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As W.N.B.A. Players Call for Expansion, League Says Not Now
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root_thing



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PostPosted: 01/10/22 3:26 pm    ::: As W.N.B.A. Players Call for Expansion, League Says Not Now Reply Reply with quote

Quote:
Engelbert said expanding the league is “part of a transitional plan,” but not now.

“If you want to broaden your exposure, probably need to be more than 12 cities in a country with 330 million people,” Engelbert said. “We’re going to absolutely expand down the road, but we don’t just expand for expansion’s sake until we get the economic model further along.”

Ogwumike hopes more financial commitments from sponsors will lead to the players getting what they want — bigger rosters and higher salaries — to keep the most prominent players in the W.N.B.A.

“These last two drafts have shown there’s a league sitting at home, and so we have to do something about that,” Ogwumike said, referring to the number of talented players who are not drafted.



https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/10/sports/basketball/wnba-expansion.html



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Richyyy



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PostPosted: 01/10/22 4:19 pm    ::: Reply Reply with quote

These last two dreadful (so far) drafts? Don't think that's the argument that you want it to be, Chiney.



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tfan



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PostPosted: 01/10/22 4:44 pm    ::: Reply Reply with quote

Despite all the hand wringing you get here about expansion, I think people would watch a 30 team league. But you need 18 more owners. It is nothing the WNBA or players can control.


Bob Lamm



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PostPosted: 01/10/22 5:14 pm    ::: Reply Reply with quote

tfan wrote:
Despite all the hand wringing you get here about expansion, I think people would watch a 30 team league. But you need 18 more owners. It is nothing the WNBA or players can control.


Please count me as dubious about people watching a 30-team league when there aren't nearly enough people watching a 12-team league either in person or in other ways. For the 2022 season, there will presumably be a maximum of 144 players on WNBA rosters. Does anyone want to see the likely list if there were 360 players suiting up for the 2022 season? I don't.

Here's another way to consider this. Think of your team's likely three best players for 2022. Now think of your team losing two of them because there will be 30 teams instead of 12.



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insidewinder



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PostPosted: 01/10/22 7:31 pm    ::: I watch but Reply Reply with quote

I would watch and care more if I had a local team somewhere sorta close to me. If you don't have a local team you don't see stories in your local sports pages, etc. It's harder to care when you have no consistent rooting interest. I enjoy the league but I miss having a team I can really dig into following and maybe even see games in person. I sometimes try to "adopt" a team from afar, but that is not very satisfying. Most fans don't follow a league as a whole, they follow a team, which draws them into knowing more about the competition that their team plays. I do follow certain players a bit but eh, that's not the same.
That's my take anyway.

Most people here probably think hmmm, who is this person who never posts in the WNBA area. That's cause I have no skin in the game and follow only passively. Give me a team I can call my own with knock wood some local coverage and that changes.


Luuuc
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PostPosted: 01/10/22 8:03 pm    ::: Reply Reply with quote

Yeah, even if only 1 in 1000 people is a potential fan of WBB, that still means that the total pool of fans nationally increases every time a WNBA team is added. So I'm all for expansion. 12 teams is clearly lower than the ideal number for a country as big (both physical size and population) as the US.

Whether now is the time is another matter. One argument that doesn't convince me is the one about players on the fringes of teams. There will always be players on the fringes who are in & out. More teams only means more players in that situation. And right now the money made by those players is not enough for most of them to keep striving.



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johnjohnW



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PostPosted: 01/10/22 8:27 pm    ::: Reply Reply with quote

I think they could add 4 teams MAX over the next 5 years but there have to be owners who WANT one before that can happen.


tfan



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PostPosted: 01/11/22 10:53 pm    ::: Reply Reply with quote

Bob Lamm wrote:
tfan wrote:
Despite all the hand wringing you get here about expansion, I think people would watch a 30 team league. But you need 18 more owners. It is nothing the WNBA or players can control.


Please count me as dubious about people watching a 30-team league when there aren't nearly enough people watching a 12-team league either in person or in other ways. For the 2022 season, there will presumably be a maximum of 144 players on WNBA rosters. Does anyone want to see the likely list if there were 360 players suiting up for the 2022 season? I don't.


