The Indiana Fever for a third straight year have led the WNBA "in sponsorship sales and ... have been profitable," leading league officials to call them a "model franchise," according to Anthony Schoettle of the INDIANAPOLIS BUSINESS JOURNAL. Fever officials said that their profit margin "isn’t huge." But WNBA sources said that the Fever are "one of only six franchises in the 12-team league to be profitable this year at all." Recent sponsorship extensions -- with The Finish Line through '18 and Community Health Network through '17 -- plus a "new deal with Papa John’s Pizza, increase the odds that the team will push further into the black." Fever officials said that both The Finish Line and Community Health Network "increased their level of investment." Community Health Network "will put its name and logo on the floor in front of the player benches." NBA teams "started selling that space two years ago," but the Fever are the "first WNBA team to capture that revenue." Fever President & GM Kelly Krauskopf said, "We're having another record year in (sponsorship) sales." She added that the team "has doubled sponsorship sales" since '12. However, Schoettle writes if there is a "dark cloud hanging over the Fever, it’s that attendance has been basically static since the team’s second season" in '01. Attendance each of the last 15 years "has hovered between 8,700 and 7,000" per game. Regular-season attendance was down 5% this year to 7,485, but Krauskopf is "encouraged by what she sees in ticket sales," noting that full-season-ticket renewal is 77% thus far. That is 10% "ahead of this time last year." This year, mini-season package sales rose 24%, single-game sales increased 8% and group sales "moved up" 7% (INDIANAPOLIS BUSINESS JOURNAL, 9/19 issue).
