The Toronto Tempo arrived in the WNBA amid record-breaking attendance, a historic collective bargaining agreement that dramatically restructured professional women’s basketball economics, and the weight of being the league’s newest franchise. Operating without the legacy infrastructure of established franchises, Resch and her team built the expansion organization from the ground up under extreme operational constraints.
Building an Expansion Franchise Without a Legacy Playbook
Unlike the Golden State Warriors and the Golden State Valkyries, which was a breakout success as a W expansion franchise, the Raptors and the Tempo are not linked. Resch spent a decade inside the Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment structure, an experience she leveraged alongside her CFO to strip away legacy processes. They built the Tempo from a blank slate, though discarding historical workflows also meant recreating fundamental business operations from scratch.
A newly agreed-upon collective bargaining agreement required a complete recalibration of team finances and roster construction under an unprecedented timeline. “If we didn’t have a deal done in the next couple of weeks, we probably weren’t able to have a season,” Resch noted regarding the high-stakes labor negotiations. Once ratified, the agreement compressed a standard six-month team-building window into just 16 days ahead of the expansion draft.
Navigating Transformative CBA Economics and Roster Volatility
The newly minted collective bargaining agreement represents the largest salary increase in professional sports history. Previous compensation caps limited top players to roughly $250,000 annually. Under the 2026 agreement, the minimum player salary sits at $270,000, with maximum contracts scaling upward to $1.5 million per year. This capital influx is heavily supported by the league’s exponential commercial growth, anchored by a new media rights agreement and expanded sponsorship distribution.
Teams must aggressively capture ticketing and sponsorship streams to maintain financial equilibrium. Guided by head coach Sandy Brondello—who secured multiple WNBA championships with the Phoenix Mercury and New York Liberty—the Tempo refused to treat the inaugural season as a developmental throwaway.
Despite roster instability caused by injuries—notably losing star player Brittney Sykes, affectionately called Slim, to an injury 12 games into the season—the team stayed competitive. Sykes was operating at an All-Star level alongside Marina Mabrey before going down. The squad never deployed the same starting lineup across its first 20 games, yet remained in direct contention for a postseason berth as the league paused for the All-Star break.
Addressing the Structural Deficit in Women’s Professional Sports
Behind the immediate excitement of record crowds and explosive single-game scoring performances—including a 53-point outburst by a star player—lies a systemic hurdle: physical infrastructure. Women’s sports teams rarely operate as primary tenants of their home venues or control their dedicated performance training centers. Resch pointed out that this lack of facility ownership leaves significant revenue on the table, with external organizations capturing margins generated by women’s athletics.
As the WNBA pauses for All-Star Weekend, the Toronto Tempo faces the second half of its inaugural campaign balancing local market expansion, intense playoff aspirations, and the long-term architectural challenge of securing permanent, team-controlled facilities. The startup model has delivered historic engagement, but long-term viability now rests on capturing local commercial value and bridging the infrastructure gap.