I don't think the posters on this board are typical and they constitute a tiny fraction of the ESPN audience, or even the in-person audience. The average person watching on TV or going to games is not repeatedly online sharing gushing praise, compliments, criticisms and condemnations of WNBA players' talents. That practice does lock posters into a position of no on expansion. But there just aren't enough people here to impact the WNBA ratings or attendance even if every single one chose not to watch/attend an expanded league and as was mentioned, the more local teams there are the more the WNBA comes on the radar of folks across the country.

Talent wise, the WNBA players are below what fans can watch from men - at any level. So people are watching for reasons other than the athletic talent of the players. And none of those reasons should be impacted with a 30 team league.


Quote:
Here's another way to consider this. Think of your team's likely three best players for 2022. Now think of your team losing two of them because there will be 30 teams instead of 12.


I find the bench players as easy to root for and watch as the starters.


Queenie



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PostPosted: 01/11/22 11:10 pm    ::: Reply Reply with quote

I would love a deep dive into why the NWSL can apparently pull ownership groups out of its ass at its leisure and the WNBA can't.



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hyperetic



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PostPosted: 01/11/22 11:10 pm    ::: Reply Reply with quote

Bob Lamm wrote:
tfan wrote:
Despite all the hand wringing you get here about expansion, I think people would watch a 30 team league. But you need 18 more owners. It is nothing the WNBA or players can control.


Please count me as dubious about people watching a 30-team league when there aren't nearly enough people watching a 12-team league either in person or in other ways. For the 2022 season, there will presumably be a maximum of 144 players on WNBA rosters. Does anyone want to see the likely list if there were 360 players suiting up for the 2022 season? I don't.

Here's another way to consider this. Think of your team's likely three best players for 2022. Now think of your team losing two of them because there will be 30 teams instead of 12.


I kinda understand your point based on the current numbers but I kinda don't because growing the league will take some bold thinking and patience. There are other factors to be considered. Regionality is an important one. Continuing to build on foreign markets is another. Finding new ways to engage the general sports fan. Sitting pat on what supposedly works is a definite way to a slow, deteriorating death as time goes by. Yeah expansion is scary. Losses are possible but gains are (no matter how small) also possible.
Silky Johnson



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PostPosted: 01/12/22 12:35 am    ::: Reply Reply with quote

tfan wrote:
... Talent wise, the WNBA players are below what fans can watch from men - at any level. So people are watching for reasons other than the athletic talent of the players. And none of those reasons should be impacted with a 30 team league.


I'll say this much, as someone who got out of the "rooting for teams" business, years ago: being a person who has never once, in his life, rooted for the "local" team, even when I was a Team fan, this was always a big disconnect between me and other fans of the teams I used to root for. No matter how many times I heard people say it, it always astonished me how many people would loudly, even proudly, declare that they wouldn't even watch certain sports, if their hometown didn't have a team. So, even though it sounds completely ridiculous to my sensibilities, i can totally buy expansion improving ratings/revenue, by getting people to watch who would have flatly refused, otherwise.



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johnjohnW



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PostPosted: 01/12/22 7:10 am    ::: Reply Reply with quote

Queenie wrote:
I would love a deep dive into why the NWSL can apparently pull ownership groups out of its ass at its leisure and the WNBA can't.


I have to assume a big reason is the much lower operating costs. Don't their players make significantly less? I also imagine renting out some of the fields they use may be cheaper than an indoor arena. NWSL also benefits from being "new" as an investment.


pilight



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PostPosted: 01/12/22 8:32 am    ::: Reply Reply with quote

Queenie wrote:
I would love a deep dive into why the NWSL can apparently pull ownership groups out of its ass at its leisure and the WNBA can't.


It's much easier to find investors when the players are mostly white and perceived to be mostly straight



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Luuuc
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PostPosted: 01/12/22 8:56 am    ::: Reply Reply with quote

pilight wrote:
Queenie wrote:
I would love a deep dive into why the NWSL can apparently pull ownership groups out of its ass at its leisure and the WNBA can't.


