Tennis legend Serena Williams is now a part of the possession group of the Toronto Tempo, marking a major second for girls’s skilled sports activities. The Toronto Tempo is ready to kick off their inaugural WNBA season in 2026 and her involvement will assist safe the longevity, success and influence the staff.
There has by no means been a greater and extra thrilling time to be a fan, advocate and researcher of girls’s skilled sports activities. Momentum continues to construct towards the final word purpose of reaching fairness in sports activities, and it’s clear that actual progress is being made.
Again in 2023, I attended the primary WNBA exhibition recreation in Canada at Scotiabank Area. The overwhelming assist and enthusiasm made it clear that Toronto was able to embrace and assist girls’s skilled sports activities. Quick ahead three years, and that imaginative and prescient is quick turning into a actuality.
Ladies’s skilled sports activities are at an all-time excessive. Canada’s first skilled girls’s soccer league set to start its inaugural season in April, the WNBA continues to increase and the Skilled Ladies’s Hockey League retains setting attendance data.
Throughout the board, media protection is skyrocketing for girls’s sports activities. Alternatives for girls and ladies in sport have by no means been better. All this and Williams’ funding within the Toronto Tempo is a becoming milestone to rejoice throughout Ladies’s Historical past Month.
A brand new period for girls’s sports activities
Williams is a trailblazer and broadly thought-about one of many biggest tennis gamers of all time. She dominated tennis for years, made historical past and broke obstacles, all whereas proudly being herself within the face of discrimination, blatant double requirements and fixed ridicule.
She stands for instance of excellence and perseverance in girls’s sports activities and social justice.
Williams is a task mannequin for a lot of Black girls and ladies, athletes and non-athletes alike. Her new function as a part-owner of the Toronto Tempo holds simply as a lot significance as her ground-breaking profession in tennis. Now, she is as soon as once more paving the best way by demonstrating how girls, significantly Black girls, can break into management positions in skilled sports activities.
Williams highlighted the importance of her new function, stating:
“This moment is not just about basketball. It is about showcasing the true value and potential of female athletes. I have always said that women’s sports are an incredible investment opportunity.”
Her dedication to advancing girls’s sports activities is nothing new. Williams can be a founding proprietor of the Nationwide Ladies’s Soccer League’s Angel Metropolis FC. The WNBA, and different sports activities leagues, want extra girls like Williams in possession and government positions to drive actual change.
Regardless of the progress made towards fairness in girls’s skilled sports activities, there’s nonetheless a staggering distinction in pay and illustration in management roles.
Coco Gauff indicators autographs as she walks off centre court docket after her match towards Sofia Kenin on the Miami Open tennis event on March 20, 2025, in Miami Gardens, Fla.
(AP Picture/Lynne Sladky)
A obtrusive instance is tennis star Coco Gauff, the highest-paid girl athlete of 2024, who didn’t even make it into the highest 100 highest-paid athletes. This highlights the persistent hole in earnings and wish for continued advocacy for pay fairness in skilled sports activities.
Black girls in sport management
Black girls stay vastly underrepresented in sports activities management roles, together with as homeowners, CEOs, coaches and presidents. Within the WNBA, the place 70 per cent of the gamers are Black, there’s presently just one Black girl head coach.
There’s a clear want for significant illustration in any respect ranges of the sport. Management should replicate the variety of the athletes on the court docket.
For the WNBA and different girls’s skilled sports activities leagues to realize fairness, Black girls have to be higher represented in management positions. The main focus must transcend token illustration towards true illustration to encourage future generations of younger Black ladies.
Monica Wright Rogers attends an occasion saying her as common supervisor of the WNBA’s Toronto Tempo staff in Toronto on Feb. 20, 2025.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Cole Burston
Serena Williams’ funding within the Toronto Tempo is a step in the fitting path. Equally important is the appointment of Monica Wright Rogers, a former collegiate participant and skilled government, because the staff’s new common supervisor.
Collectively, Williams and Rogers symbolize the progress being made towards higher illustration of Black girls in management roles.
Elevating girls’s sports activities
The struggle for racial and gender equality in sports activities is much from completed. The Toronto Tempo is a enterprise first, and centring group have to be a part of its funding technique.
The Tempo should prioritize constructing connections with grassroots organizations and guarantee racialized women and girls have entry to alternatives in teaching, group areas and constructing life-sports synergy abilities.
I’ve at all times believed grassroots organizations are the beating coronary heart of sports activities, laying the inspiration for the subsequent technology of athletes and function fashions. With out them, many younger ladies would by no means get the prospect to see themselves within the recreation. Two organizations which are group development-focused are Woman Ballers Centre and Black Woman Hockey Membership.
The Tempo should reject the notion that success and fairness in sports activities may be represented by only one story. Whereas Williams’ journey is undeniably inspiring, it can’t be the only narrative that defines progress in girls’s sports activities. As a substitute, a large number of tales, significantly these of Black and racialized girls throughout all ranges of sport, have to be uplifted.
Investing in girls’s sports activities isn’t simply the fitting factor to do, however can be useful for society as an entire. Ladies athletes have constantly confirmed they deserve skilled sports activities leagues, pay fairness, endorsement offers, equal media protection and higher sporting amenities. Supporting this motion is the fitting path for the Tempo.
Williams’ expertise and dedication to girls’s sports activities make her a really perfect match for possession. Toronto followers are prepared, and there’s little doubt the primary Tempo video games might be offered out. I, for one, am excited to attend the inaugural recreation in 2026. Let’s go Tempo!
