At this meeting it was decided to approach three Victorian teams (St Kilda, CYMS and Nunawading) with the idea of forming a home and away Interstate Competition.

The six teams' delegates all met and confirmed the new League at the Town and Country Motel in Sydney during the 1980 Australian Club Championships.

There was also much excitement with the formation of the Men's National League in 1979 and the women felt that one of the best ways to develop the game was to provide more opportunities for the best players and clubs to play against each other more regularly.

The NSW based clubs of Bankstown and Sutherland were not happy to be left out due to costs and offered to pay their own way to Melbourne and Adelaide where they would play each team once for double points.

The nine teams in the inaugural season of the league were: AIS, Bankstown Bruins, Catholic Young Men's Society (CYMS), Melbourne Telstars, Noarlunga Tigers, North Adelaide Rockets, St. Kilda Saints, Sutherland Sharks and West Adelaide Bearcats.

Ogden became the national league's first dual Most Valuable Player award winner when she took the individual trophy in 1982 (the first season it was presented) and again in 1983.

In 1983, Nunawading Spectres led by Robyn Maher easily defeated St. Kilda and went on to win nine WNBL titles during the next 12 years.

With the NBL finally riding the crest of a sudden wave of popularity, media interest in the women's league also was on the increase.

Double header matches with the men's NBL and with South East Basketball League games – a secondary men's interstate competition – pushed the women's game before a wider spectator audience unfamiliar with the quality of women's basketball.

Following the success of the Seoul Olympics, the WNBL was ready to enter a new era and appointed Lyn Palmer in the newly created full-time general manager position.

Lyn Palmer, who had just retired after a distinguished playing career with St. Kilda, Nunawading and Coburg, was looking for a change whilst her husband Bill was general manager of the men's NBL.

In 1989, the WNBL gained its first sponsorship in Pony, one of Australia's leading sporting apparel companies at the time for $258,000 and ABC agreed to cover the finals series.

The pressure was now on to ensure that women's basketball gained a profile in the country, and in 1993, the WNBL teams agreed to contribute some money to enable the game to be televised on a weekly basis by ABC.

The ABC televised weekly WNBL games and broadcast the 1994 Women's World Championships held in Australia, this provided women's basketball with the type of profile required to help secure significant sponsorship enabling the League to reduce the travel pool and to continue to build on the WNBL Brand.

[2] Bendigo brought excellent community support into the league, whilst Christchurch had a number of the New Zealand Tall Ferns on their roster to begin.

With home advantage being awarded to the highest remaining seed, the winner of the three-game grand final series is crowned as WNBL champion.

The WNBL has seen the development of famous Opals such as Robyn Maher, Michele Timms, Karen Dalton, Rachael Sporn, Shelley Sandie, Julie Nykiel, Jenny Whittle, Lauren Jackson and Penny Taylor, all of whom have represented Australia with distinction and been key performers, season after season, for their clubs.

This is possible because the WNBA conducts its season in the Northern Hemisphere summer, which is the off-season for most basketball leagues throughout the world, including the WNBL.