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New York Liberty has been fined $ 500,000 for charter flights to the second half of the WNBA season and other league violations, including an unauthorized team trip to Napa, California, a source told ESPN on Tuesday.

The flights were purchased by team owners Joe Tsai, co-founder of Chinese technology company Alibaba Group, and his wife Clara, who bought Liberty and Brooklyn Nets from the NBA in 2019.

The news was first announced by Sports Illustrated.

Tsai has publicly campaigned for better travel accommodation for WNBA players, tweeting in October that he is working with WNBA Commissioner Katie Engelbert and airlines to find a charter sponsor.

Charter is not usually allowed in the WNBA for fear of creating a competitive advantage for teams whose owners can afford to fund such expensive agreements. Engelbert told the media last month that while he supported the idea of ​​hiring teams, the league needed to experience more financial growth to cover these costs.

While Tsai worked to find a solution for all the franchises, last season the WNBA discovered that he was secretly renting flights to Liberty. At the time, Liberty players openly posted on social media about the team’s trip to Napa over Labor Day weekend. Sports Illustrated also announced that the WNBA Board of Directors had rejected an “unofficial proposal” led by Liberty in which the league would compete for three years of charter flights.

A WNBA spokesman denied on Tuesday that something specific had been presented.

“At no time has there been a proposal from the New York Liberty WNBA Board of Governors to consider offering three-year charter flights to WNBA teams,” a spokesman told ESPN. “It was agreed that Liberty would explore the possibility of charter flights and present it on board. To date, this has not happened.

The WNBA occasionally intervenes to pay for post-season travel in multiple time zones, including the latest for Chicago Sky and Phoenix Mercury between Games 2 and 3 of the 2021 finals.

Sports Illustrated also reported that the league’s top adviser offered a number of harsh penalties for Liberty, including “losing” every draft choice you’ve ever seen “to a suspension of ownership, even” grounds to terminate the franchise “. Engelbert said during a conversation on the board of governors that she “made a deal with Joe” to reduce the fine from $ 1 million to $ 500,000.

Commercial travel for WNBA teams – provided for in the league’s collective agreement with the players’ union – has been a major ignition point for the league in recent years, as players have drawn attention to tight, awkward places during flights and travel troubles that have even led to until the cancellation of games.

The news of the fine caused excitement on social media from both players and fans.

“What a joke,” Liberty’s franchise player Sabrina Ionescu wrote on Twitter in response to the league’s behavior with the situation.

The WNBA Players’ Association tweeted: “The fining of teams for justice, the defense of players, is reminiscent of a league that fines players for social justice.”

ESPN’s Ramona Shelburn contributed to this report.