The NBA has laid the groundwork to expand, returning a team to Seattle and putting one in Las Vegas.
Expansion isn’t imminent in the NHL, but in an anonymous poll of 118 players conducted by The Athletic last month, five cities were mentioned at least three times as a preferred next destination:
Houston; Quebec City in Canada; Arizona (Phoenix); Atlanta; and Austin down in Texas.
Kansas City doesn’t seem to be on the expansion radar for either of those leagues. But as Kathy Nelson tells her staff at the Kansas Sports Commission/Visit KC, “It’s never no. It’s just not yet.”
And although KC missed out in the most recent round of WNBA expansion, Nelson believes a women’s pro basketball team will someday call T-Mobile Center home.
“We are still doing the work behind the scenes, we are still forming relationships, we’re talking to the right people and we’ve got the right ownership group built out,” Nelson said.
That group includes the owners of the National Women’s Soccer League’s KC Current: Angie and Chris Long and Brittany and Patrick Mahomes.
Last June, the WNBA announced new teams would be headed to Cleveland, Detroit and Philadelphia. They will enter the league in 2028 through 2030.
Cities with NBA franchises got the nod in that round of WNBA expansion. New teams in Toronto and Portland — also NBA cities — will enter the WNBA this season.
As part of its bid, Kansas City had offered to build a practice facility in Riverside, site of the Current’s training facility on the Missouri side of the state line.
Kansas City will play host to a WNBA exhibition game April 27 when the Minnesota Lynx meet the Nigerian women’s national team. It will be the first WNBA game played at T-Mobile enter. The last time the league held a game in KC was 2005, when Detriot played Minnesota at Municipal Auditorium.