{"id":12699,"date":"2026-09-29T18:30:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-29T15:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/handoli.com\/index.php\/2026\/09\/29\/wnbas-valkyries-turned-a-50-million-expansion-fee-into-a-1-billion-franchise-it-started-by-telling-sponsors-to-wait\/"},"modified":"2026-09-29T18:30:00","modified_gmt":"2026-09-29T15:30:00","slug":"wnbas-valkyries-turned-a-50-million-expansion-fee-into-a-1-billion-franchise-it-started-by-telling-sponsors-to-wait","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/handoli.com\/index.php\/2026\/09\/29\/wnbas-valkyries-turned-a-50-million-expansion-fee-into-a-1-billion-franchise-it-started-by-telling-sponsors-to-wait\/","title":{"rendered":"WNBA\u2019s Valkyries Turned a $50 Million Expansion Fee Into a $1 Billion Franchise. It Started by Telling Sponsors to Wait."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Jess Smith had five months, no roster, and no players. What she built first was a story.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jess Smith had five months, no roster, and no players. What she built first was a story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12700,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-explore"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/handoli.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/handoli.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/handoli.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/handoli.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/handoli.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12699"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/handoli.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12699\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/handoli.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/handoli.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/handoli.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/handoli.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}