How To Build a WNBA Expansion Brand a City Can Call Its Own

Accomplish your ultimate goal once in the sports world and you’re a champion. Do it consistently, and you become a legend and the foundation of dynasties.

Kimberly Veale spent much of 2024 and 2025 building relationships around the Bay Area that shaped the Golden State Valkyries’ marketing during its first season in the WNBA. When the team launched its brand and logos in May 2024, it held a block party in Chase Center’s Thrive City plaza and featured team execs alongside Bay Area artists including Kehlani, E-40, P-Lo and Goapele.

When NBA All-Star Weekend arrived in the Bay in February 2025, the Valkyries marketing team took the opportunity to showcase their new 6,800-square-foot, V-shaped locker room at Chase Center and their 31,800-square-foot Sephora Performance Center across the bay in Oakland. Team president Jess Smith appeared at an All-Star panel for The Female Quotient, while coach Natalie Nakase and Valkyries players joined sponsor Chase on its Cashback Courts activations for fans.

Keeping the momentum going through the expansion draft and WNBA Draft and slowly introducing players to the fanbase, Veale and her squad put together a tipoff campaign, “First of a Lifetime” that took to the streets and cast actual street ballers, park visitors, and BART buskers for an Oakland-to-San Francisco view of the team’s home base. Veale herself met with San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan in an effort to get as many of the region’s fans involved as possible.

Violet, the Valkyries raven mascot, wasn’t so much introduced in August 2025 as she was slowly hatched on social media.

You want something that feels true to the city, but is also able to scale globally…and then you start to have fun with it.

Kimberly Veale, SVP of marketing and communications, RAJ Sports

Veale’s marketing efforts helped drive sellout crowds of 18,064 and an unmatched environment for each of the Valkyries’ 22 home games as the team finished its inaugural season with an unlikely playoff berth. They hadn’t just helped create a brand or assemble a fanbase: They built Ballhalla.

“There’s so much anticipation for the moment that there’s this overwhelming responsibility and desire to do it right,” Veale said.

But before the Valkyries made the playoffs, Veale’s talents were needed elsewhere. Portland, Oregon, was home to the WNBA’s Portland Fire from 2000 to 2002 and was awarded another franchise in late 2024. Team owners RAJ Sports revived the Fire brand in July 2025 and hired Veale in August to help reintroduce it to the city and region.

By the time the Fire’s first season ended nearly a year later, Veale and the Fire had brought in Portlandia’s Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen to announce the season calendar, turned the team’s Moda Center home court into The Fire Pit, debuted a Kaiser Permanente-branded performance center shared with RAJ Sports’ Portland Thorns NWSL team, put the team at the center of a Nike-co-sponsored women’s sports summit, and had a glitter-breathing dragon mascot leave its mark all over the city.

Oh, and the Fire drew 14,469 fans per night, including a record 19,335 fans for the home opener. While that still trails the Valkyries’ full-season sellout mark (which they hit for the second year in a row), it puts the Fire among the top four in WNBA attendance in its first year. Even its 11,945 low point exceeded the averages of more than half the league, including the reigning champion Las Vegas Aces (11,206).

The Fire’s first-year marketing success led RAJ Sports to elevate Veale in September from SVP of marketing and communications for the Fire to the same role for the whole company—covering the Fire, the Thorns, and the group’s Epicenter of Women’s Sports platform. It recognized that Veale’s defining strength is identifying elements and communities that make each team’s market unique.

“I obviously had to get up to speed very quickly: I had to immerse myself in what Portland wanted and how to represent Portland at scale,” Veale said. “You want something that feels true to the city, but is also able to scale globally…and then you start to have fun with it.”

Ignition point

During her transition from the Valkyries to the Fire, Veale saw a key point of distinction between the two: History.

Neither San Francisco nor Oakland had hosted a professional women’s basketball team before. Valkyries and Golden State Warriors owner Joe Lacob was an owner of the American Basketball League (ABL) San Jose Lasers from 1996 through 1998, while the closest WNBA team—the Sacramento Monarchs—were dissolved in 2009 after serving as one of the league’s original eight franchises.

Portland, however, had its own ABL franchise in the Portland Power and produced stars including league MVP (and future Aces GM) Natalie Williams. The first incarnation of the Fire, meanwhile, brought the city 2001 Rookie of the Year Jackie Stiles and kept hometown favorite Sylvia Crawley in town when the Power folded.

There’s these moments of radiance and joy and community that fire is at the center of, and so playing off of that ethos for some of these brand elements gives the fans a sense of pride that they are building something.

Kimberly Veale, SVP of marketing and communications, RAJ Sports

At the Fire’s brand launch party in 2025, the jerseys of all three were evident among the crowd outside the Moda Center. Veale’s team took notice and brought in Crawley, Stiles, and other Fire and Power alumni for a “Legacy Reignited” campaign that culminated in appearances by and interviews with former players during a Fire home game on May 18.

“There’s a lot of history that played in Portland from 2000 to 2002 and a lot of legacy that played in Portland in 2000 to 2002,” Veale said. “But the real legacy was the fans and the atmosphere that they brought.”

