Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report

Forbes on Dec. 17 placed BSE Global's New York Liberty at the top of its first-ever list of  The World’s Most Valuable Women’s Sports Teams 2025 , with a valuation of $400 million. In May, the Liberty raised an ownership stake at record $450 million valuation, according to sources , which might means the number's a bit fuzzy. It's worth noting that the Liberty's reported revenue was $25 million, while the second-place team, the WNBA's Indiana Fever, were valued at $370 million but reported $32 million in revenue. Forbes did not value the WNBA's new Golden State Valkyries but noted the team was already projecting at least $55 million in revenue just from sponsorships and ticket sales, putting aside media rights and other income streams. So presumably the Valkyries will top the list next year. Peng Yang, CEO, Ant International & Clara Wu Tsai, Vice Chair, Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment; Governor, New York Liberty The Alibaba connection Remember how, in J...

Forbes' new list of  America's Most Powerful Women in Sports includes two New York Liberty connections, another sign of the team's ascension. Its strategy was to discern categories—owners/investors, business executives, front office leaders, athletes and amplifiers—and then put them in a formula that assessed media mentions, revenue, and more, aiming to list five people per category and no more than two people from the same league in any category.  First among Amplifiers were: #9. Napheesa Collier and Breanna Stewart Cofounders, Unrivaled; Forward, Minnesota Lynx (Collier); Forward, New York Liberty (Stewart) On the court, Napheesa Collier and Breanna Stewart are among the best in the game: Collier was the runner-up in voting for the WNBA’s 2025 Most Valuable Player Award, and Stewart won the award in 2018 and 2023. Through Unrivaled, they’re changing the game altogether. Founded by the former UConn teammates in 2023, Unrivaled is a 3-on-3 league offering WNBA players an o...

Last week, BSE Global announced that the New York Liberty had added three new investors to the previous six announced in May, with all nine contributing to a valuation, as The Athletic reported, of $450 million. If the investment was in the "mid-teens" as a percentage, a 15% share would be $67.5 million. Divided nine ways, that's $7.5 million each, though it's likely that Alibaba founder Jack Ma, who was announced in May, is the lead investor, according to NetsDaily. He's the only man. The money will help build the Liberty's new $80 million practice facility in Greenpoint, due in 2027. As reported by NetsDaily, citing a BSE Global announcement, the investors are: Robin Roberts, co-anchor of ABC’s Good Morning America, who often gets to sit courtside with Clara Wu Tsai, who takes the lead with the Liberty while husband Joe Tsai takes the lead with the Brooklyn Nets Olivia Walton, wife of a grandson of the Wal-Mart founder, and chair of Crystal Bridges Museum ...

Photos Oct. 21 It wasn't officially announced, but it was inevitable: yesterday, and somewhat belatedly, the operators of the Barclays Center removed the Liberty Portraits installation honoring the members of the 2024 WNBA champions New York Liberty team. That truncated access to the arena's Ticketmaster Plaza, as shown in the photos below. Surely some promotion for the Brooklyn Nets, with their home opener Oct. 24, is in the offing. As I wrote  in July, the installation of the nine-foot display cases, with photos and interviews, was billed as art but also qualified as promotion. (After all, they weren't exactly putting up portraits of random Brooklynites.) Presumably, the goal was to keep the portraits up through the WNBA Finals, were the Liberty to repeat. Instead, they lost in the first round of the playoffs, bowing out Sept. 19 . Where will the Liberty Portraits go? There's been no announcement, but there may be space at the Barclays Center, or in storage. In the l...

Last year, the New York Liberty won the WNBA title and, notably, got framed portraits, nine feet tall, of the championship squad, placed on Ticketmaster Plaza, the work of artist LaToya Ruby Frazier. As I put it, Art, Promotion, or Both? The "Liberty Portraits" Are a BSE Global Power Move . Installed in early July, they were expected to stay up through October, the end of the WNBA season.  Photo: Norman Oder Now what? Well, sports can be unpredictable. Last night in Phoenix, the fifth-seeded Liberty, inconsistent and injury-plagued, lost Game 3 (of 3) in their first-round series against the fourth-seeded Phoenix Mercury, exiting the playoffs. So, only one home playoff game this year, no championship parade, no elected officials expressing delight, and no more features on mascot Ellie the Elephant. Nor, perhaps, articles on how enormous leaps in some ticket prices have alienated longtime Liberty fans. The art/promotion installation seems out of date, especially since the ros...

