Will Cleveland's new WNBA team be the Rockers? How did it earn an expansion franchise?
The first franchise which will begin play among those three franchises is in Cleveland in 2028. This marks the WNBA's return to the city, where the Cleveland Rockers were one of the eight original teams before they disbanded in 2003.
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If the early interest in tickets is any indication, Cleveland seems ready for a WNBA team again. Nic Barlage, the CEO of Rock Entertainment Group, which owns the new franchise and the Cavaliers, said they already had more than 3,100 season ticket deposits as of Wednesday morning.
It is the culmination of what he said was a process that began three years ago as the company grew more interested and invested in women's sports as part of its portfolio of sports properties. Barlage spoke to about how Cleveland got a WNBA team, why it bid for one, whether it'll bring the Rockers name back, and why he feels it was the right time to invest in a WNBA franchise.
Congrats on the new WNBA team coming to Cleveland. Obviously, this has all been a long time in the making. Can you walk me through how you guys landed this team?
As we were looking at our portfolio, we really started to see the momentum and the movement that was happening around women's sports, and so we partnered with the WTA 250 event here locally, called Tennis in the Land, which we've had a wonderful experience with. We're actually more of the sales and execution agency for them. We were part of the NWSL bid to bring women's professional soccer to Cleveland. Ultimately, that wasn't successful, but it was a great learning for us. But internally, through all these partnerships and endeavors, we've really been focused on the WNBA.
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Our chairman, Dan Gilbert, has a deep, deep, deep, profound passion for basketball, and we have a deep, profound passion for leveling the playing field, if you will, and providing equal opportunity for both men and women. Our Cavs youth academy, which is 60,000 kids across the state of Ohio, upstate New York, Western (Pennsylvania). The largest growing segment of that has been young girls, who've been growing about 30 percent in participation rates year over year for the last two or three years. And so we noticed all this convergence of all of these things coming together.
When we hosted the women's Final Four in 2024, it was historic viewership. We sold out the tournament in the fastest it's ever sold out. … Obviously we had a lot of unique opportunities in hosting Caitlin Clark and the undefeated University of South Carolina Dawn Staley-led Gamecocks. But all those things kind of said, alright, we're going to push our chips all in on something. When we push our chips all in on something, especially with having the backing of Dan and all that he thinks about, dreams about, and the vision that he has, this crystallized pretty quickly. And from there it just got down to how we wanted to execute the bid, and how big and bold we can make it.
The bidding process for this latest round seemed to get pretty frothy. There was, I think, the most intense interest I've seen in getting a WNBA team to date. When did you guys find out that you had landed a team? And what do you think put you over the top?
We found out right around (NBA) All-Star in February, maybe a little bit after that was the final confirmation. Obviously, there's a lot you have to work through once you're kind of selected. You've got legal documents, those kinds of things. But from our perspective, we think it's very symbolic of the Midwest. We think Cleveland is a city on the rise. We think we had such a great run in the early 1900s, we went through some tough times, and now we're kind of back in a bold way.
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And if you study Cleveland at all, what people realize is sports and entertainment is really leading the resurgence and creating the momentum in this community. When we throw the ball in the air in April 2028 or May of 2028, Dan and the Gilbert family will have invested $1.1 billion in sports and entertainment infrastructure. Not like buying teams and moving them here, but like real infrastructure in Northeast Ohio.
And so when you start to think about the infrastructure we have, the fan base that is unrelentingly passionate about sports. We were the most ready-made bid.
So is it going to be the Cleveland Rockers 2.0?
It's a great question. We're not going to commit to a brand identity at this point. We love the history of the Rockers, obviously, being one of the original eight. But at this stage in the process, we are absolutely going to have a dimension of our brand and our intellectual property that will pay homage to the Rockers, but we want to be very considerate of where Cleveland is going, where our fan base is going, as opposed to where it's been. And so for us, it's a little bit of that balance. Like paying honor and homage to the past while really focused on our bright future. And so from that perspective, we're going to go through a pretty intensive, thoughtful, inclusive process over the next six months.
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Just trying to read a little bit into what you're saying, it sounds like it won't be the Rockers …
No, I didn't say that. The Rockers will definitely be an option. The Rockers will definitely be a part of the mix of the options we look at. We just don't know if that's the right move for us yet. We haven't been able to publicly talk about this for a long time. We want to embrace the community. We want to be inclusive of their thoughts and their insights before we just pick a path, but Rockers will absolutely be under consideration.
The reason I ask is — you guys might be the Rockers, you might not. The Portland expansion team looks like it's leaning towards bringing the Fire name back. I don't know if Detroit will be the Shock as well. But there is some nostalgia coating for some of these new WNBA teams. Do you think reboots can work for WNBA teams now, bringing back a less successful but sepia-toned era of the league?
