WNBA’s TV deal will help Liberty find the eyeballs Tsais covet
Photo by Theo Wargo/Getty Images for Tribeca Festival
Everything is going well for the Liberty’s — and Nets’ — owners and the new WNBA TV deal adds to their good fortune Ever since the New York Liberty moved back to the city after being exiled to the 90-year-old Westchester County Center by James Dolan, the top priority of Joe and Clara Wu Tsai has been to get the Libs seen more ... literally. Whether it was moving many of their games to over-the-air outlets like My9 and FOX5 or setting up a Liberty Live streaming app, the hunt for fans’ eyeballs was the prize, the priority.
“For the Liberty when we first bought the team and moved them to Barclays Center, one of our original goals was to really broaden the fan base, really reach as many New Yorkers as possible” said Wu Tsai at the time the My9 deal was announced in March . “From the early days, those were the goals to make it easy for fans to discover us, be able to watch our games.”
Then, in May when predicting a billion dollar valuation for the WNBA franchise, Wu Tsai added that to get the WNBA, not just the Liberty, to its next level, the league must prioritize television viewership. As one of the most prominent WNBA leaders, her comment carried weight.
“There’s so much room for growth and WNBA viewership will take a major leap forward,” said Wu Tsai after being honored by the Harvard Business School. “More viewership will translate into more fans and more revenue. Lucrative media deals will follow as will more expansion teams, more institutional investors, more owners with an investment mentality and further globalization of the game.”
On Wednesday, she, the Liberty — and the rest of the WNBA — got a big boost in that hunt. As The Athletic’s Mike Vorkunov was first to report, the league has a big new national TV rights deal:
The WNBA’s next national media rights package has come into shape. The league is set to receive roughly $2.2 billion over the next 11 years in rights fees in its new deals — an average of $200 million a year — with an opening to earn more over that period, according to league sources briefed on the contracts.
The deal was negotiated as part of the NBA’s much larger, $76 billion rights deal, ratified at the NBA Board of Governors meeting in Las Vegas this week. Just as with the NBA, WNBA games will be carried nationally on ESPN, NBC and Amazon starting in 2025-26. Not only will the W wind up with an increase of as much as 600% in rights fees, there will now be an increase in the number of games broadcast and presumably in the quality of production. (In addition, the league is negotiating with its legacy carriers, ION and CBS Sports, that could bring them more money. That could add another $60 million a year.)
Sports Business Journal wrote while the two leagues negotiated together, the term sheets were different.
The NBA and the WNBA approached negotiations together with Disney, NBC and Amazon. However, the deal terms were determined on a stand-alone basis, sources confirmed, also noting that while Engelbert initially thought it was best to negotiate the WNBA alone, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said they would negotiate jointly.
With the growth of interest in the WNBA skyrocketing, there is also a provision that will permit negotiations to re-open after three years if the WNBA moment becomes more than that. As Vorkunov wrote of the deal,
It has also built in some measure of protection if the WNBA keeps flourishing and its rights become undervalued. There is an agreement between the league and the media partners to revisit the rights deals with good faith talks after three years that could reprice them to reflect the league’s growth.
Not everyone was happy with the out come of negotiations. The WNBPA, the players union, wondered how the valuation was reached. The players had no role in the talks.
“We look forward to hearing how the NBA arrived at a $200 million valuation... There is no excuse to undervalue the WNBA again,” said union head Terri Carmichael Jackson, suggesting the NBA had made the key decisions in negotiations.
The TV deal will lift the values of all 12 WNBA clubs and the Liberty has become the league’s most valuable at an estimated $200 million. That’s the number assigned the Libs in the sale of a minority stake to members of the Koch family. They also play in the W’s largest market and are one of the WNBA’s original teams. Moreover, at 21-4, they are also the top ranked team in the league as the WNBA’s month-long Olympic break begins, the result of an unprecedented investment.
So, the Tsais who only two years ago were fined $500,000 for providing charter flights to Liberty players, have become one of the WNBA’s most powerful players. As Kurt Badenhausen wrote in his story for Sportico, Joe Tsai isn’t just an NBA and WNBA governor. The Tsai family office was also one of a group of strategic investors who put up $75 million in early 2022 to help the league. That gives them an added leverage in a variety of league matters.
The Tsais bought the Liberty from Dolan and MSG in January 2019. According to reports at the time, little or no cash passed hands, that the Tsais merely assumed some Liberty debt and agreed to share whatever profit the team makes in the future with MSG.
WNBA’s media rights deals set league up to receive $2.2 billion over next 11 years: Sources ($) - Mike Vorkunov - The Athletic
WNBA’S $2.2B MEDIA RIGHTS DEAL MARKS 6X JUMP FOR LEAGUE ($) - Kurt Badenhausen - Sportico
Cashing in ($) - Molly Cahillane - Sports Business Journal
The WNBA’s massive media rights win, explained — Lynne Roberts talks Utah - Howard Megdal - The NEXT
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