On the 549th Sporticast episode, hosts Scott Soshnick and Eben Novy-Williams discuss some of the biggest sports business stories of the week, including Sportico’s latest list of WNBA franchise valuations.
The Golden State Valkyries top the list at $850 million, followed by the New York Liberty at $600 million and the Indiana Fever at $560 million. The average WNBA franchise is worth $427 million, a 59% increase from last year.
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WNBA team economics have historically been driven by ticket sales and sponsorships, which has set the league apart from men’s leagues that have significant media income. That said, new national TV deals and nascent local media opportunities could rebalance those numbers in the coming years.
The hosts also talk about the WNBA’s unique cap table—ownership is broken out as 42% NBA, 42% WNBA owners and 16% outside investors—the broad disparity in team-by-team revenue, and the league’s coming expansion. The Connecticut Sun were the last team to be sold, purchased for $300 million by the owner of the NBA’s Houston Rockets.
Next the hosts talk about KKR’s investment into Major League Soccer’s development league, MLS Next Pro. The private equity giant is committing more than $150 million to essentially centralize the league’s commercial operations and rethink the strategy of team names and locations. As the deal unfurls, expect more teams to be rebranded and move to non-MLS cities, a strategy that could ultimately resemble minor league baseball. Perhaps most critically for MLS, expansion from outside investors could grow the U.S. soccer pyramid within the MLS umbrella, a bulwark against other pro men’s leagues that are trying to gain a foothold in the country.
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They close by talking about the ongoing sale of the Vancouver Whitecaps. The MLS club has been on the market for more than a year, but has struggled to attract interest from local bidders. The options are either a) buy the club and spend hundreds of millions on a stadium solution in Vancouver, or b) buy the club and spend hundreds of millions on a relocation fee to move it to a city like Las Vegas, Phoenix or Indianapolis. They also talk about the timing, with all of this happening in the run-up to the World Cup.
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