The Seattle Times continues to give the Chris Hansen arena proposal an acid bath by suddenly at the last minute producing Peter Goldman, an environmental lawyer the newspaper normally grants as much credibility as Bozo the Clown. Goldman perhaps rightly asks questions in regard to the environmental impact of arena; one reason why this might not be as big a problem as he and the Times believe is that presumably the Centurylink and Safeco Fields answered the same questions. The Hansen proposal’s memoranda of understanding also addresses the issue, and in no way seeks to sidestep environmental laws; once more the Times is trying to prop-up its straw man.
A few days earlier the Times managed to recruit Jean Godden of the Seattle City Council to suggest another potential “problem.” Godden opines that she doesn’t understand all the fuss about an NBA team when “we” can thank a “group of professional women” who banded together to keep the WNBA’s Seattle Storm in town. This is stretching the truth a bit; the Oklahoma boys had no intention of being saddled with a money-draining team with little more than political support, and played coy until they were able to shake a few more dollars out of the proposed Storm ownership group. Godden further states that
“In a letter to the City Council, the Storm's owners wrote that they like playing in Key Arena, with its intimate lower bowl. They also like the ambience of the Seattle Center campus and its central location. They are rightfully concerned over Hansen's public statements regarding potentially shrinking the size of Key Arena, the rationale being that a smaller Key Arena would serve a different niche than the new, bigger arena. Hansen also talks about possible plans to have a two-arena strategy with a single management group.”
Now, I’m not sure that what the Storm’s owners are really upset about is the potential of a men’s professional team in town to “compete” for the city’s affections, but they need to get a grip and stop dabbling in deception like the Times is. Like Chris Hansen, some of us actually do our homework. Half of Key Arena’s seats—mostly the surrounding periphery—are essentially blocked-off during Storm home games. This gives the impression of a full arena, when in fact it is far from it. The “ambience” that owners are referring to can only mean all those empty seats in the background. A smaller Key Arena wouldn’t hurt the revenue stream of the Storm, which seems to be of little concern to the owners anyways. They don’t mind being subsidized by taxpayer money, either—but we will discuss that later.
“Let me be clear,” continues Godden, “the Storm is open to the possibility of playing in a new arena. And they would welcome the Sonics back with open arms (oh, sure). But a new arena would, one way or another, have a large impact on the Storm and other tenants at Key Arena, as well as the economics of the Seattle Center.”
So, the Storm owners are being “civic-minded.” Whatever. The real issue, I suspect, is that the Storm owners have determined that most of their “fans” are “liberal” Seattleites from near the arena who like to prove their “green” credentials by being within walking distance of the place. The team’s “fans” like the idea of the Storm—unless, of course, you make it more “difficult” for them to get from A to B, and then the “fans” wonder if it’s all worth the trip.
“The Storm has been a valuable asset to our city and a great inspiration to young people — both female and male. On the 40th anniversary of the signing of Title IX, we are narrowing the gender gap in sports. Women are no longer just cheerleaders; they are also sports heroes.”
Huh? I would agree that some female athletes are “heroes” to some young people—mainly to girls who actually play sports competitively. We’ve already questioned the actual level of interest of females in sports, and the fact that any outside interest seems mainly political. We’ve also discussed Title IX, and the fact that sports was actually a secondary concern of the law, and that since it was promulgated, it has been misused and abused by college admissions departments in a way that is demonstrably prejudicial toward male applicants.
But I digress. I’ll let Debbie Schlussel speak to the issue of “interest” in the WNBA. I realize that she is a right-wing hack, but she was on to something when she wrote this:
“The dynamic with people and male pro sports–as I’ve written a gazillion times–is that men wanna be them and women wanna date (euphemism) them. With the WNBA, there are neither of those dynamics, unless you’re talking about Melissa Etheridge and Ellen Degeneres, and there simply aren’t enough of them to fill the WNBA stands or ever make it cool…even if they merged it with a sensible shoes wholesale warehouse.”
Godden ends her op-ed with something about “Let’s not give lip service to women’s athletics.” Earth-to-Godden: Past experiments in professional women’s basketball leagues have suffered speedy demises, no thanks to their female “fans.” There would be no WNBA at all unless David Stern had one of his brain expectorations. While the WNBA averages an anemic 270,000 viewers per game on ESPN2 for a 0.3 rating, Stern brushed aside complaints from ESPN executives that the league has not delivered a suitable product as promised, or even threatened to come close to breaking even on its investment. Back in the day, ESPN executive Mark Shapiro recalled that he had conveyed to Stern the opinion that “The WNBA stinks, it doesn’t rate, and I didn’t want it. Men don’t watch it. Women don’t watch it!” However, Stern basically told ESPN that if they wanted NBA action, they had to take on his WNBA baggage, and that was that.
So, what about that product that Stern has foisted on a mostly unwilling fan base? Some people liken the action as exciting as what one might observe on one of those old electric football games with the vibrating “field.” I came across these comments from an “anonymous” man who claims to work for an NBA franchise, which also has a WNBA counterpart:
“The talent level is low. I look at basketball basically on the levels of: Youth, High School, College, Minor League, and Professional. Obviously there are sublevels to all of those categories, but those are the basic five. The level of talent in the WNBA, to me, is not at the ‘professional’ level that it promises. I attended one of the practices for our WNBA team, and they were scrimmaging against a group of my fellow co-workers (all male) that had been thrown together that day. I have played ball with all of the men on that court, and my talent level is roughly even to theirs. The scrimmage at this practice was competitive, and very even (this was the practice, by the way, that took place before the team's first playoff game, so the intensity and focus levels were high). I am no professional basketball player. In fact, none of the guys on that court even played college basketball.”
