New York Liberty valued at nearly half a billion

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Welcome to Yahoo Finance Sports Report, a unique look at the business of sports brought to you by Yahoo Finance and Yahoo Sports. I’m your host, Joe Pompeiano, and I’m here to coach you through the financial game. Today we’ve got Golden State Valkyries’ president Jess Smith joining the show to talk about the team’s first season in the WNBA. We’ll also be joined by Liverpool’s chief commercial officer, Ben Lotte, to discuss the business behind the 2025 Premier League champions. Let’s huddle up and get right into it.We are kicking this week off with PO’s Playbook. Why take a look at some of the biggest headlines in sports that you and your portfolio need to know? First up, WrestleMania 42 will no longer take place in New Orleans at the Caesar Superdome come 2026. According to a joint statement from the Greater New Orleans Sports Foundation and TKO, the parent company of WWE. WrestleMania 42 is being rescheduled to a different host city for 2026, and New Orleans will host the event on a later date in the future.WWE confirmed last week that New Orleans will host a premium live event, Money in the Bank in August 2026. Now WWE hasn’t yet announced which city will replace New Orleans as the host for WrestleMania 42, but given how massive WrestleMania has become, there will be no shortage of suitors looking to host the event. WrestleMania 41, which took place at Las Vegas’s Allegiance Stadium earlier this year, had nearly 125,000 fans attend the two-night spectacle with the largest gate in WWE history.Next, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell recently said that the league could eventually hold up to 16 international games each year. Goodell spoke about the idea at CNBC’s CEO Council summit last week, saying that the NFL could play 16 regular season games per season within the next 5 years if the league can expand its regular season to 18 games.The NFL began playing the International Series in 2007 with regular season games in London and has since expanded the series to other countries in recent years. In addition to the London games, the 2025 International Series will also feature games in Brazil, Ireland, Germany, and Spain, and.2026, the league will hold a regular season game in Melbourne, Australia. However, there’s also a media rights play to the NFL’s international strategy. The league is rumored to be preparing a new international series media rights package for future bidding, which could be an ideal product for a streamer like Netflix or Apple TV.Last up, the WNBA’s New York Liberty recently sold a minority stake in the franchise at a record valuation of $450 million. The $450 million valuation for the reigning WNBA champions is not only a WNBA record, but a record for all of women’s sports franchises overall. And according to multiple reports, Liberty sold a percentage share in the mid-teens to the franchise to multiple investors. The capital raise is expected to be put toward the team’s new $80 million.facility in Brooklyn, slated to open in 2027. Now the Liberty’s $450 million valuation underscores the skyrocketing investor interest in women’s sports. The Liberty were valued at just $130 million last year by Sportico. But what’s even crazier is that Clara Wuai and her husband Joe Tsai, who also owned the NBA’s Brooklyn Nets, bought the Liberty for just $15 million in 2019 and have seen their investment grow 30 times in value in just 6 years.This week I’m joined by Golden State Valkyries’ president Jess Smith to chat about the expansive team’s inaugural season in the WNBA. Jess, thank you so much for joining us today. Now, I know the WNBA season kicked off a few weeks ago and you guys were able to sell out your first game, which is a tremendous accomplishment for an expansion team. But if you could just talk me through how the team has been received in the Bay Area so far.

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It’s been unbelievable. The bay was clearly ready for this moment, and we knew that from the merchandise sales that we were receiving, the fellowship that we were receiving, but once we hit the court, it was a new level. Fans were walking in completely decked out in merch. We really weren’t sure if folks were going to be checking us out before becoming a fan, but it’s clear between the noise inside Chase Center and the merchandise, uh, being worn by our fans that everybody is ready for this moment.

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There’s this interestingownership dynamic here where the Golden State Warriors are obviously one of the NBA’s most successful franchises. You guys are able to leverage some of the infrastructure that they have there, but you’re also your own team as well. I know you guys have your own individual employees focusing on things like ticket sales and sponsorships and in stadium entertainment and things like that. One of the things that I thought was personally most interesting was the idea that only a small percentage of the season ticket holders actually came from existing Warriors fans.That’s important to me because it shows that you guys are growing the pie rather than taking some fans away from the Warriors. Maybe just talk a little bit about how you guys are targeting those fans, but also the overall picture of women’s basketball fandom within the Bay Area too.

