{"id":827471,"date":"2026-08-27T10:44:19","date_gmt":"2026-08-27T10:44:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/827471\/"},"modified":"2026-08-27T10:44:19","modified_gmt":"2026-08-27T10:44:19","slug":"sparks-are-growing-but-mark-walter-should-still-sell-the-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/827471\/","title":{"rendered":"Sparks are growing but Mark Walter should still sell the team"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Mark Walter<\/a> doesn\u2019t need to sell the Sparks. It said so in a release from his company<\/a> Wednesday: \u201cTWG is not looking to sell its sports assets at \u2018fire sale\u2019 prices to raise capital for its insurance operations.\u201d<\/p>\n

He should sell the Sparks<\/a> anyway.<\/p>\n

Not because of the investigations into allegations<\/a> that insurance companies under Walter\u2019s umbrella failed to properly disclose and conduct transactions between other companies he controls.<\/p>\n

But for the sake of the storied WNBA franchise, which hasn\u2019t won a championship in a decade and is about to miss the playoffs for the sixth consecutive season \u2014 something that would have been unthinkable six seasons ago.<\/p>\n

Sell for the sake of the Sparks, who have long deserved an owner who wants seriously to run the team like Walter\u2019s group runs, well, the Dodgers.<\/p>\n

With passion and pride, foresight and smarts.<\/p>\n

\"A <\/p>\n

A steel beam is raised as the final structuarl piece of the Sparks\u2019 $150-million training facility in El Segundo on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

(Ronaldo Bolanos \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n

And, yes, the new $150-million training facility<\/a> that\u2019s going to open in El Segundo next year is a better-late-than-never step in that direction.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not too little; the 64,000-square-foot space, which will be tremendous in a prime location near the beach and shopping.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s very late. Wednesday\u2019s topping-out ceremony, when a construction crew lifted the final structural beam into place, doesn\u2019t change that.<\/p>\n

While so many of the Sparks\u2019 rivals have had the upper hand in recruiting and retaining talent with state-of-the-art private practice spaces for the past few years, the Sparks have been \u2014 to use star forward Nneka Ogwumike\u2019s word \u2014 \u201cnomads.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Sparks have always offered fans a famously fun game-day experience, but their players had to continually get familiar with facilities all over Southern California, from L.A. Southwest and El Camino College to Academy USA in Glendale to Jump Beyond Sports in Torrance, from Windward School and Galen Center to JR286, the gym in Torrance where they practice now.<\/p>\n

Starting next season, they\u2019ll have a home.<\/p>\n

\"Photo <\/p>\n

A rendering of the Sparks\u2019 new training facility in El Segundo.<\/p>\n

(Ronaldo Bolanos \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s not because the Sparks\u2019 ownership wanted to do what Mark Davis did with the Las Vegas Aces when he was the first owner to provide fancy new digs in 2023.<\/p>\n

Not because they were resolute about giving the Sparks a first-class experience, like Joe Tsai did when he chartered flights for New York Liberty before the league said it was legal, getting himself fined $500,000.<\/p>\n

But because the Sparks would fall further behind if they didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Because now \u201cit\u2019s the bare minimum,\u201d said forward Dearica Hamby, whose input \u2014 dedicated spaces for family and naps \u2014 was incorporated into the building\u2019s design.<\/p>\n

It also will include two regulation basketball courts, a performance and training environment, hydrotherapy and recovery rooms and a player sanctuary.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt represents a belief in our players,\u201d said Stacy Johns, the team\u2019s president. \u201cIt represents a belief in the future of the Sparks. And it represents a belief in where women\u2019s basketball and women\u2019s sports are going.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Members <\/p>\n

Members of the media and guests gather with the Sparks\u2019 front-office staff for the topping-out ceremony in El Segundo on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

(Ronaldo Bolanos \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n

Where\u2019s that? Up.<\/p>\n

Valuations are growing. In May, CNBC reported that the WNBA\u2019s current teams were worth an average of $460 million \u2014 84% more than the league\u2019s most recent expansion fee of $250 million.<\/p>\n

The Sparks \u2014 without taking the new facility, the largest investment to date in the history of women\u2019s sports, into account \u2014 were valued at $415 million, seventh among the WNBA\u2019s 15 teams.<\/p>\n

The Golden State Valkyries, an expansion team in 2025, were valued at a record $1 billion, more than any women\u2019s sports team in history.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s because the Valkyries \u2014 who are owned by the Golden State Warriors\u2019 Joe Lacob and Peter Guber \u2014 have been innovative and imaginative, run more like the Dodgers than the Sparks, who are owned mostly by the same folks as the Dodgers.<\/p>\n

The Dodgers instituted a private player-only plane and added Japanese-style toilets after then-recruit Roki Sasaki asked. The Valkyries established a 30-plus network of area bars for fans to gather to watch games and they helped a player with sleeping problems by offering everything from a different comforter to a sleep study.<\/p>\n

\"Photo <\/p>\n

Rendering of the inside the contrition of the Sparks\u2019 new training facility, including a dining area.<\/p>\n

(Ronaldo Bolanos \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n

The Dodgers gave the keys to Andrew Friedman and Dave Roberts. The Valkyries\u2019 GM is Ohemaa Nyanin, formerly an assistant GM with the WNBA champion New York Liberty, and their coach is former UCLA Bruin Natalie Nakase, before an assistant on Aces championship teams and an NBA assistant for years with the Clippers.<\/p>\n

The Sparks have for the past several seasons cycled through unproven coaches and GMs, or fired experienced ones. Unable to pick a lane and drive it, they keep ricocheting between preaching patience and acting impatiently. And at the moment, they don\u2019t even have a GM after firing Raegan Pebley in July.<\/p>\n

Johns, who was brought on to oversee the team\u2019s business in April, said things are changing. And change takes time.<\/p>\n

The Sparks are 13-25, behind the expansion Portland Fire in the standings and having lost twice to the expansion Toronto Tempo. But they\u2019ve tripled their sports staff this year, adding performance and mental health therapists and additional basketball data people \u2014 who apparently aided in the construction of an old, uncompetitive roster.<\/p>\n

\u201cI couldn\u2019t tell you what happened or who woke up one day and decided,\u201d said Johns, who worked for the MLS champion LAFC and Super Bowl champion Indianapolis Colts. \u201cBut when I was recruited \u2026 I was explicitly told like, \u2018This is changing,\u2019 and like, \u2018We\u2019re hiring you because we want to signal change.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The biggest change that could help the Sparks? At the top, with someone who wants to push the envelope instead of compensate and play catchup.<\/p>\n

\"Rendering <\/p>\n

Rendering of the inside the contrition of the Sparks\u2019 new training facility, including a basketball court.<\/p>\n

(Ronaldo Bolanos\/Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mark Walter doesn\u2019t need to sell the Sparks. It said so in a release from his company Wednesday:…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":827472,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[20567,4279,25237,473,57029,64497,15553,31878,23629,1079,99,267344,1599,81642,26334,434,11270],"class_list":["post-827471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-belief","tag-dodgers","tag-gm","tag-history","tag-mark-walter","tag-new-facility","tag-player","tag-spark","tag-sparks","tag-sport","tag-sports","tag-stacy-johns","tag-team","tag-torrance","tag-valkyries","tag-wnba","tag-woman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=827471"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827471\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/827472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=827471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=827471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=827471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}