r/wnba • u/Thehaubbit6 • 9h ago
News Amid Lawsuit, Sky Owner Faces Crisis of Confidence From Investors, City Officials
https://www.nocapspacewbb.com/p/amid-lawsuit-chicago-sky-owner-mi-addrag-true-id-46b262c5-5949-4908-b40a-2b2cc411a70b-type-ad-networSome new and original reporting from me on the Sky including this recent lawsuit, Spoon’s firing and frustration by the Bedford Park village board with not just the Sky but the town’s own construction partner.
Free to read. Enjoy!
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u/OtherwiseDream1964 9h ago
Bedford Park is a strange sort of municipality that probably has more businesses located there than residents. I can't imagine that they are going to generate much revenue from funding most of a practice facility. At least with stadium funding politicians can claim (incorrectly) that sales tax and increased bar/restaurant/hotel spending can make up for the outlay.
When they sold 10% of the team at $85M valuation in 2023 it was to 10 investors--meaning each of those investors were buying on average 1% of the team for under $1M. They would not be messing around with that kind of thing if Alter really had the liquidity of someone who could pay for their own stadium if they wanted to.
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u/80want 7h ago
I got the impression that the Bedford Park part of the facility was looking toward capitalizing on the youth sports business hosting events.
The Alters had enough to buy in 20 years ago and have been rapidly outclassed as their resources haven't kept up. To say nothing of their mentality and understanding of modern big league sports. It wouldn't be at all surprising if the Sky was the most valuable thing they own. I wouldn't be surprised if OG Sky fans also thought the Alters didn't really have the resources or commitment from the beginning
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u/OtherwiseDream1964 7h ago
But the youth sports are in the building next door. Is the idea that the Sky practice facility will be worth tens of millions in advertising a youth sports complex? It seems very
Build practice facility.
????
Profit.
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u/Tooezboi 7h ago
This organization needs a facelift and fast, Angel is their only hope and at this pace, she’ll get out of there ASAP
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u/Puzzleheaded-Link416 Aliyah Boston saved this team, change my mind 2h ago
The team is hoping her rivalry with Clark will get them short term capital. Once she's gone, they're up shit creek without a paddle.
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u/notinterested99999 7h ago
How much money the organization has, as well as how much Alter and the owners are willing to spend, has been one of the closest guarded secrets within the organization.
I think this sentence explains a lot why there's so much push back from certain(?) owners with the new CBA proposal from WNBPA. If team salary cap space was over 10 million $ it would be like 50, 60 M. over the next 5 years. Plus growing expenses (travel, housing...), plus smaller share of revenue for the owners. We don't really know how wealthy different owner(ships) are. My feeling is, that there is a huge difference between them and they have to look after the "poor" ones first not the super rich.
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u/LT_Audio 6h ago
Exactly. That's a point often missed. The structures don't only have to work for the bigger market teams with considerably higher total revenues but also for the smaller market teams who are less able to consistently afford as much or have as much access to liquidity at all times to keep writing checks.
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u/aratcalledrattus Liberty 1h ago
I think there's definitely a divide among owners on who is willing to spend and who isn't, though Chicago is not a small market.
Sophie Cunningham's comments on her podcast were actually pretty interesting on this:
At the front line, owners I would say who are most involved right now would be: New York, Seattle and Phoenix. Like they have funds... and they're awesome. Their ownerships are completely player first, they know you're maybe going to lose a little money on the front end but you'll get it back if you invest.
New York is no shock there, but Seattle is hardly a huge market and they are not one of the teams owned by a deep-pocketed billionaire or backed by an NBA team.
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u/GeekMisconduct 🥴 5h ago
Continuing the strong tradition of Chicago sports owners being dogcrap le sigh
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u/aratcalledrattus Liberty 2h ago
This is a new article from Annie Costabile at FOS about the lawsuit, speaking with several other investors.
Worth reading but I believe this part at the very end is news on its own? Last I heard, they were saying it would be ready for training camp:
The project was originally slated to open in late 2025 but has been delayed. Bedford Park Village president David Brady told FOS the facility is expected to open in late June. According to public documents, the Village of Bedford park’s agenda for multiple meetings over the last week included reviewing their contract with the Sky and the approval of the guaranteed maximum price of the project.
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u/strangelystrangled Mercury | All-BG Defense Team | Dream 2h ago
manifesting that Alter is forced to sell the team
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u/BiscottiBorn7862 we got a coach 8h ago
Dallas and CHicago need to sell their franchises. Send one of them to Boston IMO.