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Absolutely, and it’s a great learning and we think we’re a great case study for how women’s sports is taking place with shared ownership with the men’s and women’s team that started with our branding when we had identified through data and some of my past experience that it would be a unique audience that was most drawn to build this, be all in, buy season tickets as that core fandom.And that’s the result that we saw, to your point with less than 5% of our over 10,000 season ticket holders crossing over to the same amount of season ticket holders with the Warriors. And so we are as Golden State, one legacy, to your point, like we have a specific way that we like to do things, we like to try toTo be great, the things that we do, we like to be thoughtful in the things that we do, and we certainly feel a part of that ecosystem and have a lot of to your point, infrastructure support in what we do. But to cater to a new fan, to bring in a new fan, we needed to make sure that we also have our own staff, right? So we haveTicket sales, suits, partnership, marketing, community, PR, everyone 100% of their time focused on growing the opportunity that is the Golden State Valkyries, and we’re seeing the results from that, whether it is from the tickets purchased, the partnerships that we have. I think one of the interesting thing in the partnership specific space, and that’s, you know, where I spent a lot of my background, is we do have a lot of shared partners that were in line that wanted to be part of this moment, but onunderstood that it was an opportunity to reach a unique audience in a market that they were already interested in being in in a big way, like that JPMorgan Chase, Kaiser Permanente, United Airlines, Racketton, and so forth. And now we’re unlocking people that are looking to reach this unique audience, right, in the Sephora of the world, Ali vitamins, etc. And so it’s really interesting to your point of how this is coming together, but it is a different core fandom.That we are catering to. So there’s really 3 segments of fans that we’re seeing come into what we’re building, and it’s not unlike what you’re seeing, drive a lot of the TV ratings that you’re seeing continue to increase, drive a lot of the ratings across the country, it’s not unique to the Bay Area.The first is that women sports fan. They have been waiting for an elite sports experience to invest in for a really, really long time. They’ve also been understudied, right? Because there hasn’t really necessarily been the data systems, the servicing of them, understanding their buying habits when you’re putting the right products in front of them. They’re a big audience that I think has been devalued for some, some subset of time, and we feelLike in the Bay Area, because that’s a strong audience already with the college basketball history and the fandom that you see in the Olympics and other sports, we’ve been really able to unlock and and bring them in as a part of our community and listen to them as we’re building, given they’re, they’re really, really important to us. The second is what we call that right believer. That’s who’s really funneling into women’s sports in all ways. That’s the20 to 35 year old diverse audience that wants to spend their money and their time on products that they believe in and that they believe will create a better tomorrow. And they’re having fun while doing it and following women’s sports, these incredible athletes, the teams, they like the lifestyle, merchandise, etc. And then a third, like, make no mistake, we would eventually love every Warriors fan to be a Valkyries fan, but that sports fan is also finding their way to us and vice versa, by the way, the Warriors wantThese Valkyries fans to eventually fall in love with the Warriors’ products. We talk about that often, but that’s our responsibility, right? We like to, you know, one of our things inside Golden State, you know, is that we build for all fans and future fans because we are doing our best to make sure that we are creating opportunities for fans to make their way into our ecosystem, whether it’s through buying tickets, merchandise, engaging with us on social, following a specific player, or otherwise. But it’s pretty calculated in that audience demographic.And within that, just to share as well, it is about 50% men and women right now, whether you’re looking at our season ticket holder base, followship or database. And I think that’s a really important note, uh, given that I think there’s been a lot of assumptions in this industry for a long time that it’s primarily female sports fans supporting it. There’s definitely more female sports fans supporting it and being the buyer than you traditionally see in men’s sports, but there’s a lot of men also making those buying decisions and being a part of what we’re building as well.

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And quickly, I’d love to just understand what sort of internal benchmarks you guys are tracking. Obviously, wins and losses are important, but on the business side, you’ve spent time building up Angel City, this property as well. What are you looking at when you’re determining success?

