WNBA President Lisa Borders at the draft: Going into 20th season league has “a whole lot of momentum.”
Lisa Borders, announced as the WNBA’s fourth president in February, helped kick off the league’s 2016 draft today during a press conference. Borders is a former Atlanta city council president and business executive. Her opening comments and the full Q&A from the press conference are below.
It’s an exciting time for all of us, as we move into our landmark 20th season. We’re very excited and feel a whole lot of momentum. We’ve got key partners here with us tonight: ESPN, who’s been with us since the beginning, since 1997; State Farm is presenting our draft tonight, and we’re thrilled to have them, as well.
When I think about the teams that are all across the country, I’m really excited about not only these 12 markets but people who can watch us all over the country, and frankly all over the world. So ESPN has been, as I said, an incredible partner, and they will be telecasting more games this year than ever before during the regular season. Certainly they will be telecasting all games in the postseason.
We are thrilled about the format changes which we think will give a more balanced schedule. That’s something that’s very different. It will be the top eight teams as opposed to conferences.
The play this year we think will be better than ever. You’ve all watched, or many of you have watched the transition and the evolution of the game for the last 20 years, and we are pleased to report that particularly with this draft class, we see a depth of talent like we’ve not seen before. So we’re very, very excited about that.
As we move into the 20th, there will be lots of things that we’ll be doing to commemorate this year. It’s a tremendous milestone. Most people say it’s the platinum milestone, right?
It is the tip of the iceberg, though. We are just getting started. It’s a tremendous achievement, but there’s still substantially more work to do.
As we look at things like a special commemorative ball, uniforms that will have contrasting colors, we’ll have patches commemorating the first three teams in the league, as well as celebrating partners like Verizon. So we’re excited that this . The tip-off is just around the corner, but we’re most excited about the draft class tonight.
Q. I know you’ve had a month on the job. You’ve just mentioned how there’s the depth of this draft class that we haven’t really seen in a while. You’ve been a fan of the game forever. What do you think it’s going to take to have more teams added to the league, to have expansion talks?
LISA BORDERS: Well, the first thing you do in any business is stabilize what you have, so we want to make sure that the 12 teams we have are healthy and that they are growing organically in their geographic markets. When we think about the players that are playing today, we know a lot about who they are on the court. We know all their statistics about how many points they make and how many rebounds they get. We don’t know much about them off the court.
So growing the game for us I think will be — will mean dimensionalizing those players and making sure we learn about who they are so that fans can relate to them beyond the extraordinary play that they demonstrate on the court.
Q. I’m just wondering, you were a fan of this league before you were the president of the league. What are your memories of draft nights in the past? Anything that sticks out for you?
LISA BORDERS: So previously, you’re right; thank you. Having been a season ticket holder — I still am in the Atlanta market. In fact, my kid now wants my season tickets. He says I don’t need them as the president. He can use them.
Draft nights before have been exciting. The Three to See, as we all recall, they brought tremendous talent, and I think we have that replicated tonight and then some. These 12 are really special. You’ve got the three young ladies from UConn, obviously. You’ve got Ms. Banham who hits a three-point shot like nobody’s business. You’ve got the bigs who are blocking shots like nobody’s business.
I really think the quality of the play is going to ratchet up even more, but draft night is all about celebrating the new future faces of the league. So I remember it from two, three years ago; I think it’s going to be even more exciting tonight.
Q. As we’re talking about the league getting more popular, I was wondering what you thought about Sue Bird’s call to have more stats and more deep stats as a way not only to increase popularity but to help fans, as well?
LISA BORDERS: Sure, I think it’s a good idea. As a businessperson, any time you can have as much data as possible, you want it, not just one datapoint, because that’s what that is, one datapoint. You want to see the trends. You want to see how well someone is doing against whatever goal it is they set out at the beginning of a challenge, right. So I think it’s a good idea. It’s going to take some time and take some work, but I’m with Sue on this.
Q. What kind of tools can help with that?
LISA BORDERS: So you’re going to need some additional technology. Some additional infrastructure is what you’re going to need. We’re headed in the right direction. We’ve got the concept first. Now we have the execution.
Q. My question to you is we’re obviously celebrating a historic season, but as someone coming in new at the helm, how do you balance between the celebratory, being able to really uplift the history but also move forward? There has been a lot of conversations about women’s sports in general not being able to generate revenue, even though they have an amazing talent pool either on the field or in this case on the court. How do you balance the expectations while also uplifting the history?
LISA BORDERS: Sure. I don’t think the two things are mutually exclusive necessarily. When you think about, or when I think about, celebrating the history, they say the best way to predict the future is to create it, but you need to understand your history so you can understand what has worked in the past. I think the quality of the game has really worked, but having folks come into the arena that aren’t already committed fans, those who are casual fans and those who are curious are the ones that we’ve really got to go after. The committed ones are there, like me. I’m the one that stood on the sidelines in Atlanta and cheered like a crazy person, right, through all of those games. But at the end of the day, it’s the middle bucket and that third bucket of people that we’ve really got to go after. Those are the ones that I think they understand sports, but they want to know more about the players, not just about the game.
