Following the recent sale of minority stakes, Storm owners valued the WNBA franchise at a league-record $151 million, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
The valuation is about 15 times the sale price of several previously sold WNBA teams and drastically exceeds modest league valuations.
In 2003, the Mohegan Tribal Gaming Authority bought the Connecticut Sun for $10 million, the WSJ reported citing an SEC filing. Two years later, Michael Alter reportedly paid $10 million for an expansion team in Chicago.
In 2019, Joe Tsai and Clara Wu Tsai reportedly spent between $10 million to $14 million for the New York Liberty.
And in 2021, Mark Davis purchased the Las Vegas for a little more than $2 million, according to The Athletic while Larry Gottesdiener bought the Atlanta Dream for an undisclosed amount.
It goes without saying that the $151 million is vastly different from the $1 million that Force 10 Hoops LLC, which included Seattle businesswomen Lisa Brummel, Ginny Gilder and Dawn Trudeau, spent in 2008 on Storm expansion fees.
The WSJ reports the Seattle owners did not have to pay the remaining balance because stipulations in the purchasing agreement were not met.
Recently, Storm owners sold stakes to 15 investors to help finance the Seattle Storm Center for Basketball Performance, a privately funded $64 million, 50,000 square-foot state-of-the-art practice facility in Seattle’s Interbay neighborhood that’s scheduled to break ground this month.
The project is scheduled to be completed before the 2024 season.
“Investors don’t go off of anecdotes. They go off of [comparables],” Gilder told the WSJ. “So hopefully, we’ve just set the floor. We’ve set a real-live floor. Not just the WNBA, but women’s soccer, women’s hockey, where women’s sports is going.”
The WSJ cited the Storm’s history of success, four WNBA championships and record-setting attendance figures in 2022 as reasons for the $151 million valuation.
Seattle, which currently has one big-name star on the roster in Jewell Loyd, is undergoing a major makeover after Sue Bird’s retirement and Breanna Stewart signing in free agency with the New York Liberty.
Meanwhile, the 12-team WNBA, which launched with eight franchises in 1997, is also in flux.
Commissioner Cathy Engelbert said she hopes to add two teams by 2025 and this week met with Oregon politicians who lobbied for an expansion team in Portland.
Other potential candidates include Toronto, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Nashville.
Engelbert is also working on a broadcast rights deal, which expires in 2025 with ESPN, the league’s primary partner.
Last February, the WNBA completed its first-ever capital raise and received $75 million from a group of investors.
At the time, Engelbert said the WNBA’s valuation was $1 billion, which placed the average value of a WNBA team at more than $43.75 million.
Meanwhile, a report in The Athletic citing anonymous sources valued the league at $475 million considering the capital raise forced the WNBA to sell about 16% of its equity to investors.
NOTE:
— The Storm signed 6-foot-5 forward Theresa Plaisance, a nine-year veteran who averaged 4.0 points, 2.6 rebounds and 13 minutes while shooting 34.8% on three-pointers as a reserve with the Las Vegas Aces last season. Seattle also added guard Yvonne Turner to a training-camp contract.