shangrila wrote:Doctor MJ wrote:shangrila wrote:I think Expansion talk is putting the cart before the horse.
Get what you have now in a sustainable place before trying to do more.
What’s the horse?
What specific threshold are you looking to see crossed before you see expansion as a wise action?
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When individual teams are financially viable?
When the league itself doesn't require subsidies from the NBA?
When the viewership numbers people are posting are sustained for, at minimum, an entire season, rather than a couple of weeks?
When they can afford to have their brawls inside the stadium rather than at the food truck outside?
I don't know. I get that people want it to do well. I personally don't care either way, but that means I certainly don't want them to fail. That said, they get their first glimmer of hope in, what, their entire history and people are suddenly talking about expansion? It's too soon and saying that isn't some indictment on the product.
Okay first: What data are you looking at to know the answers to these questions? When I do a Google search, the reference I see over and over again is that the WNBA makes $60 million in revenue and has costs of $70 million, but that $60 million number is at least from as far back as 2018, and the entire point we're making here is that things have changed a lot in the last few years.
I'll also note that back then they estimated revenue for the WNBA was almost entirely from attendance, which makes the fact that TV ratings have gone up quite a bit in recent years particularly relevant.
Now, it's possible that with the Covid disruption wreaking havoc with sports attendance the WNBA hasn't been able to make a profit despite TV ratings improving, but that's still a very different situation than one where the WNBA simply cannot make enough money to support itself.
Second thing I'll say: It's very difficult to separate the WNBA out from the NBA financially, and that's as the NBA always intended it to be. If the women's league were owned entirely by those outside the NBA, then we'd expect a tendency to play in smaller venues and perhaps with more of a regional focus to save money, but since the NBA isn't doing those things, apparently the NBA just doesn't want to do those things. Either it's because they don't mind losing some money, or because the costs they are reporting aren't actually the costs they have to any organization that's not affiliated with the NBA.
Either way, if a league can regularly average attendance in the 5-10 thousand range, there should be a way to make that make a profit if that's what you want from it.
Third thing, and I'll quote you again because I feel I need to emphasize this:
When the viewership numbers people are posting are sustained for, at minimum, an entire season, rather than a couple of weeks?
This just shows you're not really paying attention to what everyone's saying. I've been talking about a trend that's been taking place over the last several years. More than that, if there was a moment that was the big leap forward, that was 2020. You assuming we're talking about something that just happened a week ago just isn't a reasonable assumption. It feels like you're assuming you already knew the lay of the land of the WNBA until perhaps "right this moment" because you're just hearing about things right this moment, but the truth is likely that you haven't actually been paying enough attention to know where the "cart" is relative to the "horse".
Last thing I'll say is this:
I'm not suggesting any NBA franchise should be forced to add their own WNBA expansion team. But you have to understand that this isn't a situation where all the big markets have teams and we're talking about giving New Orleans a WNBA team.
We've been discussing Toronto in this thread as a candidate. Right now, there are 12 WNBA teams and only 4 of them come from a larger metro area than Toronto (NY, LA, Chi, Dal). If smaller markets can make it work, it stands to reason bigger ones probably can too.