Louisville Metro Mayor Craig Greenberg has “made overtures" to the WNBA with his Kentucky Derby invites, but it is “unclear if he’s done any of the hard work needed to lure a professional team to Louisville -- like find people who are willing to invest,” according to Joseph Gerth of the Louisville COURIER-JOURNAL. Since its founding in 1996, the WNBA has “focused on putting its teams in NBA cities" but two of the three teams at the top of the WNBA attendance list are in two cities that do not “have NBA basketball -- Las Vegas and Seattle.” And the first team to ever turn a profit in the WNBA was the "only other team that is not in an NBA city, the Connecticut Sun.” Gerth writes Louisville cannot “support an NBA team" but the WNBA would be “is a completely different story.” Ticket prices "average $47, about half what the NBA charges,” and there are “only 20 home games a year for which people would have to shell out the cash.” Gerth writes it is a “mystery as to why the WNBA is loathe to look to cities that have supported women’s basketball at the collegiate level and keeps going back to NBA towns that haven’t embraced the sport.” Gerth notes all Greenberg has done that we know of is invited league officials to the Kentucky Derby "each of the past two years” -- and he “got turned down by league officials each of the last two years.” Bringing a WNBA team would "raise Louisville’s stature around the country and potentially put it in position to draw more interest from other major league sports” (Louisville COURIER-JOURNAL, 4/30).
