[ad_1]
The Wings now have a valuation of $208M, the highest in the WNBAgetty images
Two businessmen have each purchased a half percent of the WNBA’s Wings for $1.04M apiece, SBJ has learned, raising the franchise’s total enterprise value to a purported league record of $208M.
Earlier reports this summer had valued the Las Vegas Aces at a league-high $140M, but a variety of factors — the Wings’ impending move to downtown Dallas; a proposed practice facility; prohibitive gains this season in attendance and sponsorships; a presumptive new local TV contract; and the league’s upcoming $2.2B-plus media rights deal — have turned the team into, at worst, an upper echelon franchise.
“I would say the value of anything is what the market’s willing to pay,” said Greg Bibb, the Wings’ president, CEO and partner who sold 1% of his stake in the franchise to businessmen Jed Kaplan and Randy Eisenman. “I can make a compelling case for why that $208 million number is justifiable.
“Certainly, we’re not talking about a business that’s stagnating … it’s quite the opposite. What we are doing today is going to be significantly outpaced by what we do tomorrow.”
The Wings, reportedly valued at just $75M earlier this spring, were buoyed in late April when the city of Dallas provided the team with a $19M cash incentive to become the primary tenant of a renovated downtown Memorial Auditorium that will open in 2026 with a seating capacity of roughly 8,500. As part of a decade-long redevelopment of Dallas’ convention center district, there will also be an adjacent standalone practice site that Bibb said will rival the new Aces and Mercury facilities.
RELATED: Dallas OKs incentives for Wings to move downtown
While currently playing at the College Park Center on the campus of the University of Texas-Arlington (capacity: 6,251), the Wings are averaging 6,057 fans per game, up 31% from last season. The team has sold out six of its 11 games so far and has set three single-game attendance records — most recently on July 17th when Caitlin Clark arrived with the Fever and had a WNBA record 19 assists.
In addition, the franchise — whose majority owner Bill Cameron also has a stake in the NBA’s Oklahoma City Thunder — has new lucrative partnerships with Baylor Scott & White Health, one of the region’s larger healthcare systems, alongside Wendy’s and Raising Canes. Its three-year local TV deal with Bally’s Sports Southwest also expires after this season, expected to lead to an over-the-air or streaming deal for 2025 that should include the team’s first ever rights fee.
Bibb’s conversations with the investor Kaplan — a Florida-based minority owner of the NBA’s Grizzlies and former owner of the D League Erie BayHawks and Iowa Energy — date back at least two years, and it was Kaplan who introduced Bibb to Eisenman, the founder of Satori Capital in Fort Worth. Discussions then escalated during the current season, when Bibb negotiated with both investors and closed the deal himself.
“I probably pestered Greg multiple times, maybe almost begged, to get a piece of the team,” Kaplan said. “[$208M] is a steep number. But if you look at what’s coming in the WNBA — the media deal, revenue sharing, and then some of the specific deals that Greg has negotiated in Dallas. … WNBA teams will be on par in terms of revenue with the lower revenue MLS teams. And look at where those teams are trading at.”
[ad_2]
Source link
