Indiana Fever to build 108,000-square-foot training facility in downtown Indianapolis

After an historic season for the Indiana Fever led by WNBA rookie sensation Caitlin Clark, Pacer Sports & Entertainment announced it would break ground on a $78 million “sports performance center” for exclusive use of the Fever in downtown Indianapolis. Up to this point, the Fever have used a practice court and training area inside Gainbridge Arena.

The Fever will still play at Gainbridge Fieldhouse but the state-of-the-art facility will serve as the go-to resource for everything else for Indiana’s players, support staff and front office. The center will have two regulation size practice courts, a strength and conditioning center, full-service kitchen and a spa center with massage, sauna, heat studio and multiple hydrotherapy pools. In total, the building will be three stories and 108,000 square feet. It will also house a Fever team store and offer experiences for Fever fans.

“With the goal of Indianapolis becoming the epicenter of women’s sports, this world-class sports performance center will be the preeminent place for players to train, recover and push their boundaries,” PS&E CEO Mel Raines said. “It’s a game changer in terms of providing the ultimate player experience and we can’t wait for our team to reap the benefits of having an exclusive and unparalleled facility designed specifically for them.”

The Fever joins a long list of WNBA franchise to have (or to have announced plans to build) a complex dedicated solely to its WNBA team. In March 2022, the Las Vegas Aces moved into a 50,000 square foot headquarters, and in April 2024, the Seattle Storm announced its “Center for Basketball Performance,” a 50,000 square foot facility. In July 2024, the Phoenix Mercury opened their 58,000 square foot practice facility, and in November, the Los Angeles Sparks announced that they would build a 40,000 square foot facility. Both Chicago and Dallas have announced plans to have their own facilities by 2026.

The Fever entered the WNBA as an expansion franchise in 2000 and drafted Tamika Catchings out of Tennessee in 2001. Indiana slowly built around Catchings, advancing to the WNBA Finals in 2009 for the first time and won its first and only WNBA title in 2012. The Fever advanced to the Finals four a third time in 2015, where it lost to Minnesota. Catchings retired after the 2016 season and with her departure, the franchise fell into irrelevance, failing to make the Finals for seven consecutive seasons from 2017 to 2023. In six of those seasons, the Fever finished last or second-to-last in the WNBA.

In 2023, after using the No. 1 pick to draft Aliyah Boston out of South Carolina, the Fever climbed to No. 10 in the WNBA and nearly tripled its win total from the season before.

In 2024, after receiving the No. 1 pick for the second WNBA Draft in a row, the Fever drafted Clark out of Iowa. Clark, like Catchings nearly 25 years before her, proved to be transformational for the franchise. In 2024, the Fever led the WNBA in attendance, averaging 17,035 fans per game. Jersey sales went up by more than 1,000 percent, and for the first time since 2016, the Fever advanced to the WNBA playoffs. Indiana lost in the first round to the Connecticut Sun, but it represented a major step forward for a franchise built around a core that had quite a bit of young talent.

This past offseason, the Fever fired first-year coach Christie Sides and brought in Sun coach Stephanie White, who had been an assistant with the Fever from 2011-14 and led the team in the 2015 and 2016 seasons.

Ticket sales have not yet been made available for the 2025 season.

“Last year, we experienced an unprecedented boom in interest and attention on women’s sports around the world, led in large part by our very own Indiana Fever,” Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett said. “Indianapolis is proud to see this significant investment from Pacers Sports & Entertainment drive further momentum in women’s basketball in our community and continue to elevate our status as a major league sports city.”

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

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