It’s not just a team, it’s a lifestyle.
The New York Liberty’s rabid fanbase was once viewed as niche — but with growing interest in the league and the Liberty’s first title under its belt there’s a feeling among supporters they’re finally getting their due.
“It’s not just basketball,” said Veronica Garza, 40, a comedian from Park Slope and longtime follower of the charter WNBA squad now celebrating its first-ever championship.
“It’s just fun, just inviting, it’s welcoming … You can’t find anyone who’s gone to a Liberty game in the past three or four years — I know a lot of people who’ve gone once with a friend, and now they go again. They just become fans, just because of the vibe.”
The atmosphere of Liberty games is incomparable to any other teams in the league, said Garza, who has traveled across the nation to watch WBNA and NBA games alike, and even regularly trekked to White Plains during the Liberty’s two-year stint at the Westchester County Center.
Even NBA games are tame in comparison, she said — and that includes supporters of the Brooklyn Nets, who share the Barclays Center with the Libs.
“I remember going to a Nets game earlier this year, and it just seemed like no one wanted to be there. There was an attempt at the weakest wave ever to get around. It was just not the vibe. I was like, ‘Do people know they pay for these seats?’”
Although there was always a core group of Liberty loyals, Garza noticed a significant explosion in the team’s popularity when they moved to the Barclays Center in 2020 — after two long and disappointing seasons in Westchester and a third played in a COVID-19 bubble in Florida.
Liberty failed to make the playoffs in any of those seasons and had lackluster support from fans on its own turf at the County Center, an old and small arena owned by the county government. The team brought in an average of just 2,822 fans per game during that first season out of the Big Apple, a jaw-dropping 71% patronage plummet from the previous year.
The team hit rock bottom during the 2020 season with a league-worst, losing all but two games throughout the year.
Everything changed the following seasons, however, when Liberty was brought to Brooklyn by its new owners, the Tsai family, and with it a renewed sense of optimism and marketing strategy.
“They understood that there was so much work to be done to regain that trust, and then that’s helped them bring in new fans as well,” said Myles Ehrlich, 35, a senior writer who covers New York Liberty for Winsidr.
“There was an entire new branding strategy when they took over the team in 2020 and to get to this point, it’s not just the investment on the court, but it’s everything that’s really come around it that has really brought them to this point.”
That year, the team brought in new superstars Michaela Onyenwere and DiDi Richards to kickstart a new chapter that brought the team to the playoffs for the first time since 2017.
The 2021 season was also the first time Ellie the Elephant was introduced to the Liberty family — the twerking mascot that has since taken the internet and late-night shows by storm.
Soon, the Liberty had been transformed into a team to be reckoned with and the Barclays a hub for a growing community of dedicated fans.
The proof was in the pudding — attendance rates also skyrocketed over the last few years until Liberty averaged 12,729 fans in the 2024 season, the highest turnout the team had seen since their days at MSG in 2003, records show.
The Barclays was, of course, packed to the brim and divulged into chaos Sunday when Liberty finished off the Minnesota Lynx Sunday and secured its first title win in history.
“It’s interesting because there are some fan bases that are just as passionate, but that often happens in cities where there aren’t otherwise major sports teams,” said Elrich, of Park Slope.
The sportswriter first began following Liberty during their worst year in 2020, but was attracted to the atmosphere the team and its fans cultivated, even at its lowest moments.
“I was struck by going to a game, just how welcoming the environment was for fans,” Elrich explained.
“I’ve gone with a lot of people who have said that this is different, that they’ve always felt kind of gatekept from sports, because there can be toxicity behind all of that. So whether it is women going to these games or I’ve got queer friends who have gone to these games and said, ‘Oh, now I see the appeal of sports in a way that I never was able to understand it before.’
“And, of course, that’s separate from the actual action, which is just having just more touch points for kids that want to see for young girls growing up that want to see women playing sports, and for bringing friends and getting them into a community that they didn’t know existed otherwise. So I think that it’s just an access point that really hasn’t always existed.”