WNBA drops Single Entity

Now you don't have to be a NBA city to have a WNBA team !!!! THIS IS HUGE NEWS!!!!

 

This is not a good sign for the WNBA. It means that the NBA wasn't making any money on the league so is going to try to dump the teams off on other buyers. I will be very surprised if many teams stay in NBA ownership.

 

I agree that this is probably a bad sign for the WNBA. The teams that don't make money as stand-alone operations (most of them, I imagine) will be dumped onto gullible investors, who will then have to contend with sky-high rents charged by the former owners, the NBA arena lease-holder.

The NBA will also cut the WNBA loose of its coattails in terms of a TV deal. God knows what the women's league could charge in an open market, but I bet it ain't much. Faced with a cash crunch, the new owners relocate to smaller markets or sell to other groups in small markets. Soon, the WNBA has a profile lower than Arena Football.

It probably won't disappear altogether (unless the salary structure goes wacky) but you won't be seeing it on network TV anymore after, say, 2004.

Ahhh. It felt good to release that bit of Oliver Tse-ness

 

This is great news. It shows that the WNBA/NBA management realize that the average fan equates "single entity" with WWF (now WWE?) and pure entertainment. When will MLS learn this lesson? Peter Wilt made incredible comments in his interview (recently posted here) that MLS needs to be more exciting for fans, but juxtaposed that with his belief in the single entity?!?!?!?!?

The WNBA can now become a nice off-season cash cow for NBA franchises. Their arenas don't need to sit empty half the year, and they have a new avenue for introducing more fans to basketball. It also eliminates the WUSA/MLS split problems.

I will probably pay more attention to the WNBA, now that I know its not a contrived competition designed to make sure the owners don't lose their shirts.

 

http://www.wnba.com/news/abc_espn_020612.html

NEW YORK, June 12 -- The WNBA has reached a new agreement with ABC Sports and ESPN, Inc. to televise WNBA regular-season and playoff games and additional programming beginning in 2003. The six-year agreement extends the WNBA’s national television coverage through its 12th season.

 

Disagree. I don't see how you reach this conclusion, but people who dislike single entity tend to use anything as "evidence."

I see this as a bonus for NBA season ticket holders, who will no longer be forced to buy season tickets for both just to get their NBA seats. I don't see WNBA making much headway without the marketing machine of the NBA propping it up. But oh well.

 

Strange how the NBA has a deal with the same networks...

I wonder if they made them take the WNBA as part of the deal... hmm...

 

What are you smoking? If WNBA was sucessful, the NBA would either hold onto it or sell the teams off themselves at a profit. The fact that they are, effectively, letting them go to whoever will make an offer, means that they are giving up on the WNBA. Now maybe some of the teams will survive and some won't, but if you are a fan of a team that ends up in the hands of weak ownership or folds altogether, you won't be feeling so giddy about the fall of single entity.

 

Dude, you need to come back here and back up this assertion.

 

indeed

 

The single entity approach has been the key to the survival of MLS. Just take a look at the number of teams that have shut down in the A League over the last couple of years (at one point someone cracked the A should stand for Accordion since they contracting/expanding so much). I disagree that local ownership equals excitement. Most fans probably don't care about the ownership, but the quaility of the team on the field.

 

I'm so dumbfounded by this I don't even know how to respond.

 

The WNBA actually folded once was was given a last minute life line by the NBA. I doubt the WNBA will survive more than two more years I don't care what Stern says. As for our single entity, I feel that until DC NewYork and Chicago do not have their own stadiums, ultimately positive cash flows, we should not get rid of single entity in MLS. After that I think that we should remove it and then everyone can still own a piece of Dallas if an owner is not found like all the MLB owners own a piece of Montreal expos and cover it loses.

 

When did it fold, then not? Just curious about, well, you know, the facts surrounding this.

 

I think you're thinking of the rival woman's league, the ABL (American Basketball League) that folder a few seasons ago. Their players were absorbed into the WNBA and eventually many of the cities that had an ABL franchise got a WNBA franchise (For example, the Seattle Reign were in the ABL, folded, then the WNBA expanded with the Seattle Storm)

 

Sounds like the WNBA is in trouble once this happens. By the way, seeing the hard time MLS has had finding new investors, I wonder if the NBA is gonna have a hard time selling off these franchises. Plus, once these teams are sold to other investors, they will probably get stuck with the bad arena deals MLS has like huge rent, no concession money, no parking, etc. . If this proves true, how long will these investors stick around when they are losing money. I guess it remains to be seen.

 

Actually I think you have leagues mixed up. At one point there were two Women's pro leagues: the American Basketball League (ABL) and the WNBA. Once the WNBA got started the ABL started its decline and eventually died. (At one point the Attorney General up in Connecticutt was considering an anti-trust suit against the WNBA but dropped it.) The WNBA has been under the single-entity approach since day one.

 

You guys are great! Trying to wind me up, with your supposed support and devotion to the single entity concept. Next you'll be telling me what a great guy Bud Selig is, and how baseball's anti-trust exemption has been so great for the game.

C'mon you big kidders. Knock it off.

 

Conventional wisdom here seems to be unwinding the WNBA single entity is a bad thing, but is that really true? WNBA has a solid TV contract, teams with performance history and market data, and now is spinning off its product to the original investors to capitalize on the value created by the single entity nurturing of the league in its infancy. If you were a partner in the WNBA, isn't this the result you would want?

Doesn't MLS ultimately want to give its owners autonomy over teams with value, and isn't single entity just intended to be the feritilizer to grow the franchises into viable products?

 

At some point does the game of basketball ever enter the picture?

 

Not exactly. The goal is for the lsingle-entity league to either be profitable on its own or sell the teams itself. In this case it sounds like the NBA is just giving the WNBA teams to the local owners for them to do with as they can.

 

Are you sure about that? Don't most MLS teams have an investor/operator with a personal interest in that team's performance? Wouldn't the I/O be the "owner" of the team if MLS unwound its single entity, just as the owner of the New York Knicks would get the New York Liberty as its I/O when the league unwinds? How could MLS sell, for example, the Revolution to someone other than the Kraft family if it unwound single entity?

 

Fixed your post.

 

There is a difference between an equity investment in the single entity (probably a limited partnership interest), and a contractual relationship with the league to operate a team. Remember, for example, that there are investors in the league who are not operators of a team. My bet is that if the league ever "breaks up" the I/O has some sort of option to purchase his own team, but not the right to have it go directly to him.

Anyways, this is a waste of space since MLS has proven, by investing millions in litigation, that it cares very much about preserving single entity. The fact that the NBA is giving up on single entity is because they do not believe they will make money through it, not because they want to empower local owners.