Ep. 1816 - Sophie Cunningham Just Exposed The WNBA For The Sick Organization It Is

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
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**Matt Walsh** (0:29)
There aren't many organizations that can stay alive after burning millions of dollars and losing money every single year for decades. Now, the government can pull off that trick, actually can burn through many billions of dollars and stay in the red to the tune of tens of trillions. But that's because they have bombs and guns and direct access to all of our bank accounts. In the private sector, however, an organization typically has to start turning a profit at some point. Sports leagues in particular have a tough time surviving when they constantly light cash on fire. Think of the ill-fated North American Soccer League, the Arena Football League, the XFL, even NFL Europe, which could have existed until the end of time with the funding coming from the actual NFL, eventually folded after about 15 years. Towards the end, they realized that only Germans were watching NFL Europe. So in a Hail Mary attempt to get viewers, they changed the name of the league to NFL Europa, since that's apparently what Germans call Europe. But even this clever little stratagem didn't save the day. The operation folded soon afterwards. So at a certain point, unpopular leagues that lose money die, and everybody moves on with their lives, and it's fine. That's usually how these things go.
The WNBA, however, stands as a lone exception for this well-established pattern. Despite incurring average losses of $10 million a year since its first game in 1997, this abject failure of a league has somehow continued to exist in defiance of the laws of physics. The WNBA has never turned a profit, not one single year in its entire history. Even today, as it generates more revenue than ever, and gets more attention than ever, thanks almost entirely to one player, it still loses money. Actually, that negative $10 million a year figure is from 2018
In recent years, as the WNBA's revenue has trended up, the losses have multiplied many times over. So today, the league loses something like $40 or $50 million a year.
Its total cumulative losses stood at $200 million in 2018 So today, that number must be double that or more.
It survives as a money pit because its sugar daddy, the NBA, keeps it afloat. The WNBA is truly the welfare queen of the sports industry, and the NBA still somehow has evidently not lost patience with displays like this one from the WNBA's latest quote unquote all-star game. Watch.

**SPEAKER_3** (2:56)
Oh, Stewart tips it alive. Williams from four point range.

**SPEAKER_4** (3:01)
Ty Young almost subbed them in when we were down by 11

**SPEAKER_1** (3:04)
She do that up, she knew who she wanted to pass it.

**SPEAKER_3** (3:09)
John Quell up to 10 points. Howard takes it right back. What a pass from Neca. Asia Wilson can't finish it. Clark gives it underneath and then we'll see. You haven't isolated on Caitlin at all for a blow-by yet. Is that coming?
Five seconds left in the third. Coppers jump. Unable to hit that one.

**Matt Walsh** (3:33)
Well, for those listening to the audio podcast, the footage there that we just played is exactly what you think, a slapstick spectacle. The ladies miss layups and dunks. They airball shots from 20 feet out. They send balls clunking off the backboard. This is the All-Star Game, remember. The WNBA All-Star Game looks like that scene from Space Jam after the cartoon aliens zap all the athletic skill out of Charles Barkley and Patrick Ewing and Muggsy Bogues. It's like that. You'll see more inspiring athletic performances at a random bowling alley on a Tuesday night than at the WNBA All-Star Game. It's certainly clear that any decent boys high school basketball team in the country could destroy the best WNBA team, obviously, which is why Clay Travis just made this announcement, putting his money where his mouth is, quote, I'm upping my offer $10 million for a head-to-head basketball game between the defending WNBA champion Las Vegas Aces and a boys high school state title team of my choice. If the Aces beat my team, I will give them $10 million.
Now, there is precedent for this kind of exhibition match, and it ended precisely how you would expect. As we mentioned before, a few years ago, the US women's national team, the World Cup champions at the time, lost by a score of five to two to a youth team of 15 and 14-year-old boys from Dallas in a scrimmage match. So it wasn't even close. The teenagers outplayed the women throughout the match. That's how you get to a five to two score, which counts as a blowout in soccer. And as you can see from the photos, even though they were much younger, the boys were a lot larger than the women's team. I mean, it's almost as if their biology gave them a massive advantage. And we all know that if a WNBA team had to play a boys basketball team, it would be much worse. I mean, it would be a massacre so complete, so severe as to end in war crime charges against the boys team. That's how bad it would be. And the only success story the WNBA has had recently, really, is the rise of a single, straight white woman named, of course, Caitlin Clark, who has routinely embarrassed her mostly lesbian, mostly black rivals. She's the most bankable WNBA player in history by a huge margin. She's the only WNBA player that has ever had any real name recognition outside of the small and mysterious population of diehard WNBA fans. I mean, prior to Caitlin Clark, prior to her, a WNBA player had to go get themselves arrested and imprisoned in Russia in order to garner any kind of national prominence.