Twice in the last year, once in a speech to her fellow Harvard Business School alumni last May and again in an interview this month, Clara Wu Tsai said she wanted the New York Liberty to be the first women’s sports team with a valuation of a billion dollars. She set a time
As of Thursday, she’s halfway there.
The New York Times reports that she and husband Joe has sold a small piece of the Liberty — in the teens — to a group of investors apparently as a way to help finance the Liberty’s new $80 million practice facility in Greenpoint, a not uncommon financial arrangement for WNBA teams. The move will dramatically increase the team’s valuation ... to $450 million.
Ben Pickman of the Times and the Athletic reports that the Liberty are now likely the most valuable women’s sports team ever.
The Liberty’s valuation is believed to be a record across professional women’s sports and is more than double that of the last publicly known capital raise made by a WNBA franchise. Last summer, the Dallas Wings sold two half-percent stakes in the franchise at a $208 million valuation. Earlier this month, entrepreneur Alexis Ohanian paid $26.5 million for an 8 percent stake in Chelsea Women, which values the team at $326 million.
Just last year as part of the Koch family members’ purchase of a 15% stake in the BSE Global, the parent of the Liberty, Nets and Barclays Center, the WNBA team was valued at $200 million. Today’s news means BSE Global and the Koch stake have also jumped in value.
The Times did not identify the new investors.
The Tsais purchased the Liberty in January 2019 from James Dolan of MSG who had had the franchise on the market for nearly two years, unable to sell. In a money-saving move, he exiled the Libs from Madison Square Garden to the 90-year-old Westchester Center in White Plains where they were drawing a little more than 1,000 fans a game which hurt the WNBA as well. Adam Silver asked the Tsais, then 49% owners of the Nets, if they wanted in. The purchase price has never been revealed but the best estimate is that the Tsais paid between $12 and $14 million, mostly in debt relief.
After the purchase, the Tsais moved the team to Barclays Center, which they had just purchased from Mikhail Prokhorov, and began, as Clara Wu Tsai has said, investing in women. They drafted Sabrina Ionescu and recruited or traded for some of the best women’s basketball players in the world, getting to the WNBA Finals the last two years, finally winning the team’s first title last October. Since then, they’ve announced plans for the yet unnamed training facility which is expected to be ready for the 2027 season.
The rising valuations of WNBA teams have been propelled by a new interest in women’s sports in general and the arrival of stars like Ionescu, the Indiana Fever’s Caitlin Clark and Chicago Sky’s Angel Reese. However, the valuations, could have a downside. In a separate Times story, Pickman writes that the league and its players are currently in labor talks, with the players’ union looking for a “transformational” change in a number of areas including salary structure. The new valuations across the board will not go unnoticed.
The news is also the latest indicator of how deeply the Tsais are involved in sports assets. The couple has stakes in teams in the NBA, the WNBA, NFL, MLS and both pro lacrosse teams.