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So i just saw that BG and the Mercury got accosted at an airport by a f*cking bigot

https://www.espn.com/wnba/story/_/id/37842850/police-report-details-brittney-griner-incident-dallas-airport

Joe Tsai and his wife Clara have been pushing for WNBA teams to start providing chartered flights for the players. This should be the final straw, there is no reason why Britt and her teammates should be harrassed by these vile pieces of ****.

This is absolutely sickening and the dude who did this needs his ass beat. I'm so sick of people treating BG like trash, she's been through enough and she comes home to this?

The question is...who paying for dat? I'm sorry that happened, but the WNBA is already bleeding money. How are they going to afford private flights for their players?

For equity, they should also be paid the same as NBA players. NBA players get paid half their salary and half goes to the WNBA.

Lightly warned for baiting. Please no one take the bait.

I don't really want to get into the WNBA economics, because I think a lot of people post pretty disingenuously on this topic despite very few people knowing even basic knowledge about the WNBA's money situation.

I think what's more important here is security of famous people. With the WNBA becoming higher profile, security needs change. Now Brittney Griner, due to the media coverage she received over a political situation, is a bit of an outlier. She might be the 1 WNBA player that a non-basketball fans knows. She's also visibly identifiable due to her height.

Really famous people need extra security to avoid situations exactly like what befell BG. The WNBA in general is getting popular enough that more of their players will be celebrities, and you can't use non-chartered flights to transport celebrities around. The WNBA is basically aware of this problem, and if I remember correctly they were working with Griner on a solution that allowed her to take chartered flights to some games. The W charters flights for the playoffs and for some regular season games with scheduling crunches.

TGW wrote:The question is...who paying for dat? I'm sorry that happened, but the WNBA is already bleeding money. How are they going to afford private flights for their players?

I don't think any of us know enough about the operating costs of the WNBA to make statements like that. The WNBA's economics are sort of mysterious right now. People often point to a projected operating cost of $70m to run an NBA season, and an average revenue of $60m (a $10m loss per season). But these numbers that people still cite are from 2018. There's been a big flood of investment money in recent years, and revenue projections are now at around $200m. Even if you apply an assumption of generously increased operating costs, I think the W is going to publicly claim they turned profit this year. Now when private companies release financial data, they can do it however they want, and there's a lot of strategy that goes into that. There's also the bigger question of how the NBA values the WNBA in the larger overall

Most reports on WNBA economics are really surface level and don't have anymore information than what I just listed above. None of us know much about this. I think the WNBA's losses are an over-referenced subject when discussing the WNBA and you nor I have no idea what kind of flights the W can reasonably afford.

cupcakesnake wrote:

TGW wrote:The question is...who paying for dat? I'm sorry that happened, but the WNBA is already bleeding money. How are they going to afford private flights for their players?

I don't think any of us know enough about the operating costs of the WNBA to make statements like that. The WNBA's economics are sort of mysterious right now. People often point to a projected operating cost of $70m to run an NBA season, and an average revenue of $60m (a $10m loss per season). But these numbers that people still cite are from 2018. There's been a big flood of investment money in recent years, and revenue projections are now at around $200m. Even if you apply an assumption of generously increased operating costs, I think the W is going to publicly claim they turned profit this year. Now when private companies release financial data, they can do it however they want, and there's a lot of strategy that goes into that. There's also the bigger question of how the NBA values the WNBA in the larger overall

Most reports on WNBA economics are really surface level and don't have anymore information than what I just listed above. None of us know much about this. I think the WNBA's losses are an over-referenced subject when discussing the WNBA and you nor I have no idea what kind of flights the W can reasonably afford.

You're right...financials are estimates at best. I'm going off of Silver's comments that the WNBA has never turned a profit, which I do believe is accurate.

Anyway, maybe the solution is to have armed security at airport gates that separate players from other travelers. Have unarmed security on the flights themselves to ensure nothing happens in the air. That might be a more economical solution. It makes no sense to have the players travel without at the least, a security detail.

TGW wrote:

cupcakesnake wrote:

TGW wrote:The question is...who paying for dat? I'm sorry that happened, but the WNBA is already bleeding money. How are they going to afford private flights for their players?

I don't think any of us know enough about the operating costs of the WNBA to make statements like that. The WNBA's economics are sort of mysterious right now. People often point to a projected operating cost of $70m to run an NBA season, and an average revenue of $60m (a $10m loss per season). But these numbers that people still cite are from 2018. There's been a big flood of investment money in recent years, and revenue projections are now at around $200m. Even if you apply an assumption of generously increased operating costs, I think the W is going to publicly claim they turned profit this year. Now when private companies release financial data, they can do it however they want, and there's a lot of strategy that goes into that. There's also the bigger question of how the NBA values the WNBA in the larger overall

Most reports on WNBA economics are really surface level and don't have anymore information than what I just listed above. None of us know much about this. I think the WNBA's losses are an over-referenced subject when discussing the WNBA and you nor I have no idea what kind of flights the W can reasonably afford.

