing in front of thousands of fans in the Frank Erwin Center in Austin came back to mind.
Harris led Texas women’s basketball to its first and only perfect season in 1986 and dreamed of one day being on the sideline as an owner. For the past 28 years, she stayed connected to the league. About five years ago she decided it was time to bring an ownership group together for an Austin WNBA team.
Women’s basketball, both collegiate and professional, has seen record-breaking growth in the past two years. The 2024 NCAA Championship between South Carolina and Iowa averaged 18.9 million viewers on ABC and ESPN, and March Madness saw a 121% increase from 2023.
“When I played in Texas, we would sell out. 8,000 (people) wasn’t a big deal for us,” Harris said. “So the game has really been good, and in some markets, fans have come out, Tennessee, Texas, Connecticut, some really great places. But the media, the television, the social media, the attention, the eyeballs that the game has gotten over the last 10 years, and especially the last three years, has really elevated everybody else’s eyes.”
Texas basketball now plays in the Moody Center, which fits nearly 11,000 fans and Longhorn fans show up weekly for games. Harris believes the built-in fan base would be crucial for the success of a local team.
“One of the most exciting parts of bringing the WNBA team to Austin for me is the opportunity to engage students at the university,” Harris said. “I can’t wait to see students go crazy in the Moody Center for a WNBA team. It’s high entertainment.”
Though Harris hasn’t talked to Texas head coach Vic Schaefer, Harris said she has talked to players and she made it clear that the excitement is across the board.
“If I were playing at the University of Texas right now, and there was a professional women’s basketball team in the city, it would take everything I could just stay contained because it’s so aspirational,” Harris said.
With the growth of the game comes the growth of interest in expanding the league. While that is great for the sport, it brings competition to the bidding process.
San Francisco, Toronto and Portland are the most recent expansion confirmations, raising the league to 15 teams. Other cities in the race to become the 16th team are Cleveland, St. Louis, Philadelphia and Kansas City.
“The bids keep coming in, right?” Harris said. “The fact that people, (and) cities are jumping in and saying, ‘We want a WNBA team,’ is absolutely phenomenal. That’s how it should be.”
There is no precise date for a decision on the bidding process, but Harris hopes to get an answer by the first quarter of 2025 and possibly start playing by 2027 or 2028.
