Liberty paid attendance

[tazmaz]

This article states last year the Liberty avged over 9,500 and only about 5,000 was paid attendance.
Also says Liberty is losing less money this year despite low attendance numbers since overhead is lower. Says costs were almost 20x as much per game at MSG.

Some WNBA teams downsizing arenas to save money, improve fan experience

 

[Fairfield Fan]

Huh, 20X more at The Garden. But doesn't MSG (correct me if I'm wrong) own The Garden, the Knicks, and the Liberty? And The Garden is available during the summer. Sounds to me as though MSG management were milking the Liberty for cash, overcharging them for the Garden venue, and then pretending that the the Liberty were losing money. Sounds like a form of transfer pricing: they get big rents for the Garden, reducing the bottom line for the Liberty.

Shouldn't a management team interested in growing the Liberty as a franchise want to give them a break by giving them appropriately priced rent for the off-season summer dates? Is management trying to support the Liberty by shunting them into a a crappy White Plains venue? Or give them an excuse to close it down?

Lots of questions about what's really going on behind the scenes...

 

[lne001]

It appears that your economic analysis is missing quite a bit, such as what does it cost out of pocket per event to open and staff 20,800 seat Madison Square Garden located in New York City versus 4,500 seat Westchester County Center in White Plains. I would suggest that the differential expenses for air conditioning, staffing and police presence alone are substantial.

Your love for the WNBA seems to have blinded you to the realities of running a real business. The actual owners do not have that luxury.

 

[j66kicker]

Huh, 20X more at The Garden. But doesn't MSG (correct me if I'm wrong) own The Garden, the Knicks, and the Liberty? And The Garden is available during the summer. Sounds to me as though MSG management were milking the Liberty for cash, overcharging them for the Garden venue, and then pretending that the the Liberty were losing money. Sounds like a form of transfer pricing: they get big rents for the Garden, reducing the bottom line for the Liberty.

Shouldn't a management team interested in growing the Liberty as a franchise want to give them a break by giving them appropriately priced rent for the off-season summer dates? Is management trying to support the Liberty by shunting them into a a crappy White Plains venue? Or give them an excuse to close it down?

Lots of questions about what's really going on behind the scenes...

Not that I think Dolan is a good guy, or cares about WBB - I don’t. But the opportunity cost of not having MSG available for profitable gigs is another consideration beyond just the out-of-pocket expense to hold an event there. They rent that place for big bucks.

 

[vtcwbuff]

This article states last year the Liberty avged over 9,500 and only about 5,000 was paid attendance.
Also says Liberty is losing less money this year despite low attendance numbers since overhead is lower. Says costs were almost 20x as much per game at MSG.

Some WNBA teams downsizing arenas to save money, improve fan experience

"Now WNBA teams are scaling back where they play. It seems that the perfect-sized venue for the WNBA as far as economics and fan experience is roughly an 8,000-seat arena such as the Mohegan Sun where Connecticut plays."

I guess the author was just too lazy to check the Mohegan Sun basketball seating capacity. According to their web site it is 9,373.

 

[Fairfield Fan]

It appears that your economic analysis is missing quite a bit, such as what does it cost out of pocket per event to open and staff 20,800 seat Madison Square Garden located in New York City versus 4,500 seat Westchester County Center in White Plains. I would suggest that the differential expenses for air conditioning, staffing and police presence alone are substantial.

Your love for the WNBA seems to have blinded you to the realities of running a real business. The actual owners do not have that luxury.

If MSG owns both companies, then it would be up to MSG to decide on how much it is going to charge the Liberty. If it wants to market and grow the Liberty fanbase, then why not absorb the higher cost of the Garden, and keep the Liberty there? Management of the Liberty and the Garden decided that they wanted to protect the Garden's bottom line, but not the Liberty's.

Seems to me that the made the decision to axe the Liberty, because they have no interest in actually boosting that franchise. Does the Garden really have so many events waiting to take up the Liberty's previous dates and times? Or is management simply shunting the Liberty out to White Plains to prepare them for either shutdown or sale?

 

[vtcwbuff]

If MSG owns both companies, then it would be up to MSG to decide on how much it is going to charge the Liberty. If it wants to market and grow the Liberty fanbase, then why not absorb the higher cost of the Garden, and keep the Liberty there? Management of the Liberty and the Garden decided that they wanted to protect the Garden's bottom line, but not the Liberty's.

Seems to me that the made the decision to axe the Liberty, because they have no interest in actually boosting that franchise. Does the Garden really have so many events waiting to take up the Liberty's previous dates and times? Or is management simply shunting the Liberty out to White Plains to prepare them for either shutdown or sale?

The Liberty are for sale (and have been for months) and so far no takers. Probably because they are a crappy investment. According to an AP report in USA Today "MSG said in a statement to the AP that it has "lost money every year since its inception and cumulative losses exceed $100 million." It sounds to me that MSG has been eating the Liberty's red ink and they've finally had enough.

FF what you don't seem to understand is that the Liberty and the rest of the WNBA is a business, not a social experiment. The teams and the players are entitled to squat. Businesses either make a profit for their investors or they die.

 

[Purduke]

If MSG owns both companies, then it would be up to MSG to decide on how much it is going to charge the Liberty.

I don't believe they do. At least they didn't in 2015 when they negotiated the facility rental with the county commissioners to play their D-league games there.

Additional commentary on the plight of the franchise\league …. Dolan is willing to pay a third party to avoid incurring the incremental cost\opportunity loss of playing the games in his own building.