Cleveland's WNBA expansion team will be called the Sirens. The franchise unveiled the name Tuesday at Rocket Arena and will begin play in 2028.
Cleveland's WNBA expansion team will be called the Sirens. The franchise unveiled the name Tuesday morning at Rocket Arena and begins play in the WNBA in 2028.
"The Cleveland Sirens are sharp, unapologetic, fearless and relentless, representative of this region, our Great Lake and the future of our city and women's basketball," president of business operations Allison Howard said in a news release.
Cleveland was awarded an expansion franchise in June 2025 alongside Detroit and Philadelphia, which enter the league in 2029 and 2030. The Sirens will be the WNBA's 16th team. Toronto and Portland debuted this season, and Golden State entered in 2025 as the first expansion team since 2008.
Rock Entertainment Group owns the team and also operates the Cavaliers, the Cleveland Charge, and the Cleveland Monsters. Nic Barlage is the chief executive officer. Home games will be played at Rocket Arena, which seats 19,432.
The city's first WNBA team, the Cleveland Rockers, was one of eight original franchises and played from 1997 to 2003. Ownership chose not to revive that name. Per Howard, the Sirens will not absorb the Rockers' history and the two will exist as separate statistical entities. Former Rockers players attended Tuesday's launch, and the organization plans an alumni program.
Selecting the name took 13 months and involved market research, surveys, and thousands of conversations with the community, Howard told Sabreena Merchant of The Athletic. Howard said her group started from Lake Erie, which no other major-league team in Ohio has built an identity around.
"The design of the siren, she is moving forward, she is progressive," Howard told Merchant. "That was also intentional because we believe the WNBA is moving forward, we believe women's sports is moving forward, and we believe Northeast Ohio is moving forward."
The organization teased the reveal with the phrase "Hear the Call." The logo shows the siren in motion beneath the wordmark, with accents on either side meant to resemble sound waves. The blue palette follows the gradient of Lake Erie from the depths to the surface and carries over the color the Rockers wore.
The Sirens will take over a 55,000-square-foot performance center in Independence that the Cavaliers currently use. The building is being converted for the Sirens as the NBA club moves into a new downtown facility along the Cuyahoga River.
Howard was hired in August 2025. She remained executive vice president and chief commercial officer of Rock Entertainment Group and the Cavaliers through the 2025-26 NBA season before moving into the WNBA role full time.
Among the partnerships the franchise has signed is one with Cleveland Clinic that includes research specific to female athletes.
The Professional Women's Hockey League also has a team called the Sirens, in New York, whose name refers to the sound that follows a goal. Howard said the two organizations discussed the overlap and that the difference in sport, market, and entity resolved it. Howard said she would welcome a collaboration with the PWHL club.
Rock Entertainment Group is taking $28 general admission deposits, a figure tied to the 2028 launch. The deposits place fans on a priority list for seat selection, ordered by when each payment was made.
A Sirens Fan Fest is scheduled for Saturday at Edgewater Beach from noon to 5 p.m.
