Within the largest-ever capital increase for a ladies’s sports activities league, the WNBA introduced $75 million in funding from a gaggle of buyers. With the funding, the league and its groups are actually valued at $1 billion.
Shortly after the announcement, the league held a press convention with Commissioner Cathy Engelbert to debate the funding.
]. The total transcript of the presser will probably be posted quickly.
The WNBA introduced at the moment the largest-ever capital increase for a ladies’s sports activities property, that includes new buyers and current WNBA and NBA house owners. This groundbreaking transaction is a part of a multi-faceted monetary development technique designed to generate new income by elevated funding in precedence areas as a part of the league’s long-term enterprise transformation.
Proceeds from this transaction are anticipated for use for model elevation and advertising and marketing; globalization of the WNBA; innovation, digital, and development of shopper touchpoints; and human capital and operational optimization as a part of an general effort to handle a number of the league’s obstacles to development and producing new income.
“We’re extremely lucky to have the ability to capitalize on the present momentum round ladies’s sports activities and are grateful to the buyers who’ve chosen to assist the WNBA in an unprecedented means and to our crew governors who proceed to spend money on the gamers and groups,” mentioned WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert. “Our technique is to deploy this capital to proceed to drive the league’s model as a daring, progressive leisure and media property that embodies range, promotes fairness, advocates for social justice, and stands for the ability of girls. Having simply accomplished our historic twenty fifth season, with this entry to further capital, we’re setting the WNBA up for a profitable future and it represents an indication and sign of the long run course of girls’s sports activities as a complete.”
As a part of its ongoing dedication to empowering ladies athletes and girls’s sports activities, NIKE, Inc., one of many league’s present premier companions and inaugural WNBA Changemaker, has made a big fairness funding within the WNBA. Nike’s funding additional deepens the corporate’s assist for girls’s basketball and allows the WNBA to raise the advertising and marketing and storytelling of WNBA athletes.
“Ladies’s sport is likely one of the finest investments, with nice potential to affect and develop the following period of basketball,” mentioned Sonja Henning, VP, North America League Partnerships, NIKE, Inc. “Nike has all the time been greater than a sponsor with the WNBA – we’re a strategic associate. And we’re proud to be a part of a motion to redefine the way forward for sport for a brand new technology – for WNBA gamers, followers and ladies.”
The preliminary buyers are: Micky and Nick Arison, Carnival Company and Miami HEAT; Invoice Cameron, CEO and President, American Constancy, Dallas Wings; Swin Money, WNBA legend and present New Orleans Pelicans Vice-President of Basketball Operations and Workforce Improvement; Baron Davis, NBA legend; Michael and Susan Dell, Dell Applied sciences and minority buyers, San Antonio Spurs; Karen Finerman, CEO and Co-Founder, Metropolitan Capital Advisors; Pau Gasol, NBA legend and Member of the IOC Athletes’ Fee; Ginny Gilder, Seattle Storm; Dee Haslam and Whitney Johnson, Haslam Sports activities Group, Cleveland Browns and Columbus Crew; Linda Henry, Boston Globe, Boston Purple Sox, Liverpool Soccer Membership; Brad Hilsabeck, former CEO, Grantham, Mayo Van Otterloo & Co. and minority investor, Dallas Wings; Eric Holoman, President and CEO, EquiTrust Life Insurance coverage, Los Angeles Sparks; Mark Walter, CEO, Guggenheim Companions, Los Angeles Sparks; Laurene Powell Jobs, Founder and President, Emerson Collective; Ted Leonsis, Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Monumental Sports activities & Leisure, Washington Mystics and Washington Wizards; James and Heather Murren, former Chairman and CEO of MGM Resorts Worldwide; NIKE, Inc; Condoleezza Rice, Stanford College and 66th US Secretary of State; Angela Ruggiero, CEO and Co-Founder, Sports activities Innovation Lab; Herb and Steve Simon, Fever Basketball, LLC; and Joe and Clara Tsai, New York Liberty and Brooklyn Nets.
“Susan and I are excited in regards to the development alternative in ladies’s sports activities and particularly the WNBA,” mentioned Michael Dell, CEO, Dell Applied sciences and minority investor, San Antonio Spurs. “We are also proud to assist a league that’s dedicated to empowerment, and we sit up for supporting Cathy and all of the completed and numerous ladies of the WNBA to make a optimistic affect on this planet.”
Each the WNBA and NBA Boards of Governors authorized the transaction. Allen & Firm LLC served because the monetary advisor for the transaction.