A discussion about whether the WNBA has “cultural” value is not pertinent to the issue of whether it deserves to survive or not. That is entirely up to its “fans” and whether they are willing to pay more to make the teams commercially viable; even for the Storms’ millionaire owners, they only have so much extra cash floating around to finance an expensive personal fantasy. According to a Business Week story, the Atlanta Dream franchise was purchased by a Kathy Betty, despite the fact that in the opinion of one local observer, "The truth of the matter is, there are charity banquets that generate more dollars than a WNBA team.” Why did Betty buy the team? “She wanted to empower women." In actuality, it is a sad commentary on our society—or rather female sports “fans”—that a women’s professional sports league has to have manufactured “substance” and “relevance.”
The BW article goes on to talk about the Storm ownership: “Storm co-owner Dawn Trudeau…hopes the purchase will provide role models for local girls. Recording a profit, however, won't be as easy. ‘We're still in the red,’ Trudeau said. ‘But we have a multiyear plan for how we are going to build the business and get in the black.’" Trudeau and her cohorts, of course, will not publicly release the team’s earnings statement this year, or any year. In fact, Stern has made it a policy to keep the league’s “financials” a state secret. One of the “dirty little secrets” of WNBA franchises is not that the NBA covers their losses, but that their refusal to disclose revenue generated from ticket sales has a “practical” rationale: In order to give the impression of fan “support,” many seats are filled with people who have received free tickets. In fact, the Storm has a “first game on us” program.
There is no data on how many free tickets the Storm give away, but in 2008—after the purchase of the team from the Oklahoma group—state senators Margarita Prentice and Jean Kohl-Welles inserted into the operating budget funds for the purchase of $250,000 worth of Storm tickets, by state taxpayers. There were complaints from some lawmakers, but the proponents of the subsidy tried to “shame” them by insisting that the tickets would go to girls—when in fact the legislation allowed anyone receive to them. For the Storm owners, this money was hardly an insignificant amount—it was more than one-quarter of the team’s budgeted player salary, perhaps even one-third of it. I have been unable to determine if this state subsidy of a professional sports franchise continues, but if it does, I wonder what excuse the Times has for not critiquing this little hint of its hypocrisy.
The free tickets problem has hurt some of the allegedly more “successful” franchises. For example, the Washington, DC franchise has vied with the Los Angeles Sparks for the highest attendance. Unfortunately, it is a franchise in financial trouble because, admittedly, a high percentage of its ticket “sales” are in fact giveaways. Although the Connecticut franchise has one of the lowest attendances in the WNBA, it became the first franchise in history to record a profit because it focused on selling tickets from the beginning, rather than attempt to drum-up phony interest with free tickets. Why buy a ticket when you can wait and see a game for free?
In order to generate revenue, the WNBA has resorted to some rather desperate and bizarre measures. Take the Storm, for instance. A few years ago, the WNBA allowed private business entities to place advertisements on its players’ jersey. On the Storm jerseys, you don’t actually see the word “Storm” anywhere; in fact, where the team logo should be is the word “Bing”—a search engine used by Microsoft. Other WNBA franchises have not been so shameless in their genuflecting to sponsors as the Storm, however; the Sparks still have the team logo on the front of their jerseys, rather than “Farmers Insurance.” One suspects that Microsoft expects more for their money than some other companies, although given the television ratings of WNBA games, they probably are not. But it has, for the time being anyways, assisted in improving the Storm’s bottom line, as if that was hard to do.
The Washington DC franchise’s financial picture was so desperate that both the coach and general manager were fired as a “cost-cutting” measure, and someone who could only be described as a temporary consultant was retained to fill both positions. Meanwhile, the Storm ownership more or less made a confessional concerning its hardcore supporters when it recently celebrated its “LGBT partnership,” i.e. with the “Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Commission.” Recently, to celebrate gay and lesbian pride, Storm fans “were given rainbow-colored ThunderStix and rainbow headbands,” according to the Times. There is also a racial aspect to the Storm’s efforts to market itself. The team has never drafted a marquee black player or acquired one in their prime; two white players, Lauren Jackson and Sue Bird, have been the “face” of the franchise since its inception. After a recent victory by the team, the Times chose to post the picture of some other white player on the front page, apparently a new “star” in the absence of Jackson. White sells, black doesn’t in this “liberal” town. Come to think of it, that’s probably why the Sonics aren’t here anymore, and some people are so reluctant to see them back.
So, what can we conclude from all of this? The WNBA isn’t going to die until the NBA puts business sense before politics and pulls the plug, which would make ESPN executives say “there is still a god.” Only one of its 12 surviving teams has come close to being independently “viable,” and even that might not be quite true if NBA money is not included. Some teams (like the Storm) may become nothing more than advertisements in human form. But WNBA supporters continue to deceive themselves about the viability of the league and its financial state. The league will survive as long as Stern is the commissioner, since he has been its biggest supporter, spending whatever money it takes to keep it afloat. The idea of creating the league was Stern’s to begin with, and it’s his “baby”—not “independent” new owners who depend on revenue not fairly earned. He thought that the league would bring in more female fans, but women did not support it as he dreamed they would. Ultimately, there has been much “talk”—but little walk.
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