What’s in store for WNBA’s new Toronto Tempo? Teresa Resch on building the team

You won’t find the title of chief hype officer as part of Teresa Resch’s impressive basketball resume, but it’s a big part of her current role. Resch is the president of the WNBA’s Toronto Tempo franchise, a position that makes her arguably the most important figure in women’s basketball for an entire country. As she helps build the Tempo from the ground up — she says she is still months away from hiring their first general manager — Resch is the front-facing voice of the franchise. Last week was a big one for her as Toronto officially unveiled its name (Tempo) and brand identity. (They had to speed things up after it leaked on the WNBA’s official website.)

Resch sat down for a 30-minute podcast interview with me this week and discussed plenty of topics that will be of interest to WNBA fans and certainly new fans of the Tempo. This is an edited version of the conversation.

We just witnessed the Golden State Valkyries conduct its expansion draft. You’ve been public about being in touch with Golden State’s management, as well as management for other WNBA teams. What were you specifically paying attention to as it related to the expansion draft and how they picked their initial roster?

You’re trying to kind of take it all in because you can’t necessarily project what our experience is going to be like next year. First off, (there will) be two teams — us and Portland.

Secondly, the entire dynamic structure of the league is going to change and will be under the new CBA. They’ll be the most epic class of free agents available, which impacts who’s available. I’m in touch with the Valkyries all the time as well as other teams in the league. It is definitely a community. They understand we all need to succeed for the league to succeed. Everybody’s very helpful answering questions.

There’s so many different ways to approach an expansion draft. Do you get talent that has value across the league so it puts you in position to get trades for the players you actually want? Do you look for players in the expansion draft that are going to be on the court for you?

Then the international space. I don’t want to say it is the Wild West but it is untapped. … Also, I thought it was interesting there were no trades. It’ll be interesting to see how free agency goes and if expansion has an impact on team structure, not only the Valkyries but the other teams in the league. What we know is that next year is going to look like no year that’s ever happened before in the league. We have to be ready for anything.

I don’t know if it’s too early to ask you this but do you have a philosophy of how you want the Toronto Tempo to play?

Way too early! Way too early! A traditional team president is probably more focused on the business than the basketball side and I might be more nontraditional because I spent the last 11 years in the front office of the Raptors.

But we don’t have a single basketball person on staff right now unless you count me. We’re talking to GM candidates and looking forward to having our finalists on board here in the next couple of months. From there, they’ll build out the team and that’s where we’ll be able to answer your question. I mean our name is Tempo, so I think we should probably be somewhat controlling of the game.

In your whiteboard somewhere, do you have a time frame as to when you want a coach to be hired?

I really want to empower my GM. I think that relationship between your GM and coach is vitally important for the success of an organization. I want them to feel comfortable in that timing and making sure that they understand what they need to get done.

I have some ideas, but we’ll talk through it and I want to make sure that they are empowered to make that decision.

What are some of the craziest team name submissions that you received?

We have a podcast where we talked about all the names that were submitted. It was really important for us in this process to be transparent. We got over 10,000 submissions, over a thousand unique names, and then you start going through them.

We had a really great episode on our podcast called “The Cutting Room Floor” and talked about the different categories and some of the names that were not right for us. It was really fun to go through that process. The ones that were interesting for me were submitting a name that already existed. Like there was a lot of people that submitted the Raptors. We’re not going to have the same team name as the NBA one in our same city. Why would we do that? So those were kind of interesting, though I don’t think they were crazy.

Being in Canada, there were a ton about weather and winter, but we play in the summer. Toronto is one of the most beautiful places to be in the world that time of year. Not only Toronto but across the country, Vancouver, Alberta, it’s gorgeous. The Canadian Rockies are gorgeous. Halifax on the East Coast, the Maritimes, they are one of the best places in the world to be. So why are we talking about a blizzard? It was a fun exercise to be part of and more than anything, it was really fun to bring our fans along for the ride.

Was no professional sports team having Tempo as a nickname notable for you? That will be unique to your franchise.

Yes. We set out to be unique. We wanted to stand apart from every other team whether it’s in Toronto or the world. What we loved about the name is it’s almost like a new category that we’ve opened up.

It’s a name that actually talks about the sport and the game that we’re playing. A lot of times a name talks about the city or the marketplace, but it doesn’t actually talk about the sport.

Some people love the name. Some people hate it. How aware are you of the social media reaction to the name?

You are interested for sure to hear how it’s received. Do we think it’s going to be all positive? No. I think that if everybody loved it, we probably did something wrong. I think the reaction means people care. It means people are paying attention. It means people are engaged. I feel really good about it.

You can go down a really dark place on social media, but also there was a lot of positivity surrounding it. I think give it time. Once you can connect with the actual game being played and a team and players and coaches, it feels different. Once you can wear merchandise, it feels different. There’s all these other things that are going to happen over the next year and the lifetime of this team that will really help shape Toronto Tempo.

Where do season tickets stand?

We’re just over 7,000 now as far as season ticket seat holder deposits. We’ll look to roll that out mid-next year. So spring, summertime, we’ll have the opportunity to convert those season ticket deposits over. Then things will go on sale for singles once the schedule is released. The schedule was released on Dec. 2 this season so we expect the same timeline next year.

What are you thinking about in terms of media coverage?

We are positioned as Canada’s team. Our focus is on the Canadian media. But what we also know is one out of every four WNBA fans in Canada is a new Canadian, which means they have an entire network of people and community support that is not within the borders of Canada.

We really believe we have the opportunity to (raise) the league and the WNBA to a global status. We carry that burden and shoulder it as an opportunity. We believe that’s one of the reasons why we were provided an expansion team and we really believe our story is much greater than the borders of this country.

As far as our relationship with the media, the one thing that we have tried to do specifically with the name and logo process is to be really transparent. Fans expect a lot from sports teams these days because the news cycle is 24 hours. A lot of times it is led by the talent themselves, the athletes. It’s not just getting information through the teams. It’s through athletes individually.

If you think about content and the things that fans gravitate towards, a lot of times it’s not even gameplay. There (are) going to be a lot of super fans who never watch a full game but that doesn’t mean they’re any less engaged. We need to be able to find channels and ways to talk to them and to make sure that they know and understand what our plan is and feel like they’re part of it as well.

How many games per season do you think would be realistic to play in other Canadian cities such as Vancouver and Montreal?

It is a WNBA decision, but I think we’ll be able to influence them somewhat depending upon how our fans show up and what it looks like.

I think there’s also a competitive balance you have to have. Those are our home games, but we’re going to be on the road. There are travel concerns, but the charters that are now instituted help a lot. We’re going to have to feel it out. It’s going to be very telling once we’re actually on the ground and how it impacts the season. We will rely on the league to make sure it’s not any sort of competitive advantage or disadvantage for the opponents that we’re playing as well. I know the demand is going to be there.

It’s going to be incredible in those marketplaces and I can’t wait for them to experience the WNBA in a regular season game.

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

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