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Toronto Announces Itself As a Bona Fide Women’s Sports Town With the Tempo’s Arrival
It almost felt like walking into a birthday party.
Groups of balloons in shades of blue, purple and white dangled overhead as fans entered Coca-Cola Coliseum in Toronto on May 8. Celebrations were to be had—the city’s new WNBA team was playing its first game, a historic moment for Toronto and Canada alike.
The Tempo are one of two expansion franchises to debut in the WNBA this year along with the Portland Fire, but are the first to reside in Canada in the league’s 30-year history (and they want to be known as Canada’s team until further notice.) A sold-out crowd of 8,210 fans filled the arena as the Tempo officially joined Toronto’s sports echelon.
The city has earned one NBA title, two World Series and 13 Stanley Cup championships in its storied sports history, but held no modern professional women’s sports teams until 2024. Now, Toronto is home to three women’s sports franchises, including the Northern Super League’s AFC Toronto, Professional Women’s Hockey League’s Sceptres and now the WNBA’s Tempo.
For the first time, professional female Canadian athletes have the opportunity to play on home soil beyond the international level for their beloved Team Canada. Grassroots efforts are in effect to establish Toronto as a destination for top women’s athletes to connect with fans, and turn those balloons into hardware.
Women’s sports are staking their claim in The Six—and making up for lost time.
Tempo general manager Monica Wright Rogers did not expect such a turnout for a court reveal.
After weeks of waiting to see whether the WNBA’s new collective bargaining agreement would be completed in time for the season to remain on schedule, lines of fans gathered in Toronto and wrapped around the Tempo’s new home arena on April 14. Fans already decked in Tempo gear were eager to finally catch a glimpse of a moment signalling that the Tempo’s debut was finally nearing.
As the covers on the court were removed and the lights lifted to reveal the design, Wright Rogers heard fans’ cheers—and among the applause, she saw tears stream down their faces.
“I was blown away,” Wright Rogers says. “It was just the court unveil, but I saw fans in the stands crying because they have been waiting for this team for so long. I’m not really able to put words to what I experienced and saw, but [it was] the emotion and passion and heaviness behind the weight that these fans have had to go through for this team.”
This was a job that Wright Rogers, a two-time WNBA champion herself as a guard with the Lynx, could not pass up. She experienced early on that Canada’s women’s basketball scene was one that could sustain a WNBA team.
“I was a college coach years before I got this job, and I had come up here to recruit many of the players while they were in high school that are now in the WNBA,” Wright Rogers says. “In seeing the talent level—there was a team of players in high school that all went to just top schools in the U.S. for Division I basketball, got scholarships—and so I said at that point I knew something was brewing and that the league would need to start thinking about expansion, and four or five years later it did.”
It is not every day that an opportunity comes around to lead a franchise from scratch in a new country. While daunting, it was just that challenge that attracted Wright Rogers, along with coach Sandy Brondello, to Toronto.
After being let go by the Liberty following a four-year tenure that brought a WNBA title to New York, Brondello suddenly had a blank slate to choose her next career step. While she expectedly had her pick of opportunities, it was the chance to make history that ultimately drew Brondello up north—and the chance to win a third title with a third franchise.
“You never know exactly how something’s going to look,” Brondello says about choosing a new team over coaching a more established roster. “I just felt that this was just the right thing at the right time for me, and once I made my decision, it was really clear and I was excited about doing it from the ground up. Although it’s been kind of crazy with the CBA, it’s been very tiring, but still rewarding, and I think we’ve done a good job in Year 1 of putting a competitive team in place.”
Both Wright Rogers and Brondello ended up doing plenty of waiting before they could make their vision for the Tempo a reality. It was not until April 3 that the Tempo had their first player, guard Julie Allemand, their first pick in the WNBA expansion draft. Just 35 days later, Brondello was standing on the sideline coaching a new group of players in front of a sold out crowd at Coca-Cola Coliseum.
While the CBA condensed the Tempo’s timeline, Brondello is thrilled at the outcome for the players and future of the league.
“Being a former player, I’m happy that the players got what they deserved,” Brondello says. “We still want to make sure we continue to grow. The league’s in good hands, and I know the product is going to keep getting better and better. It was a win for both sides. …You only get to play this game for a short time, so, you might as well get as much money as you can during that time because they work really hard to be the best that they can be.”
Even with the struggles leading into the season, Brondello says the Tempo “couldn't have done any better, even if we had a little bit more time” when it comes to building out their roster.
The Tempo roster’s core consists of Allemand, fellow guards Marina Mabrey and Brittany Sykes, along with forward Nyara Sabally and center Temi Fagbenle. Toronto also expanded its young talent by drafting UCLA champion Kiki Rice and Kentucky forward Teonni Key.
“There are still areas that we need to get better in, but, as the foundation pieces, we’ve got some really good pieces to build around them,” Brondello says. “We had a lot of players interested in coming to Toronto, so that made us feel really special because they wanted to be here, and I think that’s important because we are a whole new different country that they’re used to playing in.”