It's much easier to find investors when the players are mostly white and perceived to be mostly straight

Yeah, whiteness was my first instinct too



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FrozenLVFan



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PostPosted: 01/12/22 9:24 am    ::: Reply Reply with quote

[quote="tfan"]
Bob Lamm wrote:

I don't think the posters on this board are typical and they constitute a tiny fraction of the ESPN audience, or even the in-person audience. The average person watching on TV or going to games is not repeatedly online sharing gushing praise, compliments, criticisms and condemnations of WNBA players' talents. That practice does lock posters into a position of no on expansion. But there just aren't enough people here to impact the WNBA ratings or attendance even if every single one chose not to watch/attend an expanded league and as was mentioned, the more local teams there are the more the WNBA comes on the radar of folks across the country.

Talent wise, the WNBA players are below what fans can watch from men - at any level. So people are watching for reasons other than the athletic talent of the players. And none of those reasons should be impacted with a 30 team league.


People aren't attending now. Attendance figures weren't >5K for half of the franchises pre-pandemic, they were half that in 2021, and who knows what will happen this summer. This is a very uncertain time to entertain expansion teams when the league already can't put profitable numbers of fans in seats and is impacted by a pandemic. Establishing more teams to draw 3000 fans/game isn't viable unless there are sponsors and television contracts in place to support the additional games. Engelbert said the league's economic model isn't ready yet.

I personally don't see another league's worth of players sitting at home, and expansion is going to bring some dilution of talent along with the normal growing pains of expansion teams. The biggest reason I hear from sports fans who won't watch women's basketball is that the play isn't as good as the men. Nneka whining that more out-of-work-players need jobs and Reeve saying the NBA needs to kick in more money just makes the league look like a charity case.


blue crabs & basketba



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PostPosted: 01/12/22 12:28 pm    ::: Reply Reply with quote

Queenie wrote:
I would love a deep dive into why the NWSL can apparently pull ownership groups out of its ass at its leisure and the WNBA can't.


Isn't the NWSL controlled by the Olympic soccer orgs of Canada, Mexico, and the US? They have some connection, which may make the appeal of owning a soccer league more that that of a WNBA team.


tfan



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PostPosted: 01/20/22 2:25 am    ::: Reply Reply with quote

FrozenLVFan wrote:


People aren't attending now. Attendance figures weren't >5K for half of the franchises pre-pandemic, they were half that in 2021, and who knows what will happen this summer. This is a very uncertain time to entertain expansion teams when the league already can't put profitable numbers of fans in seats and is impacted by a pandemic. Establishing more teams to draw 3000 fans/game isn't viable unless there are sponsors and television contracts in place to support the additional games. Engelbert said the league's economic model isn't ready yet.


It is true that expansion hurts league-wide revenue sharing, assuming that any extra money received by the whole league won't be enough to equal what the teams currently get . And that alone maybe should kill any talk of expansion: existing teams can't afford (or don't want the extra losses of) a smaller slice of a bigger league-wide sponsorship/TV-money pie.

Quote:
I personally don't see another league's worth of players sitting at home, and expansion is going to bring some dilution of talent along with the normal growing pains of expansion teams. The biggest reason I hear from sports fans who won't watch women's basketball is that the play isn't as good as the men. Nneka whining that more out-of-work-players need jobs and Reeve saying the NBA needs to kick in more money just makes the league look like a charity case.


The WNBA attendance data is mixed as far as supporting the idea that with fewer teams (and presumably higher level of talent) people are more willing to come out and watch games (or vice versa). As the league shrunk down from 16 to 12 teams, league average attendance also went down, but some teams like LA were reporting significantly higher attendance in 2019 than 2000. If we throw out the data since it is made up of so much fiction and also has a "newness" factor in it and teams in different cities, from my vantage point, it doesn't seem like the amount of fans in the stands increased as the league went back down to 12 teams and as the talent in the league increased over time. I actually think butts in seats decreased. But the most important thing for bringing fans out to an arena is success and with more teams, it would be harder to make the finals or win a title.

