An upstart professional women’s basketball league will begin play in May 2026 with at least four teams, including one each in Greensboro and Charlotte.
Jacksonville, Florida-based Zawyer Sports & Entertainment – which had a busy 2024 in North Carolina with professional hockey and baseball teams – will own the Upshot League and its four initial teams. Other teams could join before the initial tipoff in 16 months. The two other teams will be based in Savannah, Georgia, and Jacksonville, Florida, where Zawyer also has other professional sports teams.
Greensboro’s team will play at the Novant Health Fieldhouse, also home to the Greensboro Swarm, the men’s G League basketball team affiliated with the NBA’s Charlotte Hornets. Charlotte’s team will play at Bojangles Coliseum, also home to minor league hockey’s Charlotte Checkers. Neither team has a name yet. Zawyer will hold a contest to allow fans to name the teams during their first year of play.
The teams will play 40 games, evenly divided between home and away. Single-game tickets will be in the $15 to $18 range, and deposits on season tickets are $44, according to Zawyer officials. Teams will spend the next few months hiring coaches and staff. Zawyer put the teams where it already has a footprint so that established teams can help organize the new teams, says Alex Reed, a spokesman for Zawyers.
The WNBA’s Charlotte Sting folded in January 2007, but women’s professional sports has continued to ride a popularity wave, especially in World Cup soccer and women’s college and professional basketball. Women’s sports passed the $1 billion in revenue mark for the first time last year. The WNBA, which had not expanded since the Atlanta Dream joined in 2008, will grow from 12 to 15 teams by 2026.
The Upshot League has no affiliation with the WNBA, but inaugural Commissioner Donna Orender says it will not be a minor league. “We’re calling it the opportunity league. The quality of talent is going to be incredible.”
Orender, a former All-Star in the former Women’s Basketball League, was the second president of the WNBA for six years, leaving in 2010. Before then, she was a senior vice president for almost 18 years on the PGA Tour.
Women’s basketball has more talent than the WNBA can handle, says Orender. She says over the last three years, the 12 existing WNBA teams have drafted three players each, for a total of 108 players over three years. Only 20 players have made WNBA rosters, she says.
The Upshot League will give more women a chance to play professional basketball, while also providing host cities a chance to support a team. The inaugural four teams will each have 11 players – which goes back to the $44 deposit for season tickets.
Orender says the teams will put on a good show.
“We will uphold our promise to deliver exciting entertainment and experiences brought to you by elite, phenomenal athletes,” says Orender.
Investment in the league has come from two of the greatest women basketball players of all time: Cheryl Miller and Ann Meyers Drysdale, both in the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame. Other investors include: former WBA boxing champion Seniesa Estrada, former University of Florida player Patric Young, actress Annie Q. and film producer Chris Robert.
Zawyer acquired hockey’s Charlotte Checkers, which plays in the NHL-affiliated American Hockey League in July and the Gastonia Baseball Club, now known as the Gastonia Ghost Peppers, in February 2024. The Ghost Peppers play in the independent Atlantic League of Professional Baseball.
Zawyer’s Greensboro Gargoyles will begin play in the 30-team developmental East Coast Hockey League in October. Zawyer Sports & Entertainment also owns, manages, and operates the Jacksonville Icemen, Savannah Ghost Pirates, 32 Degrees Marketing and Community First Igloo. Zawyer Sports consults on operations for the Tahoe Knight Monsters and Ghost Pirates Ice.