As I wrote Aug. 30 ( link ), the seemingly skimpy September 2025 event calendar for the Barclays Center left room for a New York Liberty playoff run. Today, Barclays Center management circulated to neighbors an alert that the second game of the first-round playoff series, with the fifth-seeded Liberty facing the fourth-seeded Phoenix Mercury, will be this Wednesday, Sept. 17, from 8 to 10:30 pm, but with amplified sound on Ticketmaster Plaza from 6 to 8 pm. Upper deck tickets start at $33.85 . The defending champion Liberty won the first game of the best-of-three series , but star Breanna Stewart was hurt . The Semi-Finals are five games and the Finals, for the first time, will go seven games.

Some long term fans of the New York Liberty are dismayed by steadily rising prices for a more coveted commodity, as Madeline Kenney reported recently for the New York Post. For example, one fan with a seat near courtside reported a price increase from $500 to $600 between 2023 and 2024, then a doubling to $1,200/seat this year, and a price tag of $1,881 next year. Others with less precious seats saw 20% increases. A Liberty spokesperson said they still have $25 tickets; after all, they've opened the upper bowl.  In today's @nypost Liberty loyalists are grappling with their team's season-ticket price hike “It’s a tough transition, but I just hope to see the women get the money out of it... If they do that, then I can live with watching on TV.” https://t.co/0NQtaBJB3H pic.twitter.com/0NL87C3BNS — Madeline Kenney (@madkenney) August 30, 2025 Why underpaid? Surely increased team revenues from ticket sales could be reflected in increased salaries, but that's not the only t...

Photos: Norman Oder See below for an update and correction. It came up at the very end of the Aug. 6 Atlantic Yards Community Development Corporation (AY CDC) meeting. (My coverage of the other discussions is here .) Almost offhandedly, Chair Daniel Kummer asked about the installation of the Liberty Portraits--an exhibit of photos of New York Liberty players, with text, that's billed as art but which I see equally as promotion --on the Barclays Center's Ticketmaster Plaza. He called it a "public plaza." I think it blurs private and public, as it significantly serves BSE Global, which constricts it to accommodate arena crowds.   "Was there some sort of approval that they sought for that or did they submit a plan for that?" Kummer asked. "What's the process there? Do they do they have free rein to just put up something like that?... I'm not commenting on whether it's good or bad." Attorney Matthew Acocella of Empire State Development. th...

Updated July 2. There was something a bit cryptic in the July 2025 event calendar circulated yesterday, June 30, to neighbors. (My coverage .) The notice also alerted readers to "an art installation on the Plaza"--which for these purposes they choose not to describe as Ticketmaster Plaza--starting Sunday June 29 at 5 am through Thursday July 3 at 12 noon.  That suggests they were ready to send out the notice before June 29, but chose not to do so, perhaps because it was delayed. Indeed, as of the evening of July 1, it still wasn't finished, but it was clearly an homage of some sort to the New York Liberty roster: at the center-right is forward Leonie Fiebich. Photo: July 1 evening As of Sunday, June 29, the installation was barely in process, truncating a good part of pedestrian access to this "public" space. Photo: June 29 So it's supposed to last through an unspecified "private event" Wednesday 12 noon to 2 pm, and would be removed in time for en...