Q. One of the challenges coming in in your first year and of course being the anniversary year is it’s also an Olympic year, so I’m curious if the league is already looking into steps to keep interest during the time the players are away in the league and also if there’s any provisions being made for what could happen afterwards.
LISA BORDERS: So of course we’re thinking about it, but it’s a secret. You’ve got to stay tuned. We want you to come back. We’re going to start this draft tonight and get the season tipped off. We’ll come back with more information about what’s going to happen during the Olympic break. I don’t want to be a spoiler here and tell you everything. Great question, though.
Q. With a lot of newsworthy events recently from the stance of the U.S. women’s national soccer team have taken to the success of Serena Williams last summer and the athletes here in the WNBA, entering the league, how do you see those kind of influences shaping the league as you take over the season and going forward and providing such a voice for the players in this league so they can have similar kind of impacts as those other female athletes have had?
LISA BORDERS: Sure. Well, watching the young women playing soccer, we always want to support our athletes making as much money as they possibly can. Any business you want people to do what they need to do.
Our business isn’t yet at a place where we can do the same thing that soccer is doing, but we need to grow the business. We need to make sure our expenses never outpace our revenue, but do we support the women in soccer asking for the money that they believe they are due? Sure, we would do the same thing for our athletes, as well.
Q. This question deals with something you said earlier, talking about the casual fan and the curious fan, and just wondering, Breanna Stewart talks about and does, she has so many of these so-called “wow moments” is how she puts it. Do you think that is, leaving aside her skill, something of particular use to the league in being able to market her in this era of social media where small “wow moments” are things that drive so much interest?
LISA BORDERS: Absolutely. So social media clearly has democratized who can bring what to wide appeal, right, so anything that we can do with social media or that Breanna can do or that her team will ultimately be able to do to uplift her “wow moments” or anybody else’s “wow moments” for that matter will draw tremendous awareness to the WNBA, to women’s sports and basketball in particular. So that’s helpful. We’ve got our traditional channels like yourself, institutional media, and then we’ve got however many fans have an iPhone, and that’s everybody these days, right?
Q. When you were deciding whether or not to take the job, I’m wondering what you thought your greatest challenge would be when you came into it.
LISA BORDERS: So when I was thinking about taking this job, the greatest challenge I anticipated was exactly what I’ve seen. It’s growing the game, growing interest in the game. There are many people who seem to have an opinion, but I would suggest and submit it’s not necessarily an informed opinion.
When I ask folks if they’ve ever seen the game that are sometimes critical, they’ve never been to a game. They haven’t watched it on ESPN. They haven’t streamed it on their computer.
So getting folks to understand what the product is I think requires them seeing it and experiencing it. So whether it’s in the 12 markets where our teams are today or watching it on TV or watching it on a device I think would be incredibly helpful, but that’s the greatest challenge.
Fundamentally, it’s a business, and it needs to be grown, and it needs to grow, I think, organically, not with a big spike after one event, but consistent, steady, sustainable growth over time.
Q. This year with the Olympics, we all see that there’s probably not going to be like a formal All-Star Game.
LISA BORDERS: Correct.
Q. So next year, or are there any plans in the future to expand the All-Star Game from a game to like a weekend and to have more festivities for the fans?
LISA BORDERS: You want to have a party?
Q. Yeah, pretty much.
LISA BORDERS: Sure. Once again, the All-Star Game is a wonderful thing. Obviously we’re not going to do it this year because of the Olympics, so we’re exploring all options. We want to make sure we have a good place and a good venue and good opportunities to celebrate with all the fans that will be there, so we’re just starting to think about stuff like that, bidding the package for 2017. It literally like went out a week ago if I’m not mistaken. So stay tuned.
Q. When you were a fan, you may have had different ideas that you weren’t privy to in terms of the league, et cetera. Coming in, did you find anything that pleasantly surprised you that might have even been in better shape than you might have thought when you were just down there at team level?
LISA BORDERS: You know, I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how engaged our owners are and how engaged our players are and how willing they are to do whatever it takes to grow the game. So for example, I talked about — you asked me about social media. I asked the players would they be willing to use their own platforms to invite their friends, families, and their followers to tune into a game or come to a game; would they be willing to go back to their undergraduate programs and speak on campus and invite their Trojans or their Titans or whatever they are to tune into the WNBA, and they said yes; they just had never been asked. So they are ambassadors of the game. They are the players. They are the talent on the floor, and they have more credibility at their home school, wherever it might be.
So I was pleasantly surprised that there are opportunities there and they were willing to execute on them, provided I just asked the question.