I absolutely think retro works. I think it can work depending on the situation. But I think for us, there's such a new fan base here in Cleveland. Cleveland has a different vibe to it now. They have a different vibrancy to the city. The communities that are going to be attracted to this demographic of this product, they might even look a little bit different or be a bit more involved. And so we just want to make sure, like I said, we're being thoughtful and inclusive of that. I would never commit to that without getting real data and getting real insights. Honestly, I could speak to the other markets, it would be irresponsible.
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Were you surprised the W went to three teams in the end? Did you think it would be just the 16 teams and were you surprised that they went all the way up to 18?
No, I wasn't. As you look at it, whenever this much interest — and this much interest is being met by a real business performance … When I was doing an interview the other day, I mentioned there was a Sunday night Fever and Sky game, I think it may have been about a month ago, on a Sunday, it did 1.7 million viewers. I think Yankees-Red Sox hit 1.3 million viewers. When you're seeing this much insatiable demand for something, I wasn't surprised at all.
When the league is led by commissioner (Cathy) Engelbert, and obviously is a part of the broader NBA family led by (NBA commissioner) Adam Silver and (NBA deputy commissioner) Mark Tatum, they're very thoughtful about these things. They put a lot of strategy and rigor into it. And so when they came back into three teams, and all three already had NBA infrastructure wrapped around them, it made a lot of sense.
And by the way, they're great cities. They're great markets. I think it made a lot of sense.
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You mentioned the NBA infrastructure. I think it's been unmissable that five of the six expansion teams in the last three years, or six of the six, depending how you want to do your accounting practices, have gone to owners with NBA ties. Do you think that's been intentional? Is there something that has given NBA ownership groups who want a WNBA team a leg up in that process? Are NBA owners the best served to own and run WNBA teams right now?
Our thesis on this is . And I think Adam shares a similar thesis. We have commercial infrastructure. We have administrative infrastructure. We have marketing infrastructure. We have venues, right? And so when you start thinking about the infrastructure we can wrap around these assets — and by the way, we have decades of institutional knowledge of how to operate them, both on the business side, but also on the basketball side.
There's no doubt there's nuances and there's differences across the board, but, yeah, I think it's very intentional in regards to how the league is expanding. An existing NBA owner is also a minority owner of the WNBA in the current financial structure. So there's a lot of incentive from our perspective to be a part of the growth of the WNBA, and I think Adam is really driving that in partnership with Cathy.
The $250 million expansion fee is a really interesting number. It's obviously the largest in WNBA history, and five times more than what the Golden State group paid to get the Valkyries. I've been reporting on WNBA expansion for a while, and there was kind of this apprehension about even getting to $50 million back in 2022. Interested investors didn't know if it would be worth it, if the business of a team and the league could support that kind of valuation. And now you have three teams, three ownership groups, paying that $250 million. There were more than 10 bidders, if I remember correctly. Why did you think that that kind of expansion fee was worth it? And why do you think valuations have risen so much?
I won't confirm the fee, but what I will say is, from our chairman, Dan, throughout the entire organization, we have a firm belief that money and numbers, they don't lead, they follow in situations like this. And we look at being the 16th team as being very much still an early mover. When you look at minority stakes that have been reported, that have been sold, whether it's for the Liberty, whether it's for the Seattle Storm in the last couple of months, we think this is an early-mover type of situation, and one that we're fully embracing.
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Once again, it wasn't driven by the money and the numbers. It was driven by the impact we can make in our community, also the trajectory of the game. I mentioned the viewership earlier, but if you look at all the major key performance indicators across the league: attendance, viewership, merchandise, sales — everything is on this rocket ship type of trajectory. So for us, it was about how fast can we get involved and how quickly can we build a platform that inspires the next generation of young girls and young women across the entire state of Ohio and throughout our region?
It also is another dimension. We own a local sports network in Rock Entertainment Sports Network. It's another dimension for us to be able to host on there as well. It's a key component and a key asset of this portfolio and this broader platform that we've been building for quite some time now, and it's the perfect complement.
So when you have those types of dynamics, you do your diligence, you make sure you're being responsible with the financial resources that you're deploying. But we are firm believers that the best days of this league are in front of us. … If this thing gets to 25, 30 teams, which we think it will, that is all green field opportunity in regards to expansion of regular-season games, expansion of playoff games, expansion of media rights.
What you're seeing right now is the fundamental and foundational return of the WNBA, and it's going to be a foundation that's going to launch it to new heights, sustainable heights. I know there's some owners out there that are aspiring for billion-dollar valuations over a period of time, we fully support that. But once again, for us, it's not about the money and the numbers, it's about the impact that we can create, and we think that impact will lead to much higher trajectories of valuation as we go forward.
I was going to ask if you think a billion-dollar valuation for a WNBA team might be possible in the future, but maybe I'm setting my sights too low.
Look, anytime you have viewership that is hitting these levels, anytime you have attendance that is hitting these levels, and you have a very finite amount of assets, this becomes a scarcity investment at the end of the day. When you have that type of scarcity and that type of stickiness and that type of growth, great things can happen.
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