{"id":27422,"date":"2025-06-30T15:18:08","date_gmt":"2025-06-30T15:18:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/27422\/"},"modified":"2025-06-30T15:18:08","modified_gmt":"2025-06-30T15:18:08","slug":"golden-state-valkyries-owner-joe-lacob-blown-away-by-early-excitement-for-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/27422\/","title":{"rendered":"Golden State Valkyries owner Joe Lacob ‘blown away’ by early excitement for team"},"content":{"rendered":"

WNBA Golden State Valkyries owner Joe Lacob \u201ccan\u2019t contain his excitement over his new team\u201d during its inaugural season, according to Ann Killion of the S.F. CHRONICLE. Lacob said he is \u201cblown away\u201d by the excitement surrounding the team and it \u201cdoes exceed\u201d his expectations. He added Chase Center is seeing a \u201cgreat atmosphere\u201d for Valkyries games that is \u201calmost better than a Warriors game.\u201d Lacob: \u201cIt\u2019s different. I\u2019m not gonna say it\u2019s better, but it\u2019s almost better. It\u2019s really loud. The energy is palpable. I love it. I think it\u2019s fantastic.\u201d Killion wrote the Valkyries are the \u201csensation of the summer.\u201d They have \u201csold out every one of their nine home games,\u201d including Friday\u2019s 83-78 win over the Chicago Sky, \u201cdrawing crowds of 18,000-plus.\u201d They are \u201cshockingly competitive\u201d having won nine games and \u201cplayed the league\u2019s best teams down to the wire.\u201d They are a \u201cmarketing sensation, with their lavender and black seen everywhere around the Bay Area.\u201d Lacob said, \u201cIt\u2019s been a pretty unbelievable execution of a plan.\u201d Killion noted Sportico recently valued the Valkyries at $500M, \u201c10 times what Lacob and Peter Guber paid for the expansion team\u2019s rights 20 months ago.\u201d Lacob said, \u201cIt may seem like a very large number to people but it\u2019s not surprising to me.\u201d He added, \u201cWhat matters to me is for the league, all the teams, to really execute. We\u2019re raising the bar. And the whole league is going to have to execute. I don\u2019t want to seem like we\u2019re the grand masters or something, but there\u2019s a bit of a blueprint being created here\u201d (S.F. CHRONICLE, 6\/27<\/a>). <\/p>\n

IMPORTANT DECISIONS<\/b>: Valkyries President Jess Smith said that the decision on the team\u2019s colors was \u201cthe most important decision we made\u201d between the franchise\u2019s birth in October 2023 and brand launch in May 2024. In S.F., Ron Kroichick noted Smith and her front-office colleagues \u201cstudied the color schemes of the 12 other WNBA teams, and pondered the precedent of women\u2019s sports franchises (typically soccer) often mirroring the colors of men\u2019s teams in the same market.\u201d So, the Valkyries \u201cwent bold: violet and black, with deep gold in reserve.\u201d The blend, and \u201cespecially the violet, was an instant hit.\u201d Smith said that in the four months after announcing the team name, logo and colors, the Valkyries \u201csold merchandise in all 50 states and 70 countries.\u201d Revenue from 2024 merchandise sales, \u201cbefore the team played a game or even put together its inaugural roster, exceeded what any other WNBA team sold in 2023.\u201d Smith said that this year, the Valkyries \u201calready are \u2018competing for No. 1\u2019 in the league in merchandise sales.\u201d A source said that the Valkyries \u201csold about $300,000 worth of merchandise at Chase Center on opening night and are averaging about $200,000 per home game\u201d (S.F. CHRONICLE, 6\/27<\/a>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WNBA Golden State Valkyries owner Joe Lacob \u201ccan\u2019t contain his excitement over his new team\u201d during its inaugural…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":27423,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[1339,62,67,132,68,232,1707],"class_list":{"0":"post-27422","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wnba","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us","13":"tag-wnba","14":"tag-womens-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27422\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}