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When the WNBA awarded the Bay Area an expansion team in 2023, the franchise had no name, no colors, no roster and no fans. Two years later, the Golden State Valkyries had sold out every home game of their first season, set league attendance records, and built a season-ticket waiting list. The executive who led that build, team President Jess Smith, is the inaugural recipient of the Sports Innovator of the Year award at the Bay Area Sports Business Awards.

Presented by Santa Clara University's Leavey School of Business in partnership with the San Francisco Chronicle, the new annual awards honor the people and organizations shaping the region's sports economy. The Sports Innovator of the Year award recognizes an individual or organization that has reimagined what is possible in sports, whether through analytics, fan experience, or technology that opens the game to more people. Like every award in the program, it carries no cash prize; instead, it is tied to a donation to a charity chosen in the recipient's honor or to a scholarship fund for Leavey's MS in Sports Business program. Smith and the rest of the inaugural class will be honored at an awards gala in San Francisco on November 9.

Recipients were selected by a finalist judging panel that included eight Bay Area sports leaders: Billy Beane, senior advisor and former general manager of the Athletics; Brandi Chastain, co-founder of Bay FC, three-time Olympian and two-time FIFA Women's World Cup champion; Stu Jackson, commissioner of the West Coast Conference; Tom Kelley, global general manager of Jordan Brand Golf at Nike; Ann Killion, columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle; Heather Owen, director of athletics at Santa Clara University; Bill Schlough, chief information officer of the San Francisco Giants; and Kerri Walsh Jennings, five-time Olympian and founding owner and chief impact officer of the NorCal Rumble.

"Innovation isn't only about new technology. It's about seeing an opportunity others have underestimated and building something entirely new to meet it," said Ravi Bapna, dean of the Leavey School of Business. "Jess Smith took an expansion franchise with no name, no roster and no history and, in just over two years, turned it into a record-setting, billion-dollar franchise. That is exactly the kind of bold, community-centered innovation this award was created to celebrate, and it's a powerful example for the next generation of sports business leaders."

A new playbook for the business of women's sports

What sets Smith's work apart is not any single record but the model behind them. Expansion teams are traditionally treated as long-term projects, expected to lose money and struggle for fans while they find their footing. Smith ran the Valkyries like a startup whose fan base was already waiting: build the community first, sign partners who invest in that community rather than simply buying visibility, and let demand prove the business.

The approach reached fans the Bay Area sports scene had not reached before, and it built demand so deliberately that the team's challenge today is not filling seats but managing a waitlist. It is a playbook Smith developed over a career spent building teams and brands from the ground up.

From the minor leagues to a startup mindset

Smith's path began close to home in Auburn, New York, where her first job in sports was with the Auburn Doubledays, a short-season Single-A baseball club. After earning a journalism degree from SUNY Oswego and a Master of Sports Administration from Ohio University, she spent 2008 to 2015 in ticketing and sponsorship with the Oakland Athletics, then held roles with the NHL's Columbus Blue Jackets and as vice president of sponsorship for MLS's San Jose Earthquakes.

In 2020 she joined the NWSL's Angel City FC as head of revenue from the club's inception. There she helped build a model in which 10% of sponsorship revenue funded local community initiatives, launched a fund that shared ticket revenue with players who promoted sales, and drove season-ticket renewals above 90%. The work earned her a spot on Sports Business Journal's 2023 Forty Under 40 list.

Building a brand before there was a team

In October 2023, the Warriors' ownership group was awarded the WNBA's first expansion franchise since 2008 for a $50 million fee, and in February 2024 it hired Smith as president. She brought the Angel City approach with her: build the community first and let demand prove the business. Fans helped shape the identity through surveys and social media, and the Valkyries name, drawn from Norse mythology's warrior women and a deliberate echo of the Warriors, debuted in May 2024 alongside a signature Valkyrie Violet.

By the day of the brand reveal, more than 7,500 fans had placed season-ticket deposits, a full year before the first game. The team based its operations in Oakland while playing at San Francisco's Chase Center, giving it roots on both sides of the bay.

A first season for the record books

Demand arrived early. The Valkyries passed 20,000 season-ticket deposits in 2024, the most in women's sports history, and became the first WNBA team to sell 10,000 season tickets, before playing a single game. Fewer than 5% of those buyers also held Warriors season tickets, a sign the team had found a new audience rather than borrowing an existing one.

In 2025, the Valkyries sold out all 22 regular-season home games at Chase Center, setting WNBA records for average (18,064) and total (397,408) attendance. On the court, they won 23 games, an expansion-team record, and became the first expansion franchise to reach the playoffs in its debut season. Heading into 2026, they became the first expansion team to surpass 12,000 season ticket holders, sold out of season tickets, and launched a waitlist for fans hoping to get in.

From a $50 million fee to a $1 billion franchise

By 2026, CNBC valued the Valkyries at $1 billion, making them the first WNBA franchise to reach that mark, 20 times the expansion fee paid three years earlier. Smith's sponsorship model helped get there. Founding partners including JPMorgan Chase, Kaiser Permanente, PG&E, Sephora, United Airlines and Waymo committed to community impact as part of their investment, from youth-sports donations tied to jersey sales to grants for every Valkyries free throw made.

In October 2025, the WNBA named Smith the first winner of its Business Executive Leadership Award, which honors a team president for driving business transformation across people and culture, revenue, stakeholder engagement and innovation.

Year two and beyond

The momentum has carried into year two. The Valkyries clinched their second straight playoff berth in August 2026, and the WNBA chose Chase Center to host the 2027 All-Star Game on July 31, 2027, the first time the event will come to the Bay Area.

For a region that has spent 2026 hosting the Super Bowl and the FIFA World Cup, the Valkyries are a reminder that some of the Bay Area's biggest sports stories are being written from scratch.