WHERE CULTURE
COURIER L 14 IFE, OCT. 25-31, 2019
The New York Liberty women’s basketball team will move to Barclays Center for the 2020
season. Photo by Kostas Lymperopoulos
LIBERTY COMES
TO BROOKLYN
Brooklyn to host New York’s only pro
women’s basketball team
BY JOE HITI
The New York Liberty will be dribbling
into Brooklyn next year.
The city’s premier professional
women’s basketball team will be relocating
from the distant suburbs of
Westchester to Barclays Center in
time for the 2020 season after billionaire
entrepreneur Joseph Tsia
— who also owns the arena and the
Brooklyn Nets — purchased the
WNBA team in January.
Barclays Center’s president and
CEO said the move to Kings County
will help grow the team’s following
in the area.
“With many of our fans based in
the five boroughs, moving to Barclays
Center will make the Liberty
more centrally located, allowing us
to bring back the original fan base
and attract new supporters,” said
David Levy.
In addition to the new location,
the Liberty also boast the first pick
in the upcoming WNBA draft next
April, giving the team an injection
of young talent to help the team’s oncourt
success — which will come as
a welcome development after a measly
10-and-24 record last season.
The move to Barclays will also
expand the potential audience to
8,000 seats per-game, compared
to the 2,100-seat capacity of the
Westchester arena where the team
played last season.
Tsia — the Tawianese-Candian
co-founder of Chinese e-commerce
conglomerate Alibaba — came under
fire earlier this month for blasting
a fellow basketball executive for
his support of the pro-democracy
protests in Hong Kong.
The 2020 WNBA season will tipoff
next May.
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