You're right...financials are estimates at best. I'm going off of Silver's comments that the WNBA has never turned a profit, which I do believe is accurate.

Anyway, maybe the solution is to have armed security at airport gates that separate players from other travelers. Have unarmed security on the flights themselves to ensure nothing happens in the air. That might be a more economical solution. It makes no sense to have the players travel without at the least, a security detail.

That quote is from 2018, 2 years before the WNBA entered this period of growth.

I remember hearing the WNBA had negotiated travel with Griner before this season, basically exactly for this reason. I haven't found anything on the specifics though.

Hopefully it's not a big deal going forward or they figure it out. The man who harassed her clearly did it as clearly a publicity stunt to get him a little attention. The problem is there are plenty of people out there like that haha, and Griner is currently an easy target for that.

I'll comment more later, because I'm kinda lit right now and i want to speak with a sound mind, but i frankly don't care about the cost. The WNBA has always been a long term investment and player safety needs to be apart of the cost.

Britt, and every other woman/person in the league deserve to be protected. I dunno how dudes have mothers, sisters, daughters can sit here, see this happen and think that it's okay and that nothing should be done.

I'll follow up with more sober thoughts, but this doesn't sit right with me. When i look at BG i see my sister, my cousins, my friends, my friends' daughters. This sh*t is not cool.

MrDollarBills wrote:I'll comment more later, because I'm kinda lit right now and i want to speak with a sound mind, but i frankly don't care about the cost. The WNBA has always been a long term investment and player safety needs to be apart of the cost.

Britt, and every other woman/person in the league deserve to be protected. I dunno how dudes have mothers, sisters, daughters can sit here, see this happen and think that it's okay and that nothing should be done.

I'll follow up with more sober thoughts, but this doesn't sit right with me. When i look at BG i see my sister, my cousins, my friends, my friends' daughters. This sh*t is not cool.

Yeah, I think a case can be made that you can't legitimately make people celebrities and then claim you don't have the money to protect them properly. If that's truly the case, then you don't have enough money to function. Tablestakes. Figger it out.

I'm just an old man who remembers when the NBA teams began to use charter flights. It was first used during NBA finals because of the East-coast West-coast flights. It seemed to be an advantage. Remember that few planes have enough first class seats for the tall NBA players. After a few years, teams were chartering planes on a regular basis.

Somewhere in the 1980's, a team bought their own plane which was customized for the taller average heights. That was considered a very real advantage but most owners said then and still say, "too expensive".

The point is, it took many years to see charter planes become the norm. It also took David Stern leading the NBA into prosperity -- money is everything in the sports world, don't you know?

The WNBA should be doing charters, in my opinion, but the financial issues are probably a big issue plus, I do believe the WNBA players association agreed to the current situation until 2027.

MrDollarBills wrote:I'll comment more later, because I'm kinda lit right now and i want to speak with a sound mind, but i frankly don't care about the cost. The WNBA has always been a long term investment and player safety needs to be apart of the cost.

....

This is exactly right.

In addition to the obvious and common sense safety requirements, and yes without knowing the exact operating costs of running the WNBA, the next step surely has to be chartered flights for the sake of player care.

There are so many studies and tests about the impact of various aspects of wear and tear on the pro basketball player's body and mind from B2Bs to MPG to style of play to sleep/rest management. And some of these have impacted schedule/travel changes by the league. Chartered flights so that travel is not THIRTEEN HOURS, disrupting routines and affecting player performance, is a next-step investment.



In a way this is a positive problem, by which I mean the league is growing to such a degree that WNBA requires it. I'm not explaining/phrasing this well, in a bit of a rush and will get back to it, but it's basically pressure of growing success that NBA/WNBA should be anticipating.

If you’ve got a potential situation where player safety (or general well being in the case of these long travel days) could be in jeopardy, I don’t think cost should factor in. The responsibility of the employer should be to ensure the safety of the employees. Simple as that.

“Sorry ladies, you can feel safe in your job when you make a buck” is kind of a stomach churning argument to me.

TGW wrote:The question is...who paying for dat? I'm sorry that happened, but the WNBA is already bleeding money. How are they going to afford private flights for their players?

A lot of them have been “spoiled” by their college teams travel. However most wouldn’t be getting private flights in college either if it wasn’t for title 9.