Mercury Gov. Mat Ishbia Voices Support for WNBA to Charter Flights All Season

WNBA teams are still fighting for the opportunity to have chartered flights all season long, and another supporter advocated for that initiative on Sunday.

Phoenix Mercury governor Mat Ishbia told ESPN's Josh Weinfuss that he believes WNBA teams deserve chartered flights more than just for playoff games and back-to-back nights, saying he wants the league to move "in that direction."

"I feel like you invest in the players, you invest in the team, you do all the right [things] and money follows," Ishbia said prior to the Mercury's home opener against the Chicago Sky on Sunday. "Too many people think about the other way around, and, so, that's my belief system.

"The WNBA is doing some good things and the commissioner's doing good things to move it in that direction. And I respect what they're doing and I'm definitely a supporter of getting there faster and sooner."

New York Liberty star Breanna Stewart strongly advocated for charter flights for all WNBA teams this past offseason. The Liberty were fined $500,000 last season for chartering flights to away games during the second half of the 2021 campaign.

Weinfuss noted that the Associated Press reported that charter flights for the postseason and back-to-back regular-season games would cost "around $4.5 million," while charter flights for every team over the course of the whole season would cost "about $25 million."

WNBA teams are prohibited from unauthorized use of charter flights because it could provide a competitive advantage and it also violates the league's collective bargaining agreement with the players' union. However, Ishbia said he's willing to go the extra mile for his team and he believes it should be the same across the league.

"We're going to make sure we do everything within our power, within the rules to make it of our women, our players have the best chance to [play at their] peak performance, whether it's medically, whether it's rest wise, whether it's in the hotels, every, I'm pushing all of the envelopes to make sure that our team has all the best of everything," he said.