With a new team comes new shared experiences for everyone—in this case, adjusting to a new country. Other than Kia Nurse, the entire Tempo roster was born outside Canada and is having to learn about their new country as they go.
Nurse has taken on a mentor role with the group, keeping her teammates updated on Canadian things they need to know—and there’s been quite a few reminders needed.
“Cable channels have been No. 1 on the list,” Nurse said of what she has had to tell teammates. “Some road signs like, ‘Follow the road signs, not the navigation,’ have been No. 2 on the list. I’ve tried to teach them in terms of things like ketchup chips and Aero bars, coffee crisps, all of that stuff.”
All that is to say, this is a learning process for everyone, but the Tempo are embracing the challenges and navigating them together.
“The newness of it all on both sides,” Wright Rogers says of the team’s challenges. “I think once we just kind of break the ice and everyone settles in, that all will go away, but initially there was just a lot of unknown on both ends that you just can’t give straight, clear answers to. People just have to experience it to know.”
Toronto joins Seattle and the New York metropolitan area as the lone North American cities that are home to three professional women’s sports teams. That representation has been fast-moving, with the earliest team in AFC Toronto founded in April 2023 and hitting the soccer pitch two years later when Canada’s NSL began play.
As the PWHL’s Sceptres joined the fold later in August 2023 and started play in January 2024 (a turnaround so quick they didn’t have a nickname yet), the teams relied on one another to navigate what was a new landscape in Toronto. The city is known to have a passionate sports fanbase, but questions remained on where women’s sports would fit into that identity.
“There’s a lot of uncertainty,” Sceptres general manager Gina Kingsbury says. “You’re always hopeful, you’re excited, you want it to work, it has to work. But it didn’t take long where… that pressure got lifted fairly quickly.”
What allowed both the Sceptres and AFC Toronto to thrive in their inaugural seasons is collaboration amongst the clubs. Players attend each others’ matches, showing public support while the other team is engaged in its season.
That comradery is something AFC Toronto co-founder Helena Ruken cites as a crucial factor for the health of Toronto’s women’s sports ecosystem.
“We are very collaborative and we lift each other up,” Ruken says. “We don’t compete with each other for fans. There are many people in Toronto and, there’s some overlap [in fans], but really lots of people are just fans of women’s sports, primarily, and they support all the women’s teams.”
With the Tempo now joining the fold, the Sceptres and AFC Toronto have welcomed their new women’s sports roommates with open arms. Now with women’s hockey, soccer and basketball all represented, fans will be able to support women’s sports year-round in Toronto.
“It’s a year-long opportunity to have women’s sports part of your life on a daily basis,” Kingsbury says. “People realize women’s sports are here for the long haul and it’s just going to become more and more common to turn on your TV at any month of the year and watch Toronto’s women’s sports highlights, which is really, really exciting.”
The Sceptres and AFC Toronto are keeping to that promise of comradery, as players from both clubs attended the Tempo’s home opener on Friday. That synergy will continue as the Tempo continue their outreach across Toronto and Canada as a whole, with games scheduled in Vancouver and Montreal this season.
Pressure in Toronto can be intimidating from fans and media alike, but the trio of women’s sports teams are navigating it together—and know they have to earn the attention.
“You know you’ve arrived when the media treat you like any other pro sports team and expect performance from you,” Kingsbury says. “You know that you’ve got their attention and they see you as an equal, and I think that’s important.
“Those are things I think the Tempo will probably go through as well and embrace the fact of—the pressures in Toronto are real. I think the Toronto people really want their teams to be successful on and off the playing field and that just means that you’ve established yourself in the city and the people see you as a team they’re getting behind and they want to see you succeed.”
Early success has also been experienced by AFC Toronto, which won the Supporters’ Shield and reached the NSL final in its first season. With fans continuing to sell out games across all three teams, they are proving that there is a market for professional women’s sports in Toronto. Each team complements the others to create a strong presence in the city.
As Ruken puts it, “There’s room for all of us.”
“It wasn’t just a one-time moment,” Ruken says. “We’re here to stay.”
The opportunity for Canada to bolster its women’s sports presence is, in part, due to the creation of new leagues. The PWHL, which spans both the U.S. and Canada, and the NSL, a Canadian pro women’s soccer league, are both under three years old, but thriving. The PWHL recently announced upcoming expansion in Detroit, with franchises also expected to be announced in Las Vegas, Hamilton, Ontario, and a fourth city for the 2026–27 season. The NSL is also aiming to add a seventh team for next year.
Much of this is possible due to brands backing the teams and leagues, a level of support that did not always exist in Canada. The value of women’s sports is proving its worth every year, with the market in Canada doubling in the past three years alone and estimates for the market value to reach $570 million by 2030, according to a study conducted by Canadian Women & Sport.
