Leading finance during women’s sports’ big moment

Four-time WNBA championship team the Seattle Storm are a juggernaut of a women’s professional basketball team, boasting iconic players like Sue Bird, Breanna Stewart, and Lauren Jackson since its founding in 2000.

Last year the WNBA had some explosive growth. WNBA viewership rose to 63.2 million unique viewers, and the Seattle Storm’s viewership grew 68% in “the strongest year in franchise history,” according to the team. Total WNBA attendance was up 33% YoY, to 3.1 million.

In Forbes’s May ranking of the most valuable WNBA teams, the Storm showed up fourth, at $430 million, with revenue of $28 million.

CFO Terri Fujinaga joined the Storm as its CFO in 2024 after a career spent in public accounting, consulting, and stints as an advisor or in-house finance exec, including as CFO of a sustainable agricultural products company.

She never intended to break into professional sports finance, Fujinaga told CFO Brew, but the opportunity with the Storm was “an irresistible combination” of her favorite things: athletics, business, and community impact.

Backing. Before being named CFO, Fujinaga was an investor in the Storm. “The Storm opportunity, it first came along as a random call…the ownership group raised a minority round of fundraising to support the construction of the building that I’m sitting in right now.” Fujinaga was talking about the Climate Pledge Arena, which opened in 2021—a $930 million renovation and expansion of the former home of the NBA’s Seattle SuperSonics. It is also home to the NHL’s Seattle Kraken.

“So as life goes, some things happen by chance, and I jumped in and agreed to invest in that minority round,” Fujinaga said.

“And then because of my background in this field, I was asked to join the finance committee of the investor group, and I did that. And then when the Storm had a need to fill for a CFO, I was in a position to take a call, and I took it, and I jumped at the interim CFO role, and it didn’t take long for me to fall in love with this place.”

Business side. Fujinaga’s job now is to capitalize on the increase in viewership we mentioned above. Fujinaga, her team, and the rest of the organization are focused on the fan experience, including “supporting legacy fans and attracting new fans.” The organization is also “really focused on community.” For example, finance tracks metrics like the number of youth that the team involves and the number of organizations it impacts.

The other indicator “we track pretty carefully,” Fujinaga said, is “our partnership relationships. Our corporate partners are very important members in this ecosystem.”

Most WNBA teams have an NBA affiliate, but not Seattle; the SuperSonics relocated to Oklahoma City in 2008 and became the Thunder. “This franchise has been owned by the same ownership group for many, many years, and that ownership group has been committed since it purchased the team in 2008, has been committed to incremental growth every year,” Fujinaga said.

Not having an affiliate may sound like it’d pose a disadvantage, but being one of five independent WNBA teams “allows us to be relentlessly focused on our business,” she said.

“I think the teams who have an NBA affiliate, or shared ownership, there’s some amazing franchises in that category, and we look up to them and we learn a lot from them, and they have to spread assets and resources across teams. We don’t, and that means that we can focus on our fan experience, our partners, our community impact, the way that only a singular focus can enable,” she added.

Her experience. Since joining as CFO, Fujinaga said she feels her “diversity of experience” has made her a key voice in conversations with fellow executives and the ownership group, and that everyone’s open-mindedness has “happily encouraged [her] to continue asking dumb questions.”

“I spent a good number of years in a variety of businesses. I mean, you name it, I worked in it: software, renewable energy, I did a brokerage firm rollout, I did a company that made liquid organic fertilizer—I mean, I did a variety of things. And what I really learned during that time is how to identify the levers in any business model. Once you understand the concepts of finance, you can apply them no matter the business,” Fujinaga added.