Business of Sports: WNBA without Caitlin

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Welcome to Business of Sports, where this week we take a deep dive into the WNBA without Caitlin Clark and the fight with its own players. We also look at what's going on with Apollo's push into sports (check out our scoop here), and we interview Valérie Tétreault, director of Montreal's National Bank Open and only woman to run a top pro tennis tournament, about the loneliness of the long distance tennis player.

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WNBA 2.0

With the WNBA All-Star Game set for Saturday in Indianapolis, home of the Indiana Fever and Caitlin Clark, it's a good moment to check in on the league. If last season was about finding out how big the Clark Effect would be, this one has been about the ripple effects.

When Clark missed five games with a quad strain early on, it offered a real-world experiment on what happens to TV ratings without her. At first glance, the results suggested that the league remains heavily dependent on its biggest star. As USA Today reported at the time, viewership for all nationally televised WNBA games fell by 55% during her absence, while Fever games dropped from an average of 1.8 million before her injury to about 850,000 while she was out.

Clark, once again, proved herself uniquely able to draw a crowd, but the numbers also told another story. The May 30th game between the Fever and Connecticut Sun on ION, for instance, delivered the largest audience ever on the network for a game that didn't involve Clark, according to Sports Media Watch, while a primetime game on CBS against the Chicago Sky was one of the ten most-watched WNBA games of the last two decades despite Clark's absence. So while the audience more or less doubles for any game with Clark on the court, the baseline is also significantly higher than before she arrived.

The WNBA is clearly on growth trajectory that goes beyond Caitlin Clark. Photographer: Ronald Martinez/Getty Images North America

The basic premise of league commissioner Cathy Engelbert has been that Clark fans will become WNBA fans once they discover the quality of the competition on offer. And that seems to be happening. "It can't just be about Caitlin," Engelbert told us before last season. Clark's injury-riddled season makes that all the more apparent. She suffered a (second) groin injury earlier this week and won't be on the court for the All-Star Game. It promises to be a strong draw without her.

Beyond this weekend, the WNBA is clearly on a growth trajectory that transcends any single player. In June, the league announced that it would be adding franchises in Cleveland, Detroit and Philadelphia by 2030, bringing the total to 18. Each of the three paid an expansion fee of $250 million. When the league's newest team, the Golden State Valkyries, joined up in 2023 the fee was $50 million. Last year around this time, we learned that the WNBA's share of the 11-year, $76 billion TV deal for the NBA is about $200 million per season, part of a sixfold increase in its annual rights haul.

Whatever the underlying economics, and last year the WNBA collectively lost about $50 million according to the Washington Post, media companies and investors are clearly bullish on the future of the league. Which brings us to the looming labor fight.

Last October, the WNBA players union voted to opt out of the current collective bargaining agreement two years early. If the two sides can't reach a new deal by the end of October, there could be a work stoppage in 2026. So far, negotiations haven't gone well, at least according to the players. Phoenix Mercury forward Satou Sabally called the league's latest proposal a "slap in the face," while The New York Liberty's Breanna Stewart echoed her frustration. "They just kind of ignored everything we said," she told a reporter earlier this month.

The two sides met again on Thursday, this time with Clark and many more in the room. Other WNBA newcomers who were in the meeting include Angel Reese and Paige Bueckers. Veterans included Stewart, Kelsey Plum and Nneka Ogwumike. In total the meeting had more than 40 players, the highest in-person turnout in union history, according to the WNBPA.

To say that the players and the league remain far apart would be an understatement. WNBPA executive director Terri Jackson described the talks as "spirited conversations." The WNBA did not comment and likely won't until a new deal is done. Players feel that the league's proposed revenue sharing plan limits their ability to participate in future growth.

After the meeting, a union spokesperson shared a statement saying that "short changing the working women who make the business possible stalls growth" and that it was "committed to the fight" for a "transformational CBA."

The two sides will meet again soon but at the current rate, you should expect a lockout. Let's see what Engelbert says before the game on Saturday.

-- Ira Boudway & Randall Williams

ICYMI

The NBA has begun the process to expand for the first time in more than two decades, with the league office tasked to do "an in-depth analysis of all the issues around expansion both economic and non-economic", according to Commissioner Adam Silver.
The owners of Premier League team Burnley FC have struck a deal with the Chinese toy-making backers of RCD Espanyol de Barcelona SAD, with the two football clubs becoming part of a new multi-club structure.
Sporting Lisbon is working with JPMorgan Chase & Co. on a plan to raise at least €100 million ($117 million) in debt in the coming months, according to people familiar with the matter.
Atlas Fútbol Club, a Guadalajara-based team, is being put up for sale by its owners to comply with rules regarding multi-team ownership, according to people familiar with the matter.

Apollo's Sporting Moonshot

Hi, it's Silas. I cover private credit. This week there was a lot of attention on private capital giant Apollo and its bid to buy a stake in Atlético Madrid.

