On Oct. 5, 2023, Joe Lacob’s Warriors ownership group secured a WNBA expansion license for San Francisco. There was no name, no roster and no coach—only a $50 million bet that the Bay Area would embrace another basketball team.¹

The franchise’s first major choice was not a player but a colour. Team president Jess Smith and the front office rejected the easy Warriors-adjacent blue and gold route, settling instead on violet and black. Smith said the challenge was “to build something just as powerful, not underneath that.”¹ The brand travelled before the team did: merchandise sold in all 50 states and 70 countries in the four months after the name, logo and colours were announced.¹

That identity met a ready-made market. The Valkyries benefited from the national boom in women’s basketball, the Bay Area’s deep college-game roots and a local desire for a fresh sporting connection after teams departed Oakland. Fan Beverley Ellis put the appeal plainly: “It’s women’s basketball, and there’s pride in that.”¹

The commercial numbers quickly backed up the feeling. Golden State sold out all 44 regular-season games at Chase Center across its first two seasons, while season-ticket sales rose from roughly 10,500 in year one to more than 12,000 this season. The team was valued at $1 billion in May and was projected to generate as much as $130 million in annual revenue—a striking return on the original expansion fee.¹

Then came the sporting proof. General manager Ohemaa Nyanin assembled a roster of players overlooked elsewhere, while coach Natalie Nakase built a defence-first group. After going 23-21 and reaching the playoffs in their debut season, the Valkyries surged to 32-12, beat Dallas and defending champion Las Vegas, then defeated Atlanta in Saturday’s Game 7 Finals.

In under 37 months, the violet-clad newcomers became champions—and, in the view of former Warriors president Rick Welts, began “resetting the bar for what’s possible in the WNBA, and probably in all of women’s sports.”¹