Cleveland launches formal bid for a WNBA team
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Dan Gilbert, proprietor of the Cleveland Cavaliers, needs to yell a WNBA team to Northeast Ohio.
Rock Leisure Team, the umbrella company that hosts Gilbert’s sports actions and entertainment properties, told CNBC on Wednesday that it intends to put up a proposal for a WNBA growth team.
WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert has said she hopes to develop the league to 16 females’s basketball groups by 2028. As females’s sports actions continues its development trajectory, a host of cities are coming to the table with their pitches.
Officers in Cleveland — dwelling to reliable groups savor the NBA’s Cavaliers, NFL’s Browns, MLB’s Guardians and American Hockey League’s Monsters — imagine they are neatly-positioned for a females’s franchise.
“Now we accept as true with this unfamiliar convergence of infrastructure, tradition and these foundational pieces that we predict obtain Northeast Ohio, and particularly Cleveland, a wide opportunity to develop from a WNBA perspective,” Nic Barlage, Cleveland Cavaliers CEO, told CNBC.
To illustrate, he cited the Cavs recently announcing that they’re joining forces with the Cleveland Health center to create a brand contemporary Performance Heart to supply cutting-edge work coaching for every the Cavs and the general public. The Cavs additionally accept as true with an original apply facility in Independence, Ohio, which they said would be willing-made for a WNBA team.
Barlage said Cleveland additionally has a tune myth of passionate followers that increase their groups in correct times and corrupt.
“Cleveland is a genuine crazy sports actions metropolis,” said David Gilbert, CEO of the Cleveland Sports actions Commission. “It is a long way so carefully tied to the identity of the metropolis that is had, the last couple of generations, some tricky times.”
The Cleveland Cavs are off to their excellent initiate in history, at the moment sitting in first set in the Eastern Conference with a 15-1 myth.
Engelbert spoke about growth last month ahead of the WNBA Finals, pronouncing there’s no shortage of opponents for an growth team, with at the least 10 cities expressing pastime.
Doable suitors additionally consist of Denver, Miami, Milwaukee, St. Louis and Philadelphia.
“The correct files is now we accept as true with slightly about a query from many cities,” she said. “I feel the more of us are gazing the WNBA and seeing what we’re rising here and seeing these avid gamers and the product on the court docket, more of us are attracted to having it of their cities.”
With Englebert leading the type, the league has already seen some growth. The WNBA’s 13th franchise, the Golden Pronounce Valkyries, will kick off their season in 2025, and Toronto and Portland, Oregon, had been awarded the 14th and 15th franchises earlier this year.
“We’re now not in a huge bolt. We’d prefer to yell it in in ’27 or no later than ’28,” Engelbert said on the topic of a timeline for a 16th team.
The league said it is a long way calling at a wide vary of things in a metropolis when it involves selecting an growth team, together with apply companies and products, a dedicated ownership neighborhood, demographics and Fortune 500 corporations.
The WNBA has tapped investment financial institution Allen & Company to steer the growth path of. Coincidentally, Allen and Company additionally helped Gilbert when he purchased the the Cavs in 2005.
Cleveland’s case
This would now not be Cleveland’s first foray in the WNBA. The metropolis hosted one among the WNBA’S fashioned franchises, the Cleveland Rockers from 1997-2003. The team folded after seven seasons as the team’s proprietor, Gordon Gund, cited low attendance and said he can also now not get a means to obtain the team worthwhile.
“I with out a doubt accept as true with invested in it now for seven years searching to seek out a industry model for it to work in our marketplace,” Gund said in 2003. “The followers we had had been very titillating and with out a doubt supportive. We merely did now not accept as true with ample.”
The league became as soon as unable to seek out contemporary owners, and Gund turned his consideration to the Cavs and their pursuit of Cleveland’s hometown hero LeBron James.
Yet, so much has changed in the 20-plus years for the reason that Rockers folded, as the WNBA and females’s sports actions are seeing main upticks.
The WNBA last month delivered its most-watched finals sport in 25 years. The league additionally saw followers popping out in droves, giving the WNBA its excellent attendance myth in 22 years. And it be translating to the pockets — merchandise sales are up more than 600% from 2023.
Cleveland itself has additionally long previous thru a resurgence, too, in section kicked off by James’ return to the metropolis abet in 2014. The Washington Put up Editorial Board even revealed a portion in January calling Cleveland “The United States’s excellent instance of turning round a death downtown.”
“We firmly imagine we sit down at the nexus of the Mediterranean of the Midwest and there is no causes why we are able to now not accept as true with and manifest your entire identical opportunities that a few of the increased development markets which that you just would possibly perhaps well well perhaps perhaps also merely peek in the southern half of the nation accept as true with,” Barlage said.
Since 1994, the Cavs, Monsters and Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse accept as true with generated $6.5 billion in whole output, in conserving with the Cavs 2024 Neighborhood Influence Order. The Cavs Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse hosted more than 150 events this year, together with the 2024 NCAA Girls’s Closing Four, helping to stimulate millions for the metropolis.
“I merely with out a doubt feel terribly confident that, must aloof a team be given to Cleveland, in section thanks to the metropolis, in section thanks to what sports actions methodology here, in section thanks to the Cavs, it would straight away be a huge success,” Gilbert said.
