HER DREAM IS OVER
Loeffler won’t co-own WNBA team anymore
The Atlanta Dream are almost free of their nightmare ownership. Weeks after losing her Senate seat to Rev. Raphael Warnock, Kelly Loeffler’s reign as a co-owner of the Dream, seems to also be coming to an end.
“As it relates to the Atlanta Dream, we understand a sale of the franchise is close to being finalized,” the league said in a statement. “Once the sale negotiation is concluded, additional information will be provided.”
Loeffler isn’t the majority share holder of the Dream, the Brock family is. Loeffler purchased a minority stake in the team in 2010, then teamed up with Mary Brock to purchase the team from then-owner Kathy Betty in 2011. She holds a 49% stake, but in recent years was the more public and infamous face of the team.
Loeffler’s tenure as a co-owner of the team was once celebrated as being one of very few women to own a significant share of a major sports franchise. She and Brock were heralded as the only all-women ownership group in Atlanta sports. Loeffler was considered a role model for young girls to see themselves in higher positions of the sports’ hierarchy of leadership. That all changed the moment she decided to go against the popular view of the league at large.
While the rest of the WNBA, and her own team, fought to right the wrongs of social and racial injustice, standing with those on the front lines of the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, Loeffler publicly stood apart. Aside from being a Trump supporter, she called a group of armed Black protesters “mob rule,” yet said nothing of armed white supremacists who antagonized peaceful protesters or of the police around the country who had killed unarmed Black and Brown men and women.
The last straw was when Loeffler penned a letter to WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert, calling for the league not to support the Black
Lives Matter movement. The letter was a response to the league’s announcement it would post “Black Lives Matter” on courts and wear warm ups that said “Say Her Name” during the Florida bubble season — Say Her Name is the name of the campaign the league launched to specifically bring to light and call for justice the Black and Brown women killed by police, like Breonna Taylor, Sandra Bland and Atatiana Jefferson.
After that, the Dream and the WNBAPA called on Engelbert to force Loeffler to sell her share of the team. Engelbert would not, but did inform players that Loeffler was no longer overseeing daily operations of the Dream and was not on the WNBA Board of Governors.
The Dream and others around the league then started campaigning for Loeffler’s challenger, Warnock. Loeffler said the calls for her leave from the team and the Senate were examples of problematic “cancel culture.”