The Toronto Tempo play their first regular-season home game on Friday at 7:30 p.m. ET, hosting the Washington Mystics at Coca-Cola Coliseum. [1] It is the WNBA's first home opener outside the United States in the league's 30-year history. [2]

The paper's May 6 brief on the cross-border opener at T-2 named the supply-side answer to the league's labor fight: build new buildings, not new revenue arguments. Friday is when that answer is tested by an actual ticketed crowd.

The Tempo's 44-game schedule includes home games at Bell Centre in Montreal and Rogers Arena in Vancouver, plus three at Scotiabank Arena. [3] The league has spent two years selling Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver to franchise economics models that until last year had no Canadian inputs. The on-sale-TBA notice still on the Coca-Cola Coliseum events page is a reminder that the collective bargaining agreement remains unsigned. [4]

The frame to watch is league-as-real-estate. Each new building — Toronto this year, Portland next — adds inventory the players' side can price against in the next CBA. The opener is the first time the inventory has tenants and a turnstile.

If Friday's house holds, the supply-side argument carries into the summer. If it doesn't, the league has spent two years explaining that women's basketball can sell new cities, on the night the new city had to show up.

-- AMARA OKONKWO, Lagos