WNBA to Begin Full-Time Charter Flights

[Voight]

New heights: WNBA to provide full-time charters

For the first time, the WNBA will fund full-time charter flights for its teams. Commissioner Cathy Engelbert said the program will launch "as soon as we can get planes in places."

www.espn.com

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[LadyStanley]

Posted in CBA thread yesterday

 

[MMC]

A league losing $10M a year adding $25M more per year in costs is an interesting move

 

[KevFu]

A league losing $10M a year adding $25M more per year in costs is an interesting move

It's not a game of monopoly, where you lose when you hit zero.

Whatever you have, you're spending more than that the next budget to grow and expand. People who work in sports are highly competitive people. You bite off a lot and tell everyone they better freaking chew.

The expansion fees of the new teams will pay for the first couple years. Then there's the Clark bump. They have their Jordan, it's time to grow.

 

[MMC]

It's not a game of monopoly, where you lose when you hit zero.

Whatever you have, you're spending more than that the next budget to grow and expand. People who work in sports are highly competitive people. You bite off a lot and tell everyone they better freaking chew.

The expansion fees of the new teams will pay for the first couple years. Then there's the Clark bump. They have their Jordan, it's time to grow.

I don’t think they’re in danger of going insolvent or anything but hard to see them ever turning a profit

 

[Voight]

A league losing $10M a year adding $25M more per year in costs is an interesting move

Really dumb move to be honest, there is zero need for this.

This NBA subsidies gotta go somewhere I guess.

 

[LadyStanley]

Really dumb move to be honest, there is zero need for this.

Wear and tear of multiple stop flights vs non-stop.

Cancelled/delayed flights. (Which have resulted in game issues as the team could not get there in time.) And the whim of airline schedulers.

Fan interaction on flight, in waiting area (rather than allowing players opportunity to try and relax/sleep; or coaches prepare for next game).

No/little control over food served (if any), much less the quantity and quality, dietary needed/wanted.

Less time required to go through security; no long periods just waiting for flight/connection.

 

[BigBadBruins7708]

this is like a guy on welfare going out and leasing a Mercedes

 

[LadyStanley]

Example #78934

 

[KevFu]

I don’t think they’re in danger of going insolvent or anything but hard to see them ever turning a profit

Right, but that's no different than say, college athletics.

The huge college athletics departments are non-profits, so their surplus has to be spent. And since they want to win the recruiting wars, it's easy to re-invest the surplus in capital projects that lure recruits. Like build a brand new $120m locker room or weight room even the current things are totally fine. That's happening in the P4 constantly.

Now, a little further down the college sports hierarchy, you have schools like Gonzaga who don't have huge $150m revenue streams. But they still have $25-$35m in revenue AND they're trying to keep up with those big schools.

So they committed to doing things that help them be competitive and win BEFORE they have the money to pull it off, hoping that what they're committing to will lead to more revenue enabling them to afford it.

That's where the WNBA is.

It's funny, I was actually at a school like that when we definitely couldn't afford charter flights for basketball.

But it was a no brainer to do it. It made us a lot better in a ton of different ways, and it ended up more than paying for itself because upon being challenged to come up with a way to pay for it, an outstanding creative solution was found.