The Barclays Center yesterday released its July 2025 event calendar, which includes 14 ticketed events: eight New York Liberty games and six concerts. That's an increase over July 2024, when arena renovations likely truncated access. It also includes four unspecified private events (which the arena should disclose); a July 19 WNBA All-Star watch party (no tickets available yet, likely free); and, on July 27, a "Belong Brooklyn" event, likely a concert sponsored by the Social Justice Fund of arena company operators Joe and Clara Wu Tsai. Note that "amplified sound" is promised. Note that, for three of the Liberty games, including the likely sold-out one July 16 vs. Caitlin Clark and the Indiana Fever, there will be amplified sound for several hours on the plaza. July 2024 As I reported , the July 2024 event calendar included only five ticketed events: three Liberty games and two concerts. It also included three free events, including student artwork in the arena...

Three sports team owners, including Clara Wu Tsai of the Brooklyn Nets and New York Liberty, spoke at the Forbes Iconoclast Summit June 5 in Manhattan, with Wu Tsai suggesting that the WNBA offers a "huge investment opportunity" and Marc Lasry, former co-owner of the NBA’s Milwaukee Bucks, saying "it's never a good time to sell" a sports team, given steadily rising valuations. (See coverage in Forbes and NetsDaily .) Nobody, of course, mentioned that the leagues are monopolies, that team ownership offers great tax breaks, and that team owners leverage subsidies, tax breaks, and other benefits from their host cities and states. To Forbes' Randall Lane, Wu Tsai confirmed that, yes, the Liberty just got a minority investment that valued the team at $450 million. (Previously, it was just "reportedly." ) He congratulated her on the path to the professed $1 billion valuation: "So that number is good." "Number's great," said Wu T...

The defending WNBA champion New York Liberty have started the new season 8-0 ( link ) and the team and their mascot, Ellie the Elephant, are getting a lot more buzz. The Brooklyn Public Library, following up its successful promotion of Jay-Z library cards as part of a giant star-produced exhibit , now offers the  New York Liberty Library Card , "a special-edition library card celebrating the New York Liberty, our hometown team and the 2024 WNBA champions!" Via Brooklyn Public Library There will be 100,000 cards, available at all library locations. Also, the Liberty and the library are partnering through Brooklyn Basketball to support BPL's Summer at the Library programming. The Brooklyn Paper lapped up the promotion: Ellie created a special summer reading list of books about basketball, empowerment, community, friendship, and women in sports — with selections from picture book “You Hold Me Up” to young adult graphic novel “Wash Day Diaries” and the new nonfiction book...

It's a crushing irony, if you see the big picture. While some believed that Atlantic Yards (later Pacific Park) should be seen as a whole, with the possibility of cross-subsidization of its more successful elements, that hasn't happened, even though it could, as I explain below. So affordable housing has been delayed, becoming ever more costly, while the value of the Brooklyn Nets, New York Liberty, the Barclays Center operating company, and the overall BSE Global growing dramatically.  The boost That was shown last year when BSE Global owners, Joe and Clara Wu Tsai, sold 15% of the company to the Julia Koch family, their fortune based on the late (right-wing funder) David Koch's Koch Industries, at a valuation of $6 billion. That transaction valued the New York Liberty, which the Tsais acquired for a song and invested in savvily, at $250 million, as the overall WNBA grows with greater public interest and more lucrative sponsorship/TV deals. The bigger boost Yesterday The A...

Aiming to offer more amenities and compete for future talent--a locker room with players' "private suites," rooftop dining, and a childcare facility-- the New York Liberty yesterday announced ( link ) plans to build "an $80 million "state-of-the-art practice facility, spanning 75,000 square-feet, located in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, on Newtown Creek and overlooking Manhattan’s iconic skyline."    From NY Liberty: helicopter view towards Greenpoint from Newtown Creek Well, it more overlooks Long Island City's impressive, if not quite iconic, skyline, as well as Greenpoint's also impressive-not-iconic skyline, as shown in images below. Looking west from Pulaski Bridge. Arrow =  approximate location. Photo: Norman Oder While the location wasn't specified, it's clear that the location is the northern tip of Manhattan Avenue, between Ash Street and Newtown Creek. Manhattan Avenue once led to the Vernon Avenue Bridge, but in 1954 was replaced by the P...