Seattle Sports have been a vital part of the city since its inception. From the rainy shores of Elliott Bay, we've been hitting balls and keeping score for well over a century. Sometimes, we even win.

1903  The Rainiers (Sort Of)

The Seattle Siwashes were founding members of the Pacific Coast League. The nickname didn’t last long. Over the ensuing decades, the baseball club would also go by the Purple Sox, the Turks, and, ultimately, thanks to beer magnate Emil Sick, the Rainiers. 

1917  Raise the Cup

The Seattle Metropolitans (great name, obviously) were the first team from the United States to win the Stanley Cup, an auspicious beginning for pro sports titles in Seattle. But it was not a predictive one. The Metropolitans lasted only a decade. And championship trophies since have proven, uhh…scarce.

1933  Pony Express

There was a time when the most popular sports in America were baseball, boxing, and—giddy up—horse racing. When it opened in 1933, Longacres racetrack in Renton offered stunning view of Mount Rainier and the only legal gambling option in Washington state. It closed in 1992, served a couple of decades as a Boeing office park, and is now the training home of the Sounders. 

1946  Steelhead Alley

The cream and black Sunday uniforms the Mariners are wearing in 2026 are a throwback to the short-lived Steelheads of the West Coast Negro Baseball Association, a Negro Leagues offshoot cofounded by Abe Saperstein, the man behind the Harlem Globetrotters. The league lasted only one season. 

1951  Hydro-Powered

Any Seattle old-timer will tell you that our city’s most emblematic sport is, in fact, hydroplane racing. And they might even be able to tell you about hydro cups past over a few beers and pull tabs. The hydros arrived on Lake Washington as part of Seafair in 1951. They’ve returned every Seafair since, often bearing the names of local businesses like Oberto and Albert Lee. (Notice that for all the complaints our city has about the noisy Blue Angels overhead, there’s nary a word about the roaring hydros.)

1967  SuperSonic Boom

Seattle’s first major league pro sports team took the court for the first time under the shadow of the Space Needle in 1967. The SuperSonics weren’t exactly good that first season—or for the next few—but the basketball team quickly became an integral part of the city’s culture. And in 1979, they brought the Seattle its first modern championship banner. Then everybody lived happily ever after, right? Right? 

1969  Major League Baseball, Briefly

Only two years after the Sonics arrived on the scene, Seattle landed an expansion American League franchise. The Pilots played at Sick’s Stadium, formerly home to the Rainiers and Steelheads. They were then immediately stolen and moved to Milwaukee by future MLB commissioner Bud Selig. That’s called foreshadowing. 

1974  Sounders: Take One

The first golden age of soccer in Seattle came in the 1970s, when the original Sounders filled up Memorial Coliseum and Pelé was making national headlines suiting up for the New York Cosmos. The North American Soccer League would disband in 1984. But the Sounders name would remain in the hearts of Seattle fans, to be used in the 1990s and then again when the city was finally awarded a Major League Soccer franchise in 2009. 

1976 and ’77  The Kingdome Effect

Fun fact: Before Seattle got its very own multipurpose sports dome, sports advocates in town tried to suggest a floating stadium out on Elliott Bay (with monorail access, of course, and also a ferry dock). Instead, we got the Kingdome—and with it, football’s Seahawks and baseball’s Mariners in short order. The Sounders came to play there, too. It may have been dreary. It may have lacked buoyancy. It may have occasionally dropped ceiling tiles. But Seattle wouldn’t be the sports town it is without it. 

2000  Storm Rising

The 1990s were a golden age in Seattle. Payton and Kemp. The Griffey-powered Mariners. A national championship for UW football. And the rise of woman’s pro basketball. For a couple years, we had the Reign of the American Basketball League, before the ABL folded in 1998. Then in 2000, the Storm debuted in the WNBA. Soon they would draft Lauren Jackson and Sue Bird and establish an identity altogether independent of their NBA counterparts in Key Arena. Which was a good thing…

2008  Sonicsgate

…because soon, the Storm would be all alone there. In 2006, Starbucks owner Howard Schultz sold the Sonics to an Oklahoma oil baron named Clay Bennett, supposedly
because the city didn’t want to cough up the tax dollars he needed to upgrade Key Arena. Bennett soon did what everybody expected: ditched the lease and took the team to Oklahoma City. Schultz himself finally announced his departure from Seattle after the passage of a state income tax this year.

2013  Reign FC

The Seattle Reign launched in 2013 as one of the founding teams in the new National Women’s Soccer League. Since then, they have played in four different stadiums (including a sojourn in Tacoma), and under three different ownership groups. And yet they have managed to gain traction every year, to platform international superstars like Megan Rapinoe, and to win three shields for having the league’s best regular-season record. 

2021  Seattle Kraken

It was easy to be skeptical about the NHL coming to Seattle. Even easier when the team announced that it would be called the Kraken. Thankfully, the Kraken realized early on that their job wasn’t to fill the void left by the Sonics but to create something new, with flying salmon, a truly weird mascot, and a genuine commitment to community outreach. In their second season, they even hooked a playoff berth

2025  Seattle Torrent

The Torrent’s first home game attracted an audience of more than 16,000 fans—the biggest crowd for a women’s hockey game in the history of the United States. And the vibes might just be the best in the history of the United States, too. It turns out Seattle is a hockey town now.