“[The study] showed we were behind our global counterparts,” Canadian Women & Sports CEO Allison Sandmeyer-Graves says. “When we look, of course, to the United States, also to Europe, to Australia, and other places, you know, Canada has a real catching up to do, and we are catching up in a hurry. There is a large and valuable fan base for brands and other investors to reach through this. …I think it’s a reflection of progress in the women’s sports movement in this country, and a catalyst for a lot more to come.”
That trend is seeing both brands and individuals put money behind women’s sports in Canada. For example, former tennis star and current entrepreneur Serena Williams is an investor and owner of the Tempo, along with brand sponsors for the team ranging from Sephora Canada, CIBC, Tampax and more.
Still, with the increasing financial support, some brands in Canada remain hesitant to put their support behind women’s sports.
“The landscape here is evolving really fast,” Sandmeyer-Graves says. “A lot has been established in the last three years. It’s all relatively new, it’s all emerging, and so some were early adopters and some are taking a ‘wait and see’ mentality. With the arrival of the Tempo and just the amplification of women’s sport overall that it will contribute to, I’m optimistic that we will see more investors joining in as they see that the risk-reward calculation is really increasingly positive and exciting for them.”
Recently, it was announced that support is also coming from within Canada itself. In April, the Canadian government pledged $755 million to grow Canadian sports over the next five years with a focus on strengthening the roots of women’s sports in the country.
Brands and government officials alike are seeing the value in women’s sports in Canada, and it is finally earning the financial support to be a mainstay and erase the lines of risk that still reside in the minds of some.
“I believe that an investment in sport, whether it’s at the professional high performance level or the grassroots and community level, when done right, serves everyone,” Adam van Koeverden, the Secretary of State for Sport of Canada, says. “So we want to ensure that when we’re talking about professional sports, there’s a program and a project that’s going to have a positive impact on the grassroots. It’s not just about inspiring the next generation, it’s about providing them with those opportunities, and that’s a tangible thing through infrastructure, through camps, through programming, through mentorship.
“This is a pivotal moment. It’s a jumping-off point for sport in our country, and I couldn’t be more excited about where we’re at today.”
Fans of all ages piled into Coca-Cola Coliseum for the Tempo’s home opener on Friday night. The historic moment brought together young and old, from those who have waited decades to see a WNBA team in Canada to others experiencing their first professional women’s basketball game.
Just a short way from their homes, young Canadian girls were able to see the world’s best players compete. They can see beyond a television screen that a career in women’s sports is possible. The WNBA has held two preseason games and a regular-season game across Canada in the years leading up to the Tempo’s debut. But now women’s basketball is going to be a regular occurrence in the country.
That representation starts at the player level. For Wright Rogers, it was essential to have at least one Canadian player on the Tempo’s roster. They accomplished that by signing WNBA veteran Nurse to the squad.
“I think about Kia and other Canadian players and to be frank, we wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for Kia and those other Canadian players taking risks and making sacrifices to put themselves in a position to be professionals in the WNBA,” Wright Rogers says. “We ask her for help and guidance all the time because this is her world, and so we want to show up the right way, and we would be remiss not to have that as a resource on this team.”
Having grown up in Hamilton, Ontario, just about an hour drive from the Tempo’s home arena, Nurse knows the gravity that comes with a Canadian WNBA team. After not having as much access to see players like herself on a professional team and picture her career, she knows how the Tempo will impact young athletes’ lives.
“Obviously if you’ve ever seen sports fans from Toronto, they really are engaged,” Nurse said. “They are really involved, they love their team, they support them, and I think that’s a great place to start when we’re growing women’s basketball here. …It’s really exciting [for young players] to be able to have this version of what they’re going to be able to see so that they can grow into that as well.”
AFC Toronto captain Nikayla Small knows first-hand how important it is to set a standard for the next generation. She and her teammates make a point to stick around after each match to sign autographs and take photos with young fans to make connections that will last a lifetime.
“I think it’s really important,” Small says. “Us signing their jerseys or signing whatever they bring, it brings them so much happiness, and they keep on coming back because they know how good we are and how we come to take pictures with them. I just think it makes our day and it makes their day as well.”
With the introduction of the Tempo, young fans now won’t have an offseason to women’s sports in Toronto—there will be competition yearround. They can go to games knowing that professional women’s sports are the norm, and they can grow up to play on that same field, court and ice as the players who signed their jerseys.
That is something to be celebrated, but will require dedication from all involved to ensure the momentum continues. With Toronto as a model, Canada is setting an example for what women’s sports can become, and the young fans it inspires.
And that is why seeing a WNBA team in Canada brings tears to fans’ eyes.
“We are here to stay, and we’ll be here in 10 years and beyond,” Ruken says. “For all the little girls and boys, it will be completely normal to see that sports is an opportunity for them. …They will know that there is a place for them and it means so much for them to dream and for that to be totally normal, that women play sports and that people come to cheer them on and that that it’s a real business and it’s a real job that to be a professional athlete as a woman in Canada.”
More WNBA from Sports Illustrated
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