Report: Liberty Fined Record $500K for Chartering Flights During 2021 WNBA Season
The WNBA's New York Liberty were reportedly fined a league-record $500,000 for chartering private flights for the players during the second half of the 2021 season.
Howard Megdal of Sports Illustrated reported the league originally planned to fine the team $1 million, but the total was reduced by an appeal. What's more, Liberty executive Oliver Weisberg was removed from the WNBA's executive committee as part of the punishments.
The flights chartered by team governors Joe and Clara Wu Tsai, as well as a Napa trip over Labor Day weekend, violated the league's collective bargaining agreement.
Megdal reported that WNBA general counsel Jamin Dershowitz even "floated" penalties such as losing "every draft pick you have ever seen," suspending the team governors and possibly even "termination of the franchise."
The Tsais, who purchased the Liberty in January 2019, chartered flights for every road game in the second half of the season.
Joe Tsai even tweeted in July that he was going to "solve this transportation problem for good."
The inability to charter flights has been a controversial topic in the WNBA, and Megdal reported the Liberty pushed forward an unofficial proposal to the WNBA Board of Governors in September to make it the default way of traveling for the league.
However, it did not receive majority support.
"I think what charter flights represent in the world of sports is it gives you a little bit of validation," Seattle Storm guard Sue Bird said in February when explaining the importance of the issue. "It's saying that your league is so successful, it has the finances to charter flights, which is incredibly expensive. There's not many businesses that just charter flights left and right. ... So I think for a lot of us, it would just be an indicator of that. It'd be an indicator of financial success."
While the league still stepped in to punish the Liberty when it found out about the transgressions, some front offices around the league didn't think the $500,000 fine was enough. New York didn't lose any draft picks, and Megdal noted there was no further discussion about additional penalties if it continued to violate the CBA.
Liberty alternate governor Oliver Weisberg wrote the following response to Dershowitz in September:
"The focus on objecting to better travel arrangements seems to go against the spirit of what the entire League is trying to achieve under the leadership of WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert. We cannot begin to talk about gender equity until we solve some pressing issues that have put extra burdens on the health and well-being of WNBA players. In the spirit of improving working conditions for our female athletes, we are of the strong belief that WNBA teams should be permitted to arrange travel that is consistent with the fact that they are professional athletes."
New York ultimately did not charter a flight to its first-round playoff game against the Phoenix Mercury as part of its efforts to reduce the proposed $1 million fine.
It ended up losing that game by a single point, which brought its season to an end.
