this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2023
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Would that be genuinelly losing $30M a year or would it be only "losing" it in accounting terms because of paying more than $30M a year for "trademark use rights" to a company based in an offshore tax haven, said company being nothing more than a metal plate on a door next to the plates for 100s of such "companies" and 100% owned by the very same parent company as Tumblr?
Because if there's one thing which is common in Tech companies is using intelectual property legislation and convoluted corporate structures to create accounting losses for the purposed of paying no taxes (and publicly claiming poverty).
Same thing in Hollywood (hence the expression "Hollywood Accounting"), by the way, which is how they just recently claimed they "couldn't pay more because they were losing money" to the actors' union representatives during recent negotiations.
Mind you, such accounting trickeries can be undone by Courts (which can just deem that the "for tax evasion only" daughter company is not actually a real company set up to do business, so all those "intellectual property costs" used to create accounting losses legally become just an internal transfer of money within the same company, hence not a cost, hence do not reduce declared profits and the tax on them.
However there is no actual Political will to do so, which is why even though the laws for it are in the books, they're almost never applied.
this was my instant thought on the headline. what business that is truly losing $30,000,000 every year is going to stay open?
The WNBA. It operates at a loss. Been that way for the last 25 years.
Sports associations are not real businesses. Not a single one of them has to pay their own bills, so all of their accounting is farcical. The NBA, NFL, NHL, and most any other sports organization gets a tremendous amount of subsidy from local governments, a special tax status, and Monopoly protections.
None of these things would be nearly as profitable if they had to buy their own stadiums, pay their own salaries, and pay everyone in the organization properly. National sports leagues are a racket. If the WNBA only loses 30 million a year, that seems like a drop in the bucket compared to what these other ones are costing us with their taxpayer funded multibillion dollar stadiums that some prison company or student loan shark gets to put their name on.
A lot of sports teams claim to be perpetually unprofitable on paper...
But they'll still sell for billions
The leagues may be unprofitable. I have no idea. But individual sports teams typically make bank.
If I don't have to pay many of my own expenses, much of my business is a protected monopoly, and the government is providing me facilities at a negative interest rate, I am pretty sure I would be making pretty incredible money.
With all that being said... Between ticket sales, merch, etc. the NBA generates $10 billion in revenue per year.
The WNBA generates $60 million a year at a $10 million dollar loss and has never turned a profit in 25 years.
"2018, Adam Silver, Commissioner of the NBA, said that the WNBA had lost an average of $10 million per year for every year of its existence, including the posting of a $12 million loss in 2017. "
Imagine closing that league down when the top 30 or so NBA players combined make around $1,000,000,000 a year.
I don't see the correlation bro
WNBA is the NBA, it’s the same organization. They make more money than they know what to do with.
The WNBA is not a profitable league and operates at a $10 million dollar loss every year.
Did you skip my comment completely? WNBA is a part of the NBA. They’re not operating at a loss, they are a cost incurred by the NBA in order to promote basketball to a female viewership.
It’s like saying a marketing team operates at a loss because ads cost a company money. It’s just the wrong way to look at it. Usually the people who are adamant on phrasing it such are misogynists, which I really hope you aren’t, and you can understand what I’m saying
The WNBA is not part of the NBA. They have had their own set of owners since 2002. They operate at a loss every year and the NBA covers it as their sister league. Throwing out buzzwords like "misogynist' is based on feelings. What I am telling you is a fact.
The NBA owns the WNBA de jure: the trademarks, all the intellectual property. The WNBA Enterprises LLC is owned by the NBA.
The NBA doesn't own the WNBA teams though - although a handful of them belongs to NBA owners. So basically the WNBA teams participate in a league they don't own.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/03/sports/basketball/wnba-capital-raise-investors.html
The NBA website literally mentions the WNBA in the “Our Leagues” page:
https://careers.nba.com/our-leagues/
That being said, “misogynist is a buzzword” is a hilarious thing to say. I can tell what type of person you are already, and blocking you will not deprive me of literally anything of value.