Allison Howard’s Four Tests for Brands Vetting a Founding Partnership in the WNBA
How Cleveland's WNBA President Turns Founding Partners Into Long-Term Winners
By 2030, there will be six new WNBA teams.
Every single one will pitch Fortune 500 brands for founding partnerships before playing a game.
What Allison Howard, President of Cleveland WNBA and EVP & Chief Commercial Officer at Rock Entertainment Group, has built at the WNBA’s newest expansion franchise,—8,000 season ticket deposits with no team name, 8 dedicated team members hired two years early, training center renovations underway—show what evaluating those pitches can bring to a founding partnership.
Key Takeaways:
Judge what franchises invested before revenue existed. Dedicated staff, facility renovations, and community infrastructure signal intent.
Demand documented fan evidence, not projections. Real deposits separate genuine demand from models.
Evaluate audience intelligence before inventory. Franchises that know their specific market activate effectively.
Structure deals for what you'll get before tip-off. Multi-year partnerships need activation plans starting day one.
When Founding Deals Arrive Before the First Game
The WNBA expansion wave creates a commercial situation most Fortune 500 executives haven't faced: franchises asking for founding partnerships 2-3 years before tip-off.
No roster or team name. Not even colors. Just a market, ownership group, and pitch deck promising “you'll regret missing out.”
Brands that secured early WNBA positions before the league's breakout captured significant returns. Ally Financial became the league's first jersey patch partner in 2021—before the record-breaking 2023 season that saw attendance jump 16% and franchise valuations double. That track record generates real urgency for expansion deals.
That urgency, however, also creates its own failure model, so a brand has to do pre-launch work:
document genuine demand
build dedicated infrastructure
develop real audience intelligence
Without it, your brand won’t activate effectively regardless of market timing.
When Howard was with the Lakers, corporate decisions came easily, as partners arrived already bought in, leading to over $450 million generated in revenue.
At the Kansas City Current in 2022, she had 20 employees, and a market unaware the product existed. Two years later, the team had:
300%+ corporate partnership revenue growth
complete season ticket and premium hospitality sellout
naming rights secured for the first purpose-built women's sports venue globally
Howard has brought that same commercial model to Cleveland WNBA since she joined in August 2025, and brought the same model she used at Kansas City. Brands evaluating founding partnerships should judge franchises on what they've invested before asking for your investment.
Her core thesis: organizational behavior before revenue exists, before fans occupy seats, before a brand name needs protecting predicts how they'll show up for partners after launch more reliably than anything in a pitch deck.
Four Tests Before Investing in a New Franchise
Test 1: Where Has Ownership Invested?
Evaluation point starts with real financial commitment visible in staffing and facilities. Cleveland WNBA was initially planning on hiring and dedicating resources around summer of '26, but the CEO was aligned with fast-tracking this. They decided to hire 8 dedicated full-time team members in 2025 for a team playing its first game in 2028.
Most startups ask how few people they can get away with. Rock Entertainment Group asked what the franchise needed to succeed. A franchise running pre-launch operations on 2-3 people sharing services with other properties is signaling how seriously they'll activate your brand.
Training center renovations began before the team had an identity. "We put ourselves in the shoes of fans from different age groups and also make them feel loved and cared for," says Allison about designing the stadium.
That orientation is already visible in Cleveland WNBA's training center renovations. Security enhancements beyond what men's teams require, spaces designed for family needs, rooms for rest and recovery. All of that was committed before a dollar of revenue existed.
If actions do speak louder than words, investing in advance is a loudspeaker shouting about the trust a franchise is putting its dollars towards.
Ask any franchises looking for investment: what have you built that you didn't have to build yet?
Test 2: Is Demand Documented or Projected?
Cleveland WNBA generated 3,000 season ticket deposits within 30 hours of franchise announcement. Real people. Real money. By early 2026, that number reached 8,000. That was still with no team identity announced.
The deposit data also reveals which audience you're buying. A significant share of Cleveland WNBA depositors have no prior Rock Entertainment Group relationship. They showed up specifically for women's basketball. That's a genuinely new audience, not an extension of existing ones. Brand activation that works for Cavaliers fans won't automatically work here.
Ask franchises: what's your evidence for demand, and where does it come from?
Test 3: How Well Do They Know Their Audience?
Knowing 8,000 people want tickets is a starting point, not an activation plan. What matters for brand partners: does the franchise know what those specific people want from the brands sponsoring the team?
Howard spent months in Cleveland high schools, middle schools, and community settings before Cleveland WNBA had a commercial pitch in the market. She asked what the team should stand for, what role it should play in people's lives, what problems it should help solve.
That research showed that the Cleveland WNBA audience wants empowerment resources for young women, visible community presence from athletes and business leaders, mental health transparency, and confidence-building programming. Brands that show up credibly in wellness, confidence, or community access have clear activation lanes. Brands that can't connect their product to those themes face harder conversations once games start.
Ask any franchise: what has your community research found?
Test 4: Is the Deal Structure Built for Long-Term Success or Fast Close?
Jess Smith, Valkyrie’s president, built her founding partner roster by selecting brands that fit the platform's mission, not the ones offering the fastest checks. Howard is running the same discipline at Cleveland WNBA.
Cleveland WNBA's "Starting Five" program, five foundational partnerships at seven-figure annual commitments on multi-year terms, anchors to specific assets: two WNBA jersey patch locations (chest and abdomen) and training center entitlements built around women-specific facility renovations. Howard has three active offers and is being very intentional regarding the timing of closing any deal.
A franchise pressuring you to close fast, unable to explain specifically how it will activate your brand in the two years before tip-off, or one that is unwilling to walk through realistic expectations for a pre-launch partnership might be worth exercising some patience with. Founding partnerships that generate compounding returns are multi-year relationships that are built on fit rather than fast closes relying on FOMO.
Ask any franchise: what does activation look like in year one when there are no games?
Where the Due Diligence Points
Howard has used these four criteria twice, once to build Kansas City Current and now with Cleveland WNBA. Brands can use the same tests to evaluate which expansion franchises are worth their investment. With Toronto and Portland launching in 2026, and Detroit and Philadelphia follow by 2029-2030, the pressure to commit early will be real.
Not every expansion franchise entering by 2030 will look like Cleveland WNBA. The ones that do through meaningful pre-launch investment, documented fan demand, real audience intelligence, and honest deal structure, are where founding partnership commitments will compound.
