Title sponsor Coinbase will give each championship player $5,000 in cryptocurrency.Pictures
As the NBA expenses in the summer, by announcing its first tournament of the season to take place in November and December, people conveniently forget that their comrades down the hall – the WNBA – have already been there, done that.
“Imitation is the gentlest form of flattery, or something like that,” said Colie Edison, WNBA senior vice president and chief growth officer.
The Commissioner’s Cup, the W’s tournament of the season, will celebrate its 3rd anniversary on Tuesday when the New York Liberty take on the Las Vegas Aces in the title game at Michelob Ultra Arena in Las Vegas. The NBA side of the league office has always watched in awe from a distance – with commissioner Adam Silver saying his tournament was 15 years old and NBA head of strategy and event development Joey Graziano saying the World Cup Commissioner “has incredible value.” » as a model.
“We’re sitting in the same office, working on a multitude of ideas and conversations,” Graziano said. “(WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert) and her team are always a big voice in the room.”
The Las Vegas Aces will face the New York Liberty at Michelob Ultra Arena.WNBA/Instagram
Engelbert is also part of the NBA’s management team and has often shared the financial benefits of his tournament. Engelbert and Edison readily admit that the season’s event was designed to make more money for the lowest-paid WNBA players and that their $500,000 prize pool (with $30,000 each for winning players and $10,000 each for finalists) is something the NBA could mirror. The NBA will give each of its winning players $500,000 and each of its losing players $200,000.
But, more than that, the WNBA leveraged its season tournament into a live broadcast on Prime Video, six associated partnerships and a $5,000 cryptocurrency gift to each player in the finals from the partner Coinbase presenter. For fans in attendance, Coinbase will distribute a collectible digital proof of stake, with rewards including a 25% discount in the WNBA Store and a free game on WNBA League Pass.
The six associated partners – Anheuser-Busch, CarMax, US Bank, Google, LegalZoom and Deloitte – each have a presence on the field and in the arena through signage and in-game fan activation.
And while the NBA tournament will surely attract more lucrative partnerships, the W also has a philanthropic thread that the NBA will likely keep an eye on. For example, the WNBA and WNBPA use the Commissioner’s Cup platform to raise funds each year for the league’s Social Justice Council activities. This year’s mantra is women’s health equity, with all 12 WNBA teams choosing a 501(c)(3) maternal health charity to receive proceeds from a $165,000 charitable fund $, based on a team’s wins and losses.
The Liberty, for example, will donate money to the Callen-Lorde Health Center to advance New York’s LQBTQ+ communities, while the Las Vegas Aces will donate to NAMI Southern Nevada to reduce mental health stigma.
“Every year we work with the players — I call it player-led, but league-facilitated — on social justice,” Engelbert said. “Our players understand this tournament. One day when Breanna Stewart got on the microphone she said, “Let’s go, we have to win this game, it’s a Commissioners Cup game.” We constantly talk to our NBA colleagues about this. They are much bigger and broader, with many more teams. Their format is therefore a little different from ours. But I think they are paying attention to us.
