Tulsa: Needs to Sell $250 K in Tix?

I've commented in earlier posts about trying to understand the financial model of the WNBA.

We've learned a new piece of the picture from an article in the Tulsa World about the hiring of Nolan Richardson. Tulsa investor David Box said the following:

“We just need people to buy tickets,” he said. “We sold $45,000 worth of tickets for 65 people at the event last week at the BOK. We have 15 suites available at about $13,000 apiece. If we can sell those suites, we’re home. We’re not that far away. We need some sponsors and we need to sell these suites.”

Okay. Let's assume that Tulsa has sold $45K of tickets for 65 people in one of its meet-and-greet events. That's about $700 for each of those people, so I'm assuming that those are season tickets. (The cost is about $750 in Atlanta.) Let's assume that you need about 2,000 season ticket holders. That would give you $1.4 million from the gate, whether or not those tickets are actually used or not.

Box also wants to sell the suites. That's $195K.

Here's the newest WNBA budget:

Season Tickets Sales: $1,400,000 ($700 x 2000)
Suite Sales: $195,000 ($13 K x 15)

Arena Rental: $255,000 ($15 K x 17 home games)
Arena Operations: $153,000 ($9 k x 17 home games)
Salary for Players: $803,000 (Collective Bargaining Agreement)

Income: $1,595,000
Outgo: $1,211,000

Theoretically, this is a profit, but it doesn't count any of the items mentioned in the first link above: player meal money, player travel/relocation, coach costs (Richardson alone will be a six-figure hire), etc.

Once again, these figures are posted entirely for speculative purposes. They are vague approximations at best. The above is simply to give one the idea of the costs of running a team, and where the money comes from and where it goes.