The players are less athletic than men. But a two-team league (a constant WNBA all-star game) would still have that issue. People have to be watching the WNBA for reasons other than seeing players as athletic as men. If you make the league a 13 to 30 player league those other reasons for watching will still be there. There may very well be an imaginary athleticism/skill/size line below which a small group of aficionados won't watch the WNBA (even though the talent would be higher than the college WBB many of them also watch) I suspect that the vast majority of in-person and ESPN fans will still watch a larger league.


WNBA 09



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PostPosted: 05/10/22 6:56 pm    ::: Reply Reply with quote

Apparently the league is changing its stance. Not official but Look for Oakland/Bay area to definitely be a player for expansion as of now a bidding war with The warriors and Alana beards group continues. Two teams being added within the next two years is nice. Toronto and Philadelphia are the other candidates I’m hearing besides the Bay Area/Oakland.


This article from yesterday from our president is what got me asking around btw…

https://www.si.com/wnba/2022/05/09/wnba-commissioner-cathy-engelbert-discusses-adding-expansion-teams

Quote:
Engelbert, who began a 12-city tour of the league with a stop in Seattle for the regular-season opener on Friday, revealed that the WNBA is currently looking at adding two expansion teams in the next few years. In doing so, she believes more opportunities for young players will be available, which in turn will help remedy the issue of small roster sizes.



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johnjohnW



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PostPosted: 05/10/22 7:06 pm    ::: Reply Reply with quote

WNBA 09 wrote:
Apparently the league is changing its stance. Not official but Look for Oakland/Bay area to definitely be a player for expansion as of now a bidding war with The warriors and Alana beards group continues. Two teams being added within the next two years is nice. Toronto and Philadelphia are the other candidates I’m hearing besides the Bay Area/Oakland.


This article from yesterday from our president is what got me asking around btw…

https://www.si.com/wnba/2022/05/09/wnba-commissioner-cathy-engelbert-discusses-adding-expansion-teams

Quote:
Engelbert, who began a 12-city tour of the league with a stop in Seattle for the regular-season opener on Friday, revealed that the WNBA is currently looking at adding two expansion teams in the next few years. In doing so, she believes more opportunities for young players will be available, which in turn will help remedy the issue of small roster sizes.


I would get courtside season tickets if they came to Philly.


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PostPosted: 05/10/22 7:20 pm    ::: Reply Reply with quote

The league should should allow Oakland(Beard's team) & San Francisco(Warriors). Just not in the same season.



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johnjohnW



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PostPosted: 05/10/22 7:24 pm    ::: Reply Reply with quote

toad455 wrote:
The league should should allow Oakland(Beard's team) & San Francisco(Warriors). Just not in the same season.


Does Lacob seriously even want a team despite all his lip service? And is the Beard group truly viable despite their press releases? I have serious concerns with both.


Richyyy



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PostPosted: 05/10/22 8:20 pm    ::: Reply Reply with quote

With how few teams there are, spread around a very large country, you don't add two practically on top of each other.



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myrtle



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PostPosted: 05/10/22 9:11 pm    ::: Reply Reply with quote

Richyyy wrote:
With how few teams there are, spread around a very large country, you don't add two practically on top of each other.


Maybe. But I think there are a lot of fans in the Bay Area who would support both. Lots of baseball fans there have season tickets for both. I was in the Bay Area in 1989 when they played each other in the World Series. those who had season tickets for both were in heaven...and some of them literally went there when the major earthquake hit during the series. The East Bay is actually easier to access for many people. It's more central in terms of the population distribution and BART makes it pretty easy to get to the facilities there.


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PostPosted: 05/10/22 9:28 pm    ::: Reply Reply with quote

But it's also just about expanding your reach and the overall fan base and interest. So many more people are likely to pay attention to the league if there's a team in their general vicinity. So bring two major metropolises into the fold, not one of them twice.

Once you're hitting 24-30 teams then there's some value to local rivalries that MLS has started to lean into, but I think we're a fair way off that.



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PostPosted: 05/10/22 9:49 pm    ::: Reply Reply with quote

I would absolutely love to see Detroit and Houston get their franchises back. Both organizations have so much history in this league and I think both had solid fan bases as well.


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