LAS VEGAS (AP) — Las Vegas tourism chief Steve Hill said he will interview Tuesday with the lead investigator who is examining whether WNBA rules were broken when sponsorship deals were offered last month to Las Vegas Aces players.
Hill announced to the players on May 18 they would each receive a $100,000 sponsorship each of the next two years from the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. The WNBA hired a law firm, Kobre & Kim, to investigate whether the league's salary-cap rules were circumvented. Founding partner Steven Kobre heads the investigation.
The sponsorship money is more than the average annual value of five Aces players contracts, according to Spotrac.
Hill, CEO and President of the LVCVA, said Monday the authority did everything according to the WNBA's policies, including working independently of the Aces to arrange the sponsorship agreements. He said “a handful of” contract drafts sent to player agents have been signed.
“We made a commitment to the players and we’re going to follow through on that,” Hill said. “We have not done anything wrong. (The players) have every right to sign a sponsorship agreement. This is a legitimate sponsorship agreement. ... We've taped all the players and broadcast their image, so we owe them for that. That's the first deliverable in the deal, so we are moving forward."
He said the authority did alert the team it planned to offer sponsorships to the players, but did not divulge the details.
Before moving forward, Hill said the Aces informed the LVCVA that it would have to sponsor the team first in order to receive the rights to use the club logo and other properties in any promotional materials. The LVCVA has similar agreements with the NFL's Raiders and NHL's Golden Knights, Hill said.
Also, the authority asked the Aces permission to gain access to the locker room to tell the players the news, but that no details were provided other than a sponsorship proposal would be offered. The Aces have said they had no knowledge of the specifics.
Hill said he wasn't aware of any rules barring the LVCVA from working with the two-time defending champion Aces to set up the announcement that was videotaped and promoted by the authority.
“That's just a logistics thing," Hill said.
Hill said under terms that each player receives $25,000 a month, and players who are released or added to the roster would receive money on a prorated basis. Each sponsorship agreement includes four components — the video from the locker room as a promotional tool, a team photo, public appearances and uses of name, image and likeness.
“We're in the process of working through that with each of the agents,” Hill said.
This isn't the first time the WNBA has investigated the Aces.
Last year, the WNBA suspended coach Becky Hammon for two games and took away the Aces’ 2025 first-round draft pick because it determined the franchise violated league rules regarding impermissible player benefits and workplace policies.
Hill said he didn't know where the WNBA's investigation stood into the sponsorships matter.
“We think this is a very positive step for the team, the league,” Hill said. “We hope we're raising the bar. We hope that we are maybe opening some minds to the value that has been kind of locked up that we're trying to unlock with all these players.
“I get completely and understand the need for the league to ask questions. Really the only thing I think the league has said is that they are opening an investigation, which has kind of an ominous tone to the word. I don't know that they mean it that way or not. I hope not. I think after they investigate, they're going to say, ‘You know, completely following the rules here and wow, this could be a good thing.’ So, hopefully, they embrace it.”
AP WNBA: https://apnews.com/hub/wnba-basketball
Las Vegas Aces head coach Becky Hammon calls out to players during the first half of an WNBA basketball game against the Minnesota Lynx Tuesday, June 11, 2024, in Las Vegas. (Steve Marcus/Las Vegas Sun via AP)
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — In the waning moments of Iran's final televised presidential debate, one of the top candidates to replace the late hard-line President Ebrahim Raisi invoked the name of the one person who perhaps has done more than anyone to change the trajectory of the Islamic Republic's relationship with the wider world in recent years.
The next president could be "forced to either sell Iran to Trump or spark a dangerous tension in the country” if economic problems aren't solved, warned Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, Iran’s parliament speaker and a candidate in Friday’s election.
President Donald Trump's decision in 2018 to unilaterally withdraw America from the Iran nuclear deal saw crushing sanctions reimposed and largely cut Tehran out of the world's economy. That worsened the political climate within Iran, already beset by mass protests over economic problems and women's rights. An escalating series of attacks on land and at sea followed, while Tehran also began enriching uranium at near weapons-grade levels.
Hamas' Oct. 7 attack on Israel and Israel's subsequent war on the militants in the Gaza Strip only added jet fuel to a fire now threatening to burn nearly every corner of the wider Middle East. Iran's support of an array of militias, including Hamas, Lebanon's Hezbollah and Yemen's Houthi rebels, and its unprecedented direct attack on Israel during the war, has made it a direct belligerent in the conflict.
