TV Deals Still Leave ABL Far Behind

Never has the gulf seemed so wide, the bridge so long.

When it came out in a conference call last week that the American Basketball League had to buy air time to put two playoff games on CBS next season, there were gulps up and down the line.

Televised WNBA games are hard to miss. But the ABL, approaching its third season, remains stuck in the jumble of cable television, its hard-to-find games seen by only a fraction of those who watch WNBA games on NBC, ESPN and Lifetime.

Already bearing considerable financial losses to date, the ABL must now come up with roughly $300,000 for each of those two playoff games next April, an industry insider said.

A WNBA spokesman said it does not pay for any of its TV time.

Is the ABL on life support?

How much longer can a league carrying player salaries as high as $200,000 go on, with no visible revenue streams?

Increasingly, you hear those kinds of questions.

The league can’t keep going back to investors Joe Lacob and Bob Fiondella (neither was returning reporters’ calls this week) and asking for more. They invested, sources say, $3 million each about a year ago.

Rob Correa, the CBS executive on the conference call with ABL chief Gary Cavalli, said all the right things.

“Client-supported TV is a lot more common than people realize,” he said, citing skins golf tournaments and college football’s Cotton Bowl game as examples.

“He also called women’s pro basketball ‘a growing property.’ ”

Cavalli called the CBS deal “a breakthrough . . . a milestone in our growth and development.”

He said the CBS agreement was essential to bringing major sponsorships on board.

“We’re very close to some major sponsorship deals, and they’re with people who told us they want to see where we’re going with TV before committing,” Cavalli said.

The ABL is expected to announce its third regular-season cable-TV package this week. Meanwhile, the WNBA, with the backing of the NBA, has gone to overseas markets. The league recently signed TV deals in Greece and Israel.

If the CBS deal triggers some ABL sponsorship deals, they’ll have to be big ones to match its rival’s arsenal. WNBA sponsors include Nike, American Express, Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, General Motors, Kellogg’s and Lee Jeans.

Current ABL sponsors include Reebok, Phoenix Insurance, Nike, Yahoo!, Baden and First USA Bank.

Both leagues lose money, but the WNBA has nearly double the attendance and takes in far more in sponsorship money than the ABL. It’s called marketing muscle.

It was reported a year ago the WNBA had $21 million in sponsor money in the bank before its first game.

The ABL needs deals like that . . . just to pay the Long Beach StingRays’ bills.

Take a look at the StingRays: Factoring in rock-bottom salary estimates for players and staff and adding minimal numbers for office and arena rent, a figure of $800,000 is easily arrived at. And that doesn’t include travel bills.

And considering some StingRay crowds early last season could be counted in the hundreds, not thousands, and attendance problems in Philadelphia and Denver, it’s clear to see why increasing numbers of followers of the women’s pro game ask:

“How much longer do you give the ABL?”

Let’s put it this way: If Cavalli turns this around, he gets the award for sports executive of the year.

MOMMA CAN’T HELP HER JUMP SHOT

That smart-alecky little girl in those Nike TV ads--the one who tells Lisa Leslie “New York is gonna shut you down!” and informs Sheryl Swoopes that her jump shot needs work--was a Sparks spectator the other night.

Kyla Pratt, 13, is a seventh-grader at Marina del Rey Middle School.

We asked her if she really is that smart-alecky.

“Yeah, almost all the time,” she said.

STALEY WATCH

U.S. Olympic team point guard Dawn Staley will jump from the Philadelphia Rage of the ABL to the WNBA, an insider says, if she can be placed with old friend Lisa Leslie on the Sparks.

If not, she’s likely to remain in Philadelphia . . . and play in the same backcourt with Teresa Edwards.

Staley, by the way, has changed agents. She’s now represented by Management Plus, the same firm that represents Leslie.

NOTABLE

Leslie and Rebecca Lobo are the guests on ESPN’s “Up Close” show Wednesday at 3 p.m. . . . Guard Erin Alexander, waived July 10 by the Sparks, has been picked up by Utah.