Their franchise will debut in the WNBA’s 30th season, a transformational point in league history. Its players just secured a landmark new collective bargaining agreement featuring significant boosts in compensation, revenue sharing, and a US$7-million team salary cap.
The 8,000-seat arena situated at Exhibition Place is becoming a hot spot for women’s sports. The Tempo join the Toronto Sceptres of the Professional Women’s Hockey League in making it home.
“The building has a great intimacy to it,” said Don Boyle, chief executive officer of Exhibition Place. “The energy is great. Being at the first Sceptres games, it felt like a bonding experience for people, so many girls and women in hockey jackets and sweaters. It’s going to work really well for basketball, too.”
Coca-Cola Coliseum is home to the Toronto Tempo for basketball, and the Sceptres for PWHL hockey.Sammy Kogan and Galit Rodan/The Globe and Mail
The Tempo’s custom-court is the most front-facing of the upgrades this new team needed to make within the stadium they lease from Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment before WNBA basketball arrives in Toronto.
The team got creative with some of the floor seating behind the baskets, adding in some booth-style tables.
Many of the team’s changes to the building – made over the past 18 months – are in areas fans won’t see. Like the specially built climate-controlled storage system for the basketball court, to keep the flooring tucked away while disassembled during hockey games at Coca-Cola Coliseum.
The Tempo also had their own state-of-the art locker room created to make the arena home, designed by women for women. Plus, their own weight room, too. They added another team room that will adapt for player needs – as a nursing room if required, a nail salon, or for other recovery and wellness needs. The team said its new locker room sets a new benchmark for athlete-first design in women’s pro sports.
Monica Wright Rogers, left, is the Tempo's general manager, and Teresa Resch is the team's president.Cole Burston/The Canadian Press
“Shout out to our president, Teresa Resch – it was her brainchild and she just did a phenomenal job of turning something that was an idea into reality,” said Tempo general manager Monica Wright Rogers. “To see it in person blows me away. ... It has taken so much to get the actual players here in a Tempo jersey, so having them in that space, enjoying it for the first time, there’s really no words to express the emotion.”
A new industrial kitchen was added ahead of the Tempo’s debut, where food will be prepared for players and to service the suites. Telecommunications in the building needed to be upgraded as well to enable the WNBA game broadcasts.
Those who use the stadium, including MLSE and the Royal Winter Fair, spared some of their operational space to make sure the Tempo could have what they needed to move in. “Everybody came together and said, ‘We’re going to make space to make this happen. It’s the right thing to do,’” said Boyle. “So everybody gave up some space.”
Fast forward to 2012, and the Coliseum hosted the Lingerie Football League’s Toronto Triumph; a lacklustre franchise that lasted a single season.
Canadian women had golden moments on the grounds at the 2015 Pan Am Games. The Canadian women’s rugby sevens team became champs at BMO Field, while inside the coliseum, gymnast Ellie Black and trampolinist Rosie McLennan each earned gold medals.
The grounds have hosted the Canadian women’s soccer team many times, including a rematch with the U.S. after their bronze medal run at the 2012 London Olympics. Then BMO Field also played host to Toronto’s first-ever pro women’s soccer match, when the Northern Super League came into existence in April, 2025. It hosted its inaugural final as well, when the Vancouver Rise celebrated the league’s first championship.
During the coming Tempo games, Russell Kovshoff will be the director of gameday presentation, overseeing the entertainment aspects inside the arena. He’s produced live in-game elements for teams, including the Toronto Raptors, Saskatchewan Roughriders, Los Angeles Clippers and San Francisco 49ers. Colleagues were pressing the Toronto native to return home and go after the Tempo opportunity.
“You have an opportunity to create something for the first time ever from a blank canvas,” said Kovshoff. “How we develop our traditions, to how we create our chants and the music you hear at certain moments to the look and feel of our court, it will have a unique feeling.”
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