Even before Toronto was awarded an WNBA franchise, Geoff Molson wanted to get into the business of women’s basketball.
The co-owner of the Montreal Canadiens and Larry Tanenbaum, co-owner of the Toronto Maple Leafs, had discussed the possibility of bringing the WNBA to Canada years ago. When Tanenbaum’s Kilmer Group had its bid for a team approved in May of 2024, Molson was one of the first people he called.
“Even though we compete on the ice, we’re very close with Larry Tanenbaum and the MLSE organization,” Molson told The Canadian Press. “We talked about the WNBA and how it’s performing and growing and how important it would be to get a team to Canada.
“Larry took the lead knowing full well that we were very interested and when he finally, got around to getting his bid approved he called me and wanted to make sure that the Montreal market was represented and so we gladly invested in this venture with the Tempo and we’re excited about it.”
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Molson and fellow Groupe CH executive France Margaret Belanger officially joined the Toronto Tempo’s ownership group on Tuesday as the WNBA team also announced it will have two of its regular-season games in Montreal in its inaugural 2026 campaign.
The Molson family owns Groupe CH, whose primary business is the NHL’s Canadiens but includes the American Hockey League’s Laval Rocket and running venues like Bell Centre in downtown Montreal.
Molson is Groupe CH’s president and chief executive officer while Belanger is its president of sports and entertainment. Kilmer Group is the majority stakeholder in the Tempo, but the ownership group also includes tennis superstar Serena Williams, comedian Lilly Singh and technology leader Sukhinder Singh Cassidy.
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Canada’s first WNBA team to be named Toronto Tempo
Molson and Belanger say basketball is very popular in Quebec and they wanted to keep the sport growing in the province.
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“We’ve seen it firsthand. We’ve organized over the years, a few pre-season games of the Raptors here,” said Belanger. “I’ll always remember, that we started the tickets sale and all those tickets for the Bell Centre, which is, you know, 21,000 people, got sold in nine minutes.
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“So there is huge interest and we try to do as much basketball here as we can. This was a unique opportunity for us to actually, not only be promoters of basketball, but also to have a part in this ownership group, which is truly fantastic.”
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Coca-Cola Coliseum at Toronto’s Exhibition Place will be the Tempo’s home arena when it begins playing in the WNBA in 2026. The team had previously announced it will also hold two regular-season games at Vancouver’s Rogers Arena.
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“It was always our intent to be Canada’s team and to play regular-season games outside of Toronto,” said Tempo team president Teresa Resch. “There’s a lot of partnership that has to work and be in place in order to make those things happen, both on the team level, the league level, as well as our hosts in the different cities.
“What’s been really encouraging is that everybody’s really excited and everybody’s really supportive of making this happen.”
That intention can be seen in the team’s name as Tempo has the same meaning in both English and French. Resch said that when team management was down to the final 12 submissions for possible names the issue of language came up.
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“What is this in French? What does this look like? How does this sound?” she said. “We liked Tempo anyway and then when it has the same meaning in French and English, we liked it even more.
“It was definitely something that was top of mind. It was not the deciding factor, but we were really excited that it could work really well (in both official languages.)”
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