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That’s a great question. You know, I think there is something that drives this organization, there’s certainly something that drives me to want to be the best, but being the best is such a a specific term. For us, it’s not necessarily, you know,A checklist on a, on a list because there’s not necessarily something to compare ourselves to. So it’s making sure that we are relentless in building this in a way that we know we can build what’s possible, that we can cater to fans, that we can keep listening. We’re also very, very aware that the Bay Area loves to set the example. They love to be the first adopter, right? We have a really special market that wants to buy in from day one that allows us to test a lot ofThings and make sure that we’re getting some things right. But we’re also a year one brand. So for us, it’s about creating a can’t miss experience. It’s about getting the world to watch and take note of what we’re doing and really thinking about that long term success, whether it’s the long term partnership model, how we activate those, what we do differently there, that we think will be really fun, or the ticketed experience and making sure that every game day is a can’t miss opportunity.

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Amazing. Well, you guys are off to a great start. Thanks so much for joining us, Jess.Thanks for

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having me.

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We’ve made it to the one on one, a conversation where I get to break down news and sports with the key player in the industry. This week, we’re talking to Liverpool FC Chief commercial Officer Ben Lotte.This interview was filmed before Liverpool’s championship parade, but in light of the events that happened on Monday, our thoughts are with everyone impacted by the tragedy. Here’s my conversation with Ben. Ben, thank you so much for joining us. I think the most logical place to start is, what is being a chief commercial officer entail on a day to day basis? What are you focused on when it comes to Liverpool, uh, on the revenue side and driving new business for the club?

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Yeah, thanks, Joe, thanks for having me. Um, my role is predominantly exactly what it says, right? It’s to drive commercial revenue into this football club. We have a business model, which is um.A virtuous circle, which on pitch performance drives commercial success and commercial success drives on pitch success. And so really my job and the team that I, uh, that I manage on a day to day basis is focused on the latter, driving as much commercial revenue as we can to, uh, to make sure our football operations team have, uh, the right funds to, to drive the on-pitch success that we’ve seen, obviously, this season, and, uh, winning our 20th Premier League.

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Yeah, and I’d love to talk about that cycle, right? You mentioned how uh revenue can drive on pitch success and vice versa, and they kind of feed off of each other. I’m curious how uh how winning the Premier League, uh, the title has impacted the business of the club over the last few months.

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Yeah, no look, winning the Premier League obviously has a, a huge impact from everyone connected with the club. I think first and foremost.You know, congratulations to Arag, the team, the squad, the staff, the fans, and anyone associated with the club partners as well and um.Look, I thinkI’d be lying if I stood here right now and said that obviously winning the Premier League doesn’t have a commercial impact, of course it does. But, you know, what we’ve managed to do over the last few years, decades since, uh, 15 years since FSG bought the club in 2010, is build a really successful commercial team off the pitch as well. I actually did an interview probably this time last year when uh when Jurgen Klopp.Um, announced that he was stepping down as manager of of Liverpool Football Club, and one of the questions was, will this impact the club commercially? And my perhaps brave answer at the time was no.And that still stands today, simply because I believe we’ve built such strong foundations where, as we’ve said, commercial success drives on pitch success. I think that’s reflected in the end of year accounts that you saw, um, that we, that we announced a few months ago.2/3 of our revenue now is what we call controllable revenue, so.It’s revenue that we can absolutely control, we can impact, we can influence, it’s not the media revenue, ultimately which comes and fluctuates based on, on merit in the league. So look, I believe we’ve got really strong foundations to kick on now.And uh of course, winning the Premier League is gonna have huge uh commercial impact for us, but equally, you know, we’ve built strong foundations to to make sure we have commercial success anyway.

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All right, we’ve got to take a quick break, but we’ll be back with more of my conversation with Ben Lotte right after this.Welcome back to Yahoo Finance Sports Report. I’m your host, Joe Pompeiano. I’m here with Liverpool FC Chief commercial Officer, Ben Latte. You mentioned FSG for those that don’t know as Fenway Sports Group. They’re sort of a portfolio or holding company for a bunch of different sports assets, both here in the US, butAlso internationally as well. Liverpool is one of them, but so are the Boston Red Sox, Pittsburgh Penguins, they own a NASCAR team and some other assets as well. I’m curious just what what the dynamic is like working under that umbrella as opposed to being sort of a more independent club might be.