How this investment plays out is still to be seen. But the possible deal in Spain was hiding something potentially much more significant: our scoop that Apollo is considering launching a permanent capital vehicle for sports finance.

For several years now, Wall Street players such as Elliott, Oaktree and Ares have found novel ways of tapping into the boom in sports finance. New-York listed Apollo's introduction could perhaps be the most seismic, given its size and expertise in complex financing.

Sporting Lisbon celebrate winning the Taca de Portugal in May. Not an Apollo fund manager in sight. Photographer: Carlos Costa/Getty Images

The New-York listed investor, which manages about $785 billion of assets, is the second largest alternative asset manager globally. It has also built a reputation creating large, complex financing structures for companies. Last month, the firm agreed to help Electricite de France SA raise as much as £4.5 billion ($6.1 billion) in private bond placements to fund the construction of the Hinkley Point C.

Apollo and sport already have plenty of historical overlap. Take Josh Harris, an Apollo co-founder who left in 2022, he's now the owner of the NFL's Washington Commanders. Then there's Tony Ressler, another Apollo co-founder who later co-founded Ares Management, he's the main guy behind the NBA's Atlanta Hawks.

It's unclear how much an Apollo sports vehicle would target US teams and leagues. A few US leagues, like the NFL, have rules against investors in areas like sports betting owning team stakes.

Apollo's already done some sports deals, like lending money to soccer teams such as Sporting Lisbon and Nottingham Forest. They've also looked into "transfer financing," which is basically when soccer clubs sell future transfer fee payments for upfront cash to help with player deals.

Our man in Madrid, Thomas, tells me that right now, Apollo is looking at striking a deal with Atlético Madrid. The Spanish football club is in talks with a number of funds to raise money to help finance a major redevelopment project next to its stadium. One of the options on the table also contemplates a capital increase so that the potential investor may take a small stake in the club.

Football finance may be about to get much more complicated.

The Loneliness of a Long Distance Tennis Player

Hey, it's Carrington. If you've ever watched an episode of Break Point on Netflix, then you know how mentally and physically challenging tennis can be. (Or you could ask Bill Ackman.)

As a former pro tennis player, Valérie Tétreault knows what that's like. And since becoming director of Montreal's National Bank Open in 2022, she's pushed to incorporate mental health awareness into the tournament. It's part of a broader effort to evolve and expand a tourney that dates back to 1881, making it the sport's third-oldest event.

Valérie Tétreault is trying to address mental health in tennis. Source: Tennis Canada

I recently talked to Tétreault, 37, about mental health and being the only woman to run a top tennis tournament. The NBO begins play next weekend.

The NBO will be hosting a panel with men's players on mental health. It's put on similar events on the women's side. Why the emphasis on men's health this year?

It was always our intention to make sure that we could create a platform to have those conversations with both the women and the men athletes to make sure that we weren't feeding a sentiment that mental health issues are more present on the woman's side than on the men's side.

We just needed a little bit more time to create that trust and to talk this through with the ATP [Association of Tennis Professionals that oversees the men's game] to find the same openness that we have found with the WTA [Women's Tennis Association].

Tennis is known for being a lonely sport. What advice do you have for players trying to preserve their mental health?

When you don't necessarily have the financial resources to be traveling with a full team and you're traveling on your own, you need to make sure that you have the right people around you so that you find some sort of balance between tennis and life.

Montreal's National Bank Open has been expanded to a 12-day event this year. Source: Tennis Canada

The expansion of the tournament to 12 days from a week will boost revenue. You plan to reach pay equity by 2027 with women's prize money equaling men's. As a retired player, why is that important to you?

I stopped playing in 2010 for different reasons, but one of them was the fact that I was ranked around 100 in the world. Knowing that my potential would probably bring me to stay close to that ranking and that at the end of the year, I'd break even or even lose a little bit of money, I didn't feel like it was necessarily the best decision.

I'm happy to see that prize money is increasing. I think it gives the opportunity to more young girls to dream of one day being able to really live from their sport.

This year's tournament will include an additional week of new programming. What's the strategy behind that?

We really wanted to make sure that anyone who came before and will be coming back this year, will feel the difference, will feel like the tournament is entering a new era. That's what we promised a year ago so that was the big work that we had to do this year.

You're the only woman to run a top pro tennis tournament. Who do you turn to for professional advice?

When I got the role in Montreal, it made me realize I never necessarily saw myself as being the first woman to do something. But recently I've been connected to a couple of women who are quite involved in sports in Canada, and I find that feeling of being stronger together is nice. So being able to share a little bit on our journeys, our challenges.

What do you want your legacy to be?

My goal is to be driven by my values in life, the ones that I cherish. And to try to make the pathway that I walked in a little bit bigger and a little bit more obvious for the next players.