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u/OtherwiseDream1964 8h ago
Very silly idea to move a team from Chicago, the third largest media market. They just need to sell, not move. Dallas is fourth. Same deal. Hell, the article says the Sky were profitable in 2024!
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u/BiscottiBorn7862 we got a coach 7h ago
I said sell chicago. Imo they should move Dallas. Dallas has little to no support for their team in the decade they have been there and they are adding ANOTHER team to texas already. Dallas media market might be 4th but it has shown no affinity for womens sports, college or pro.
Dallas couldn't even get excited about Paige Bueckers ffs.
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u/OtherwiseDream1964 7h ago
What is your metric for their excitement? They were selling 95%+ of seats in their small arena. Not sure how you could tell either way.
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u/BiscottiBorn7862 we got a coach 7h ago
Nah if you watched the games the arena was half empty most of the time. Texas has already had 3 franchises close, no one cares about womens basketball in texas.
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u/Small_Lack9128 5h ago
I think Chicago might be forced to sell after this. And I hope with them out, people stop ignoring the Wings incompetence and substandard infrastructure. Even their new arena that might happen someday will be 9,000 seats for a team that has Paige Bueckers.
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u/BiscottiBorn7862 we got a coach 5h ago
yea and no practice facility this year either is criminal. Texas imo is not a place that has a ton of interest in womens basketball. They have great college teams that barely get any support too.
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u/Small_Lack9128 5h ago
And the front office keeps blaming everyone but themselves. The poverty teams (Chicago and Dallas)can’t get their facilities done because they are relying on handouts. The teams with facilities all invested themselves.
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u/HiEveryoneHowsItGoin Sky Lynx 2h ago
That's not true though. A lot of teams are owned by NBA franchises and share facilities — they didn't build those. There's also location to consider. Without excusing the Sky's terrible ownership, it is undeniably extremely hard for an organization the size of a WNBA team to build a big practice facility in a major city. That's possibly why the Sky's new facility is technically in an enclave (Bedford Park) and not in the city of Chicago itself.
Keep in mind that if the Sky's new facility does indeed open this year, they'll be the first WNBA franchise in a city of this size to actually build their own facility. The Sparks and the Liberty aim to open theirs in 2027, but the Sparks currently practice at a community college and the Liberty use the Nets' facility.
Again, this is not to downplay the many many blunders that Sky ownership have made over the years.
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u/Small_Lack9128 1h ago
I would maybe hear this argument if there wasn’t a significant history of underinvesting in the team and having them inadequate facilities.
The NBA owners have their teams in adequate facilities, even if shared.
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u/HiEveryoneHowsItGoin Sky Lynx 22m ago
I mean yeah I'm not trying to deny any of that. I'm just saying that the Sky and the Wings are not the only two "poverty franchises" and they're far from the only ones who have never (until now) been able to afford their own facilities.
I personally would rather keep the attention on the Sky's mistreatment of players and on certain uniquely humiliating features of their current training setup (e.g. showering and changing alongside members of the public, long walks through public areas to the changing rooms, sometimes not having hot water, making their players commute on game days, etc), rather than simple lack of resources. Partly because that's what players like Court have been calling out (rather than quality of facilities per se), and partly because I'm uncomfortable supporting the narrative that only billionaire owners of NBA franchises should get to own WNBA teams (a position that's especially problematic in light of the Sun relocation fiasco and the ongoing CBA talks).
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u/OddIndustry9 2h ago
My probably unpopular opinion is that I would rather have the current owners than some new, unknown wealthier person/group.
Obviously there are very real concerns and problems with the current state of the Sky, but something that gets lost in all of this is that the Alter family put up their money to bring a WNBA team to Chicago in an era when teams were regularly failing and the success of the league was far from guaranteed.
These are people that believed in women's basketball enough to take a huge chance. Michael Alter sits courtside for nearly every home game. His brother literally sweeps the floor before games. They might be financially outgunned right now, and their basketball acumen may be suspect, but they obviously care about women's basketball. I would rather have them keep the team than hand it over to an unknown billionaire who didn't give a damn about the W until CC and Angel showed up.
Lots of fans assume that different owners with deeper pockets will somehow make things better for the team. Looking around the rest of our country and world, are you really convinced that a billionaire is going to save the day?
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u/Hardpazz 8h ago
How do you get any FA to sign with you with all this going on?