Fran Harris knows the city of Austin quite well. It’s where she spent most of her adult life and where she won an NCAA championship as a basketball star at the University of Texas.

Now the decorated athlete and entrepreneur hopes the rising Texas city will serve as the home of the next WNBA expansion franchise.

“Austin has a well-known and longstanding appreciation for women in sports,” Harris told SB Nation in an exclusive interview. “We have always been thought leaders when it comes to supporting women’s sports.”

So Harris has spent the last few years rallying the community and preparing for a WNBA expansion bid in Austin. That bid is underway, and in turn, Austin has emerged as one of more than a dozen cities vying for WNBA expansion.

“When I decided to expand, the first thing I thought was, ‘I have to get my city ready,’” Harris said. “I wasn’t thinking, ‘Hey, let me call Cathy (Engelbert)’… I was actually thinking, I have to get Austin ready. I’ll have to see if Austin is as excited about this as I am.

Once she got into the community, she liked what she learned. There was energy and there was enthusiasm. Austin has only one professional sports team – Austin FC, a men’s professional soccer club – so a WNBA team doesn’t have to compete with many other professional sports teams. Austin also has several potential locations for new arenas.

And she identified the same energy in the city that she remembered from her playing days, when 8,000 to 10,000 fans packed the stands to watch the University of Texas women’s basketball games in the 1980s.

So she opted to move forward with the offer, confident that Austin will prioritize the franchise, something that hasn’t always been the case in the WNBA.

“I think we’re seeing now in some cities – I don’t want to name names, but most people know that some cities are being displaced, WNBA teams are being displaced or having to play somewhere else, and that’s something that the league wants to avoid,” Harris said.

What makes Fran Harris unique to WNBA ownership

Fran Harris has an unusual resume and plenty of firsthand experience with the WNBA. She has had a stellar career as a basketball player and successful entrepreneur, a combination that could put her in exclusive company for franchise ownership.

Harris famously led the University of Texas at Austin to an NCAA championship in 1986. That season — the first undefeated season in NCAA women’s basketball history — she averaged 13.8 points per game.

At the end of her collegiate career, she briefly moved abroad, playing in Italy and Switzerland. She then returned to basketball for the launch of the WNBA, serving as one of the first members of the 1997 Houston Comets who won the league’s first-ever championship.

Harris believes her experience as a former player puts her in a unique position to be an effective owner.

‘I have lived this,” she said.

Since retiring from the WNBA, Harris has served as a TV broadcaster, hosted a TV show that redesigns the interiors of people’s homes, produced a fitness show and founded a female-oriented electrolyte drink, among several other pursuits on the field of sports and entertainment. It has been called Dallas Wings Games for years, including this past WNBA season.

Photo by Bryan Bedder/Sportico via Getty Images

“This season has been magical for many reasons,” Harris said. “I feel blessed to be here, to witness and fully celebrate the growth of our game. It is a super special time in the evolution of our sport.”

Harris is often reminded of how unique her firsthand experience with women’s basketball and the WNBA is when talking to investors. There are dozens of high-profile individuals in the mix for WNBA ownership, but few have the direct knowledge and firsthand experiences that Harris has.

“When I’m talking about the why Austinand why me As we lead these efforts, it will come up,” she said. “Because I think there’s something to be said for people who own sports teams, who have a lot of money, but maybe don’t have a lot of domain knowledge about what the players are going through, what they want, what the players expect. what fans want, what fans love – all those things.”

And in addition to her career as a basketball player, Harris is confident that her experience in marketing will help a WNBA team in Austin find success, despite the initial excitement and buzz surrounding it.

She attributes a dip in excitement around the WNBA in the 2000s to a lack of marketing, pointing to the fact that the league had no marketing department in its early years.

“To market your product, you have to know what your product is,” Harris said. “You need to know who your core audience is and talk to them. And that’s it. The league didn’t do a very good job of marketing what it had.”

But Harris has had a hugely successful career in marketing. She has appeared on Shark Tank. She has successfully pitched numerous television shows and products.

Now she hopes to use that diverse background to ensure the success of a future WNBA franchise.

“I’m an entrepreneur. I started my first business when I was nine years old,” Harris said. “And again, I’m not shy about spreading the gospel, whatever I do. That’s the way we’re going to approach it in Austin.”

Other potential cities for WNBA expansion

Harris is hopeful that Austin can separate himself from the rest.

But she is also aware that the 16th WNBA bid is incredibly competitive.

The WNBA consisted of twelve teams in the 2024 season and will add three more over the next two seasons: the Golden State Valkyries in 2025 and teams in Toronto and Portland in 2026. The league is vying for a sixteenth team that will maintain parity enlarge. Everything should be finalized by 2027, and there are reportedly already more than a dozen interested candidates, including in Miami, Milwaukee, Denver, St. Louis, Charlotte and Philadelphia.

Hornets player Grant Williams has discussed bringing a team to Charlotte, Celtics star Jayson Tatum has been linked to a potential team in St. Louis, and Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes hopes to bring a team to Kansas City. These are just a few high-profile athletes linked to future WNBA expansion cities.

And while it’s certainly possible that the league will expand to more than 16 teams in the future, for now it looks like the situation will end at 16 teams.

Commissioner Cathy Engelbert has repeatedly stated that the goal would be to add a 16th team by 2026 or 2027, although nothing is guaranteed at this point. There is currently no timeline for the final offer.

Fran Harris hopes the team will be in Austin. And she’s confident she’ll be able to help build an unwavering fan base in the city she’s long called home.

“My goal for the Austin franchise is to create devout fans… fans who feel like they are part of what we are building in this community, fans who feel like I need to go to church and that there is a competition going on. On Sunday I don’t know if I’m going to church,” Harris said. “Those are the fans I want.”