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Yeah. I mean that first and foremost, our ownership group have been amazing custodians of of the football club. They’re committed to the club, and I think one of the great things about FSG is they do what they say.And uh one of the first things they did in 2010 when they bought the club was.Really focus on three main areas. One was obviously football performance, making sure that we’ve got the right, um, football operations team to drive on pitch success.Second was the investment in the infrastructure related to the football club.And, uh, thirdly was investing in the, in the team behind the team, the commercial team to drive and, and to continue the, the virtuous cycle that we’ve talked about. I think clearly you’ve seen sort of what’s happened in the last few weeks in terms of, of lifting the Premier League trophy.Credit to the football operations team. Um, you know, we’ve really driven a hugely successful, uh, football club. The infrastructure, obviously that does impact the, the, the sporting success as well, making sure we’ve got the right facilities, um, investing in the stadium, we’ve, or FSG have, uh, invested in the main stand, 2016 that opened to car capacity up to 54,000. Um.Most recently, the Anfield Road End, taking our capacity up to 61,000. They’ve invested in the ACSA Training Centre, and you set the art facility for the men’s team. And then most recently, the, uh, the AXA Melwood, um, buying back Melwood, uh, for the women’s team as well. So, um, look, they’ve, they’ve really invested in the right areas. Obviously, sort of behind the scenes as well, the, the business side of, of the football club really invested in areas which are going to make an impact to drive the commercial revenue needed.And, um, you know, long may that continue, sort of that that’s not gonna stop from, from our perspective.

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Uh, for people that are just joining, we’re talking to Liverpool’s chief commercial officer, Ben Laddy. Ben, one of the things that I’d love to get your perspective on is just the globalization of sports assets over the last number of years that we’ve seen. I think people have noticed at this point that whether it’s the NFL trying to hold more international games and grow their fan base there or form of the.Coming to the US. This is obviously happening at a team level as well, whether you’re the Yankees or Liverpool, Barcelona, AC Milan, all of these clubs and these teams and these leagues are trying to expand to different parts of the globe to grow their revenue streams. Is this something that you guys have decided to focus on over the last number of years? And if you could just explain to me a little bit more of the strategy, but also how that strategy is played out too.

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Yeah, look, the Liverpool Football Club’s a global football club. We’ve got fans in every corner of the world and, um, you know, for us as a football club, we need to engage with that fan base, we need to service that fan base.Um, obviously there’s only so often we can take the team to different markets and, and play in front of, uh, packed out stadiums as we did in the US last year. Um, we’ve announced that we’re going to Asia this year for, for our tour to Hong Kong and to, uh, Japan, Yokohama. um.So yeah, look for us, you know, making sure that we can um uh service our fans, engage with our fans in every corner of the world’s really important. US is a really important market for the football club.Uh, 24 million fans in the US, 70% increase, increase since 2018. Uh, the number one fastest growing US fan base of any Premier League club, so we’re really proud of that, that growth and the trajectory that we, we see ourselves on at the moment.And some like crazy stats for you to, to just sort of uh um soak up and take in.Our mathematical Premier League win against Tottenham Hotspur generated 63.2 million engagements on our social channels, and to put that into perspective, when the Eagles won the Super Bowl, that generated 14.5 million engagements.So nearly 4.5 times the engagement from the Super Bowl, from Liverpool winning mathematically, uh, a few weeks ago against Tottenham. So that just gives you sort of a sense of the reach of this football club. That’s obviously only in the US market alone, but, um, you know, we’re really proud of sort of what we’re doing on an international basis and how we can take this football club further.

