Making HERstory: How WNBA owner Clara Wu Tsai turned a team ‘no one wanted’ into New York’s next big franchise

CNN

By Carolyn Manno, CNN

New York (CNN) — The woman behind a franchise no one appeared to want is aiming to orchestrate one of the most remarkable turnarounds in sports history.

The New York Liberty are one of the WNBA’s original franchises. Now, back in the Finals, winning the team’s first title would cap off a stretch of unprecedented growth for majority team owner, Clara Wu Tsai.

Wu Tsai and her husband, Joe Tsai, bought the team in 2019 for an undisclosed amount after the franchise’s previous owner, James Dolan, put the team up for sale in 2017. Dolan had moved the franchise out of New York and wanted to move on. Wu Tsai says without investors in the market, she jumped at a chance nobody else wanted.

“We decided to take a look at it seriously, and we decided that it was a premium asset that had high scarcity value and decided that it was a little bit like owning a Picasso,” Wu Tsai said.

“If a Picasso comes along and you really love it, it’s scarce. We looked at it the same way.”

Wu Tsai started creating her own masterpiece shortly thereafter.

“The first thing we did was bring the team back to New York City to play at the Barclays Center, much closer to the fans. And then we started to invest in the team. We built a state-of-the-art locker room, and we invested in our performance team, and over four years, through drafts, through trades, and free agency, we assembled a team of stars,” she said.

“It all really culminated in a trip that I took to Turkey in January of 2023 to recruit (Liberty star center) Brianna Stewart. She was pivotal to our success, and without her, we wouldn’t be the franchise that we are today,” she admitted.

“Signing her gave other players the confidence to sign with us, and after she came and brought along some other stars, it allowed us to start to win. We made it to the Finals last year. This year, we’re the number one seed.”

Interest in the Brooklyn-based team is undeniable as women’s sports continue to reach unprecedented heights in the United States.

In the early days after Wu Tsai bought the team, she says in-game attendance averaged around two-three thousand fans on any given night. Now, there are regularly more than 12,000.

“Our Liberty fans are incredibly diverse and engaged. When I look at our fan base, I think everyone comes very humbly. The amount of engagement fans have with the players on the court and also just with all of the other entertainment that we have going on is really something that I’ve never felt before.

“We really do try to create a culture of inclusion and belonging and a place where everyone feels welcome. I definitely feel like we have the most inclusive fan base in all of professional sports today,” Wu Tsai told CNN last month.

All of this has made Liberty games one of the premier summer destinations in New York City.

“I think people come for the basketball, but they are also entertained from beginning to end. Our fans see themselves in the entertainment.

“Our (dance team) Timeless Torches and Ellie (the Elephant) – she is more than a mascot, she is truly an entertainer. She really engages the crowd, and it all builds by the fourth quarter when we have something called the Ellie Stomp and the Ellie Wave,” she said while smiling.

Wu Tsai is now tasked with scaling interest in Liberty while keeping games accessible for everyone.

“Attracting new fans is very important. It’s essential for the league to continue to grow. At the same time, we have to recognize our oldest and most loyal fans because we wouldn’t be where we are today without them,” Wu Tsai acknowledged.

“It is our responsibility to make sure the franchise is financially sound so we can continue to invest in the franchise and tap into the entire business potential of the WNBA. This year, because there was a surge in demand, we have a waitlist for our courtside tickets.

“There’s also a surge in secondary market ticket pricing, and so we had to raise our prices to just respond to those market forces.

“But at the same time, in response to that, we decided to open up our upper bowl next year for every game and the get-in price is going be $25. We also made sure that when we put in these price increases, we had caps on the price increase for our most loyal and longest-tenured subscribers.”

Wu Tsai says balancing growth and affordability ultimately reflects how far the league has come and where it can go from here.

“Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese, Kamilla Cardoso, Cameron Brink…a lot of these players became household names even before they entered the (WNBA) draft. They are a highly skilled rookie class and brought a lot of attention and eyeballs to the WNBA.

“The thing with Caitlin is that people come to watch her style of play. The logo three is basically the equivalent of our dunk. We don’t need to dunk. We have the logo three. That kind of basketball people wanna see, and they want to see it in person. It is because of her and the entire rookie class that we saw such an upswing in viewership,” she said.

That increased viewership has helped Wu Tsai spearhead what could become the most successful franchise U-turn in WNBA history, perhaps in the history of women’s sport.

She believes the franchise valuation could eventually hit the billion mark.

But she is also a champion for women off the court. Wu Tsai is breaking research barriers in the study of female athletes.

Three years ago, she launched the breakthrough Human Performance Alliance, which has flipped the script on the study of women, and, ultimately, society’s collective health.

She said, “A few years ago, we started the Human Performance Alliance, which is a six-university scientific research collaboration.  Almost everything we know about human health comes from studying disease, so we created this Alliance to change that approach, and we study peak performance in elite athletes.”

Wu Tsai says the hope is to uncover the biological principles underlying human performance and apply them to everyone so that people worldwide can achieve optimal health and well-being.

“A major initiative of the Human Performance Alliance is the female athlete program. It was important to do this because I think less than 25% of all health studies are done on females even though, of course, we’re about 50% of the population,” Wu Tsai noted.

“Our approach is to take a more holistic view of female athletes.

“We study hormonal cycles, we study nutritional needs, and we even study some psychological stressors that might arise in team sports settings. Females suffer ACL tears at two times the rate of men. This Alliance tries to uncover why that is and then develop preventive measures to make sure that that doesn’t happen.

“It’s really rewarding to be a part of something that’s gonna address an important need that we have.” Wu Tsai says.

Through her philanthropic foundation, Wu Tsai has donated more than $200 million to advance this research, with the ultimate goal of transforming our collective health globally by studying information on human performance and what contributes to peak performance in athletes. She is also involved in helping to fund philanthropic programs in the Brooklyn community, where the Liberty continues to shine.

“Our teams play in New York City and so they belong to New York City and to Brooklyn because we play in Brooklyn,” she said.

“And so, it’s always been important to me to build up and support our community. Soon after we bought the team, Covid hit so one of the first things we did was provide no and low interest rate loans to businesses, particularly Black businesses who were hit hardest by Covid.

“We’ve given out $2.8 million in loans to 98 businesses.  We also started a tech accelerator, which we call BK-XL, and we provide seed funding to start-ups mostly run by underrepresented founders.  So far, we have funded 18 start-ups over two summers in Brooklyn.”

Wu Tsai has also coordinated boot camps with Cornell University and Yale University students to develop a block chain and AI curriculum for Brooklyn public high school students and started a program with the Department of Education in New York to fund an art curriculum based on the life and philosophy of Jean Michel Basquiat, one of Brooklyn’s most well-known painters.

“This curriculum is taught in 75 schools and to 4000 school kids in New York City. At the end of the program, selected students are invited to display their work in the atrium and Barclay Center. We have an exhibition that’s open to the students, their parents, their teachers, and the community,” Wu Tsai said.

“It’s wonderful to see everything come together. Ultimately, we want people to feel included and a sense of belonging not only in the community, but all of that extends into the arena. I think all of it really comes together full circle and that’s very gratifying.”

The Liberty will aim to win the franchise’s first title beginning Thursday for Game 1 of the WNBA Finals.

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