But rebuilding a fanbase and the trust that comes along with it takes time after 24 years without a team. Some of the first steps toward building those links included bringing aboard Sania Thomas in September 2025 to serve as the Fire’s director of community impact and holding NCAA, March Madness, and draft watch parties leading up to the season, as well as hosting camps, school visits, and merchandise pop-ups.

For the “Did You Hear” campaign announcing the season’s home schedule, Veale’s team brought back Portlandia stars Armisen and Brownstein—with the latter joining Daily W Sports co-founder Trysta Krick on commentary later in the year.

In the Moda Center itself, Veale—who had already done one WNBA stint in the Pacific Northwest while working with the Seattle Storm from 2013 to 2018—thought about how communities here gather around fires while at the coast, camping, or in their backyards and designed a flame-centered, timber-piled court, flame lighting, and a pyrotechnic scheme with a name that fans would later adopt for their packed, loud home turf: The Fire Pit.

With fans from among the 17,000 who put down season ticket deposits initially meeting each other at the team’s select-a-seat event in December 2025 and forming relationships with both each other and new players leading up to the season, both the design and makeup of the Fire Pit were functioning as intended by the time Sarah Ashlee Barker hit a buzzer-beater for the Fire’s first win and Bridget Carleton hit a career-high seven 3-pointers against the Storm.

“There’s these moments of radiance and joy and community that fire is at the center of, and so playing off of that ethos for some of these brand elements gives the fans a sense of pride that they are building something—because without our audience and our fan base, there is no Fire Pit,” Veale said. “So to have that sense of pride and for them to own it and make it what it has turned into was exactly what we were going for—to be the first strike of the match, no pun intended.”

All that glitters

Veale and her team kept the Fire burning through the Epicenter of Women’s Sports Week held by RAJ Sports and Nike from Aug. 19-23. During that span, the team sent ambassador and former WNBA player Helen Darling to help refurbish a court at a Portland school and run literacy-based basketball drills. It also hosted the EmpowerHER awards, unveiled the recently completed Kaiser Permanente Performance Center shared with the Thorns in Hillsboro, Oregon, and included Carleton, owner Lisa Bhathal Merage, and team sports surgeon Dr. Jacqueline Brady among 29 speakers at the event’s women’s sports summit.

The week finished with a Fire home game against the Washington Mystics that also just happened to be Pink Glitter Night at Moda Center. During Epicenter Week, glittery scorch marks began appearing throughout the Portland metro area, including at the site of Epicenter’s summit at Nike Global Headquarters near Beaverton, at Portland’s flagship Powell’s City of Books, the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI), vintage sports apparel shop Back to the Basket, candle boutique Mr. OK’s Essentials, and soy candlemaker Penrose Candles.

On the day of the Fire’s game against the Mystics, a glitter-filled crater appeared outside of the Moda Center. During the game, the team introduced Rose: a flower-crowned, glitter-breathing dragon.

Fans saw her handbag and Nike Air Force 1s, but had little idea of the planning and practical measures that went into her design. Yes, it makes sense for a team named the Fire to have a dragon as its mascot, but it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to equip that same mascot with tanks of fuel and have it belch flame at unassuming fans. Veale considers glitter a bit brighter, radiant, and lingering, giving fans more of Rose to make their own.

Rose also came with a backstory that had her lying dormant beneath the Moda Center since the Fire left in 2002—nestling into the region’s volcanic soil—but being awoken by the sound of squeaking sneakers on the court. Needing certain items in her new world and unaware of the concept of theft, Rose took regional city guides from Powell’s, her shoes from Nike, a throwback Fire jersey from Back to the Basket, and candles for her lair—which fans can now visit on the Moda Center concourse. She also loves Rihanna, so a few Rihanna tracks and Easter eggs accompanied her debut.

“She’s been a Portland Fire fan this whole time and cannot help herself but to come out now and be here for the remainder of the debut season and also never miss a game again,” Veale said. “How do we tell our fans you know she’s coming and build anticipation and drive some interest in this game at scale?”

By the end of the season, the Fire had players like a grateful Carleton saying they felt like a priority and Barker saying the city felt like home. General manager Vanja Černivec, who also worked with Veale in Golden State, was impressed with “how fast the city and fans fell in love with us.”

The Fire’s attendance, viewership, merchandise sales, social engagement and other metrics—as well as Veale’s ascension through RAJ Sports—provide ample evidence of sustained success. Veale, meanwhile, sees the proof of her team’s efforts in the tiny unincorporated community just beyond Portland’s West Hills that she calls home. She took her parents out for coffee while wearing a Fire sweatshirt and a woman walked by in a Fire hat while walking her dog. She asked if Veale was a Fire fan and, before she could answer, told her that she was from Seattle, attended the Fire game the night before and raved about the experience.

“That’s a small example, but there’s this growing swell around the team and people here in Portland,” Veale said. “There’s this pride and this responsibility of creating this environment at the Fire Pit that carries beyond the walls of Moda Center for our fans, and that’s exactly what we want.”