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Yeah, it’s amazing. I think in myself included, sometimes we get kind of a cocooned inside the US market and we think that it’s so big, but when you expand outside internationally, football is a global sport, the most global sport, and you guys are reaching billions of people all over the world. So those are really impressive numbers. Another thing I want to touch on is just the balance between.Maximizing commercial revenue, right? At the end of the day, you guys are judged on the P&L and how you perform financially. The pitch is obviously an important piece of that, but also the fans are an important piece of that, right? So you’re, you’re probably, I imagine, constantly going back and forth between what’s good for the club’s balance sheet, but also what’s good for the fans. One of the things that I would give as an example is the decision for the club to freeze ticket prices next season.I know this has been done a number of times over the last number of years, uh, but essentially you’re freezing the ticket prices. You’re saying we’re not going to increase them. Fans are obviously happy about that because they’re seeing in different leagues and different stadiums across the world, how much tickets have appreciated in value over the last number of years. Talk to me just sort of through that dynamic of keeping fans happy and engaged, while also making sure that the club is growing financially.

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Yeah, look, it’s a fine balancing act, right? And, um, look, I would like to think we’ve got it right over the years, and certainly since, since FSG bought the club in 2010. Um, yeah, like you, you referenced the, the price freeze. Obviously we’re very pleased and proud to be able to once again announce a, a freeze on the general admission tickets for next season.Um, and I guess just some context, that means that the, the, the price ranges on the cop, our most famous stand within Anfield remain the same as they were when FSG first set ticket prices after taking ownership in 2010. So the cheapest tickets 39 pounds, most expensive, 45 pounds. Exactly the same as 15 years ago. So the, the, I think we’re, we’re proud that we’ve been able to do that again.It is a fine balancing act. Costs are increasing, as we know. Football’s getting more expensive. Um, but anyone that knows anything about football will know how passionate Liverpool fans are. We want to maintain the atmosphere in the stadium, the atmosphere that they generate, obviously gets behind the team and, and, and drives the team forward for, for footballing success as well. So, look, it’s not an easy decision, it’s a fine balancing act, but, um, yeah, we’re, we’re sort of proud after meaningful engagement that we had with our supporters board.Um, that we came to that conclusion and, um, we will continue to engage with our supporters board on that issue and that topic over, over the next few years as well.

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Yeah, ticket prices are always a passionate topic, that’s for sure. Ben, thank you so much for joining us. It’s been awesome to see how much the club has grown financially under your leadership, and I’m sure there will be more to come.Thank you, Joe.The clock is running down here, but we have just enough time for some final buzz. So let’s talk about the UEFA Champions League final. The UEFA Champions League final takes place this weekend between Leagues One’s Paris Saint Germain and Serie A’s Inter Milan. The Champions League is considered the world’s greatest competition in professional soccer, pitting Europe’s top clubs against each other in a season-long tournament. And the winner of this weekend’s final will notbe considered the best team in European soccer, but will win big financially as a result. Now, UEFA, the official governing body of European soccer, changed its Champions League format for the 2024 25 campaign to expand the competition from 32 to 36 teams. UEFA said the format was changed to increase competitive balance and raise the stakes for the tournament to include more of Europe’s top clubs. However,This change also upped the ante when it comes to prize money, with the total price pool increasing 24% to $2.7 billion. Now, the UEFA prize money payout system is very complex, with multiple factors contributing to the total money clubs can earn throughout the tournament. However, to put it simply, the Champions League winner earns prize money based on four factors. First, their performance in this year’s Champions League competition.Second, the UEFA coefficient ranking from historical performances in UEFA tournaments over the past 10 years. Third, broadcast revenue from shares of the Champions League me rights package. And 4th, the money the Champions League winner earns from automatic qualifiers into future competitions like the UEFA Super Cup and FIFA Club World Cup. So when you add up all of those contributing factors, this year’s Champions League winner will walk away with over $180 million. This number is a massive.To windfall for the winner and can have a huge impact on the club’s business, especially when it comes to spending out player contracts and transfers. Winning the Champions League also helps increase the global brand for the tournament’s winner, as the champion automatically qualifies for the 2026 Champions League, the UEFA Super Cup, the FIFA Intercontinental Cup, and the FIFA Club World Cup. So whether you’re a fan of PSG or Inter Milan, remember that your team is aligned for a huge payout this weekend, not just Champions League glory.We’re all out of time, so it’s officially game over for this week. Thank you so much to Jess, Ben, and for all of you for joining us. Please make sure to scan the QR code below to follow Yahoo Finance podcast for more videos and expert insights, and catch us every Thursday wherever you get your podcast. I’m your host, Joe Pomliano. See you next time.

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