The Golden State Valkyries and Warriors Waymo Partnership Isn’t Driving Itself

During the Golden State Valkyries’ victory parade along San Francisco’s Embarcadero on Nov. 4, WNBA Finals MVP Gabby Williams signed autographs, sprayed champagne, played drums, and occasionally rode on the top deck of a bus sponsored by Kaiser Permanente.

Team owner Joe Lacob showed up to the team’s championship celebration across the San Francisco Bay in Oakland in the Founding Guard varsity jacket that was given to the team’s first season ticketholders who paid with team sponsor Chase’s cards.

Throughout the celebrations, the team’s founding partners at Waymo sent vehicles around the Bay Area wrapped in Valkyries colors and logos. Waymo has also anchored the team’s designated drive program for fans, presented its Waymo Wednesdays promotions, and sponsored content including Courtside Connections and Full-Court Drive of the Game. While Waymo initially signed on as a Golden State Warriors partner in 2023, it stuck around as the organization rebranded to Golden State to encompass the Warriors, Valkyries, their home at Chase Center, the adjacent Thrive City, their Santa Cruz Warriors G League Team, an entertainment division, and other holdings.

“We’ve been lucky enough to work with really great brands that trust us with their brands and that we trust with our brand to show up in meaningful ways for our fans,” Barbour said. “And Waymo has been an extraordinary partner in doing just that. And they’re, I would say, quite simply like a model partnership in terms of their ability to think beyond the box, beyond the assets, and say ‘what else can we do?’”

Ahead of the Warriors’ Nov. 7 home game at Chase Center, the team and Waymo announced the winner of a “Drive the Design” competition that featured vehicle wraps designed by three artists from the Bay Area Mural Program (BAMP). For Barbour, who has been working with Golden State’s corporate sponsors since joining the organization as an intern during the 2007-08 season, having Waymo and other brands show up throughout the year in ways that complement Bay Area culture makes them not only part of game day, but a piece of the region’s fandom.

The Warriors alone have more than 60 brands within their partner portfolio, and Barbour notes that the less than 10% overlap between Warriors and Valkyries fans has created opportunities for brands including Sephora, Olly, and Athleta to seek out different fanbases within the broader organization. A partnership with Golden State isn’t on autopilot: A brand has to know the fans and their culture before coming along for the ride.

Waymo has been an extraordinary partner in doing just that. And they’re, I would say, quite simply like a model partnership in terms of their ability to think beyond the box, beyond the assets, and say ‘what else can we do?’

Nicole Barbour, vice president of partnership development, Golden State Warriors and Valkyries

“I think we’re approaching Waymo similar to how we’ve approached all of our partnerships, by looking at them and saying ‘How can this brand enhance the fan experience?’” Barbour said. “I think that’s why we’ve been able to team up with such incredible brands because at the heart of what we do, it all centers around the fans, and then being able to see the fans come out and celebrate in a parade, it brings it all together.”

Striking gold

Barbour’s first year with the Warriors followed the team’s first playoff appearance after 12 consecutive losing seasons. Despite the optimism of the “We Believe” Warriors, the team would spend another half-decade out of contention.

During this stretch, Barbour and her colleagues at Oakland’s Oracle Arena focused on showing their sponsors measurable results. For long-tenured partners like Oakland-based managed care consortium Kaiser Permanente, that not only meant working on community projects within the Bay Area and teaming up on healthy concessions, but talking through marketing efforts and activations that weren’t working and pivoting when necessary.

In 2009, the team drafted a young guard out of Davidson College who’d taken his team on a surprise trip to the NCAA tournament’s Elite Eight a season before and whose NBA-player dad brought him along for Burger King commercials. A year after Stephen Curry’s arrival, Joe Lacob and Peter Guber (and 17 other investors) bought the Warriors and promised a title within five years. They drafted future All-Stars Klay Thompson and Draymond Green in 2011 and 2012 and made good on their promise: Winning their first title in 40 years in 2015 and three more during the next seven seasons.

As the Warriors’ partnership team grew around Barbour, they began having conversations with existing partners about how to expand their relationships, and they began looking at how they could better measure results.

“We were building out our strategy team on the partnership side and asking how can we get third parties in to help us evaluate our partnerships and how can we really put KPIs in place to judge the success of these and share those KPIs with partners and say ‘this is our goal,’” Barbour said. “This is how we’re tracking and really be able to have those honest conversations and create deeper, stronger relationships with our partners during that time.”

But even success has its challenges. In 2019, the Warriors moved from Oakland to their new home at Chase Center with its adjacent Kaiser Permanente-branded Thrive City event and retail space. Roughly six months after welcoming fans into the new space, COVID-19 showed up and shut everything down.

Everything that we do, it starts with fan experience, and then ensuring that it has that deeper story, deeper connection… To use the strength of our brand to shine a light into somebody else is really at the core of what we want to do.

Nicole Barbour, vice president of partnership development, Golden State Warriors and Valkyries

Thrive City—devised as “an open space for communities, restaurants, retail”—became a community space for socially distanced food pantries, health care, holiday shopping, education and other uses. As Barbour noted, “It had nothing to do with basketball,” but it gave a Kaiser Permanente and local civic organizations a means of reaching people in need of their services and Golden State a bit of goodwill to be redeemed later.

“We found that all of our partnerships that are built in trust and relationships are always going to be the ones that last forever,” Barbour said. “Our legal team won’t let us put ‘forever’ in a contract, but that is our goal with our partnerships.”

Championship lineage

Eventually, the pandemic waned, Chase Center and Thrive City welcomed fans, the Warriors won their most recent title in 2022, and the NBA awarded the franchise All-Star Week in 2025.

By the time the latter event arrived, fans from around the world got to see how brands fit into Chase Center for themselves, but also got to attend fitness classes and night markets in Thrive City, see the newly open Valkyries Sephora Performance Center in Oakland, watch Valkyries players shoot on partner Chase’s courts, and take part in other activities aimed at the vast majority of NBA fans who will never step inside one of the league’s arenas.

Barbour and her team had known since the Valkyries were first announced as “Golden State WNBA” that their audience would be different than that of the Warriors or the South Bay fans of the Santa Cruz G League team and began analyzing the fanbase and strategizing around them. The first conversations with partners within the existing Golden State portfolio—J.P. Morgan Chase, Kaiser Permanente, United Airlines, CarMax, Waymo—made clear that there was an opportunity for something unique and special with the new WNBA franchise.

Our legal team won’t let us put ‘forever’ in a contract, but that is our goal with our partnerships.

Nicole Barbour, vice president of partnership development, Golden State Warriors and Valkyries

The meetings produced an open-minded response from the partners, who wanted to approach the Valkyries differently. Much like Waymo reached out to muralists for the Warriors but wore Valkyrie Violet on its sleeve for that team’s championship celebration, Chase brought in one of its Bay Area small business partners to make Founding Guard jackets and gave the team’s first fans incentive to use its product.

Now, after walking Golden State partners through four Warriors championships, Barbour and her team have connected brands with a Valkyries franchise that has built a championship legacy of its own in just two years. There are now 80 Golden State employees dedicated solely to the Valkyries and more than 500 others connecting all of the pieces of the organization.

Even when wins seem miles away, the right combination of partners can get there if they pay attention to each other and keep their eyes on the road.

“Everything that we do, it starts with fan experience, and then ensuring that it has that deeper story, deeper connection.” Barbour said. “Like with Waymo, we’re enhancing the fan experience, but then bringing in these incredible artists that really own their art, and now have our ability to bring that to our fans and showcase that. To use the strength of our brand to shine a light into somebody else is really at the core of what we want to do.”