rom the earliest days of the Women’s National Basketball Association, it seemed like winning a championship was only a matter of time for the New York Liberty. A glamour franchise by default, they firstduring the league’s inaugural season back in 1997, falling to the Houston Comets in a championship game that was wiped from the headlines within hours by the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. That was the first of five times New York tripped at the final hurdle, includingon their home floor.
That’s one way of saying that Sunday night’s cathartic triumph, when New York finally hauled in the sport’s biggest prizeover the Minnesota Lynx and became the last of the WNBA’s Original Eight franchises to win a title, was a long time coming.
Organizational morale was at rock bottom when Joe and Clara Wu Tsai bought what they saw as an undervalued asset for an undisclosed amount in 2019, but things changed rapidly under their ownership. Moving the team to the Barclays Center, which the Tsais took over with their purchase of the NBA’s Brooklyn Nets, was a no-brainer. Seizing on changes to the 2020 collective bargaining agreement that relaxed restrictions on player movement, Wu Tsai tracked star free agent and.
Since purchasing the Aces nearly three years ago, the owner of the NFL’s Las Vegas Raiders poached Becky Hammon from the NBASame for the Seattle Storm, who have won two of the past seven WNBA titles and also recently opened a $60m, 50,000 sq ft training facility, among the world’s first to be designed specifically for female athletes (famouslyIt’s the kind of culture-building which translates to success between the lines.
It was a worthy climax to a WNBA season that attracted vast television audiences and unprecedented public interest, breaking records for TV ratings, merchandise sales and attendance seemingly by the week. But it was also a road map to success. Less than five years after buying the Liberty at a distress-sale price, the Tsais’ recent sale of a 15% stake in BSE Global gave the Liberty a $200m valuation. Earlier this month Wu Tsaithat number will exceed $1bn within 10 years.