(July 19): The New York Liberty has become one of the most successful women’s basketball franchises, with its owners’ breaking rules in a bid to treat the team the same as the men.

Billionaire Joe Tsai, co-founder of web giant Alibaba, and wife Clara Wu Tsai, acquired the team in January 2019 from New York Knicks owner James Dolan and began enacting a plan to invest in the team and turn the afterthought into a hot ticket. At the time, they were outliers. The WNBA was struggling. Franchises received little attention from owners who were more focused on the NBA teams they ran.

But now with booming interest in women’s basketball — partly sparked by phenom Caitlin Clark — the Liberty are well-positioned to capitalise. The latest outcropping of that push to elevate the franchise is that they are building the team its own practice gym, according to people familiar with the plans. That would make the Liberty the only team with an NBA counterpart — the Tsais also own the Brooklyn Nets — to get a training facility. The Las Vegas Aces and Seattle Storm have their own, but are independent clubs.

“We just knew that there were some very special qualities about this team,” Wu Tsai said in an interview, while pointing out the inherent value of playing in the biggest US media market.

The team showed off some of that specialness during a home game this week — the last matchup before almost a month-long break for the Olympics and this weekend’s All-Star game. The Liberty didn’t have two starters because of injury, including reigning MVP Breanna Stewart, and still knocked off the Connecticut Sun in a battle of top teams.

The Liberty now sit on top of the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) standings after winning 21 of 25 games, giving them a shot at the league record of 34 wins in a season — set last year by the Aces, who beat the Liberty in the Finals.

That’s quite the contrast from just a few years ago. The team has had periods of success since debuting as an original WNBA franchise in 1997, but it bottomed out in 2020 in winning only two games in a season shortened by Covid. The turnaround on the court has been driven by good drafting and luring free agents, including a courtship of Stewart last year that included Wu Tsai leading a delegation to recruit her in Turkey where she played in the offseason.

Sabrina Ionescu, a star guard drafted with top overall pick in 2020, said she’s realised how well Liberty players are treated after hearing about the experiences of peers around the league. The 26-year-old has only known the Tsais as owners and is used to having amenities, like housing and nutrition options, on par with the men’s side.

“It’s super important for free agents and players around the league to know,” said Ionescu, who pointed to the Tsais attending her wedding as a sign of their dedication to the players. “They value us as people, and that is something that I cherish.”

Treating the Liberty equally to the Nets was apparent in the second half of the 2022 season when the Tsais began chartering flights for the team. The WNBA didn’t allow such a move because it might create a competitive advantage because not all owners could afford — or be willing to pay — the pricier flights to away games. The league fined the Liberty US$500,000 (RM2.33 million) for violating the collective bargaining agreement. But charter flights became standard in the league this season.

After acquiring the Liberty, the Tsais inked a deal to buy the rest of the Nets — they had purchased a minority stake in 2017 — and the Barclays Center in the heart of Brooklyn. That allowed them to move the Liberty to Barclays, which has a capacity of almost 18,000, from a puny Westchester stadium north of the city that seated a few thousand fans. The previous ownership made that team’s home when the franchise was put up for sale after years at Madison Square Garden.

The pandemic delayed the move to Brooklyn and building a new fanbase, but that quickly changed. The team pitched games as family-friendly and affordable. To increase player visibility, Wu Tsai produced a documentary on the team’s history. And this season, she worked to make all Liberty games that aren’t on national TV free to stream or broadcast to anyone in the tri-state area.

The Liberty also expanded its partnership with Fanatics to increase merchandise offerings. Sales on game days have jumped about 150% compared to this time last year.

One of the Liberty’s most successful marketing ploys has been its evocative mascot, Ellie the Elephant. The internet sensation has more followers on social media than nearly half the team.

Maintaining fan engagement through community events is also on the agenda for this summer, while the WNBA goes on hiatus for the Olympics. The team plans to host Paris 2024 watch parties and its first summer camp in Brooklyn.

These strategies have paid off: Attendance has surged 63% this season. The franchise is on pace to increase ticket revenue by 70% with the average ticket price up by roughly a third. That’s alongside two straight years of 30% gains in corporate sponsorships. Total revenue is the highest in the league at US$18 million, according to Sportico. The team declined to comment on its financial figures.

The Liberty is also the first team in the WNBA to have a premium seating waitlist.

“We are completely sold out of our courtside seats,” said New York Liberty chief executive officer Keia Clarke. “That’s scarcity.”

In the midst of increased interest in the WNBA and the Liberty’s prospects for future growth, the team landed a new major backer. In June, members of the billionaire Koch family acquired 15% in BSE Global, the holding company which owns the Liberty, Nets and Barclays Center. The deal valued BSE at US$6 billion.

That investment should help the Liberty take even more advantage of this moment for women’s basketball. Home games are averaging 12,755 fans — a roughly 140% jump from two seasons ago. This year’s opener at Barclays against the Indiana Fever and rookie Clark set the record for the highest single-game ticket revenue in league history — topping Game 3 of last year’s finals in Brooklyn.

At Tuesday’s win over the Sun, season ticket holders Coral Zayas and Steven Marr, who’ve been fans since the franchise’s founding, marvelld at the club’s revival.

“Moving to Barclays Center was a gamechanger,” Zayas said. “The Tsais really turned the team around — invested in players who were going to be competitive and hopefully bring a championship.”

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