Denver’s bid for a WNBA franchise will be put off until at least 2009 because of lack of investor money, Triple Crown Sports CEO David King said Tuesday.
“To this point, we’ve had insufficient investor interest to move forward for the 2008 season,” King said. “And I would say there is a lot of interest in the team. There’s not a lot of interest in ownership in the team.”
The official deadline for submitting a bid for an expansion franchise is Saturday. But King, who has spearheaded the effort, said the handwriting was on the wall and notified the WNBA a few days ago.
There was a core group of 15 investors, but King said “the dollar amounts weren’t significant enough. I didn’t have the one or two really substantial players that it took to do this deal. … We’re not the kind of (entity) that can take an 80 percent stake and fill in the blanks.”
In March, when King announced plans to pursue a team for the 2008 season, he said at the time he had secured $11 million of the $15 million needed to start the team.
Now he is focusing on ways to bring a team to Denver after 2008.
WNBA officials were en route to Phoenix for Tuesday night’s Game 3 of the league Finals and weren’t available for comment.
“We’ve had discussions with them about the potential for 2009 or 2010,” King said. “And they definitely want to keep us in the loop, and we want to stay in the loop.”
Triple Crown Sports owned the Colorado Chill of the now-defunct NWBL. According to King, in an expansion the WNBA would have welcomed the name, which is currently trademarked.
There were rumors King was going to buy the WNBA’s Houston Comets and move the franchise to Denver. King said he never was presented an opportunity to buy the Comets, but that acquiring an existing franchise is a possibility – and that takes fewer dollars.
Kroenke Sports Enterprises was on board offering use of the Pepsi Center at economical rates, though the Chill would have used various venues in the area. Stan Kroenke, who owns five sports franchises in Denver headlined by the Nuggets and Avalanche, does not want to be stretched too thin by being the majority owner in a sixth professional franchise, KSE executive vice president Paul Andrews said.
“At this time, we’re concentrating on the five teams that we own,” Andrews said Tuesday. “We think the WNBA can thrive here with the right individuals in a group to drive it. When Dave let us know six months ago he was putting this group together, we were supportive. It’s sorry to see that it’s not going to be the case at this point.”
King said he understood the magnitude of bringing a franchise to Denver when he announced his intentions in March. It didn’t make conceding any easier.
“I felt this would be the toughest thing we’d do,” he said. “But I thought it was accomplishable. And in the time frame we had, I thought it was a doable task.”
Staff writer Chris Dempsey can be reached at 303-954-1279 or cdempsey@denverpost.com.