What happens in both the war and with Iran's future may hinge directly on the U.S., denounced by the Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini as the “Great Satan” in the 1979 Islamic Revolution and still cursed at major events like a speech this week by the 85-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Despite the vitriol, the U.S. has come up again and again in the campaign. Khamenei warned this week against supporting candidates who “think that all ways to progress pass through America," a thinly veiled criticism of the only reformist running in the race, Masoud Pezeshkian, who has fully embraced a return to the 2015 nuclear deal.
Among the six initial presidential contenders — two of whom had dropped out by Thursday — Trump has repeatedly emerged as a theme. One of them, former hard-line candidate Amirhossein Ghazizadeh Hashemi, contended that if Trump wins the U.S. presidential election “we can negotiate with Trump and impose our demands on him.”
That wasn't an opinion shared by Shiite cleric Mostafa Pourmohammadi, who warned Iran should take part in talks now with the U.S. before a second possible Trump presidency. However, his campaign also printed a side-by-side poster showing the cleric and Trump in profile, declaring: “I am the one who can stand against Trump!”
Hard-line candidate Saeed Jalili also mocked his competitors as being “scared” of Trump, vowing to fight him.
For his part, Trump has brought up Iran while campaigning in recent days. Speaking to the “All In" podcast, Trump repeated that he had wanted to “make a fair deal with Iran” — while also trying to claim Iran's theocratic government that long has called for Israel's destruction would somehow have made a diplomatic recognition deal with Israel like the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain did during his presidency.
“A child could have made a deal with them — and Biden did nothing,” Trump asserted.
Interestingly, President Joe Biden's name hasn't been mentioned during the Iranian election debates. Before Raisi's death in a May helicopter crash, the U.S. under Biden had several rounds of indirect talks with Iranian officials.
While broadly criticizing Iran, particularly in the wake of the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini and the women's rights protests that followed, the Biden administration has opened the door to Iran accessing some frozen assets abroad. That includes a deal that saw a prisoner swap between the countries in September, less than a month before the Israel-Hamas war began.
Then there's Iran's oil sales. While technically sanctioned, Iran recently reported selling 2.5 million barrels a day — with the lion's share likely going to China, possibly at a discount. Former Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who struck the nuclear deal under the relatively moderate President Hassan Rouhani and now supports the reformist candidate Pezeshkian, directly attributed those sales to the Biden administration's policies.
“That the crude sales have gone up was not a work by our friends, but when Biden came power they had a policy to loosen the bolt of sanctions," said Zarif, obliquely referring to hard-liners. "Let Trump come and find out what our friends will do.”
While wider talks in Vienna with world powers to restart the nuclear deal collapsed, Biden may be trying to replicate a strategy from when he was vice president under Barack Obama — quietly working indirectly with the Iranians toward a deal that later can be brought to the table.
But much of whatever U.S. policy the Biden administration planned for the Middle East — including a possible Saudi security deal that could see Riyadh diplomatically recognize Israel — has been upended by the Israel-Hamas war.
Meanwhile, the real wildcard for Iran comes Nov. 5 when the U.S. holds its presidential election. Biden's re-election likely would see a continuation of the carrot-stick approach wielded so far during his term. If Trump is re-elected, it could portend more discussions about a deal while also carrying risks. Trump in 2020 launched a drone strike killing Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani while still insisting he wanted a deal with Tehran.
A war between Israel and Lebanon — or the Houthis potentially getting a missile strike on an American warship amid their campaign — also could drastically upend calculations in both Tehran and Washington.
For now though, Iran and the U.S. remain intertwined in tension, much like the nations have for decades.
Jon Gambrell, the news director for the Gulf and Iran for The Associated Press, has reported from each of the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, Iran and other locations across the world since joining the AP in 2006.
A customer takes a photo of a carpet in a carpet shop at the old main bazaar of Tehran, Iran, Thursday, June 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
Reformist candidate for Iran's presidential election Masoud Pezeshkian waves to his supporters in his campaign meeting in Tehran, Iran, Sunday, June 23, 2024. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
Iran's parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, the most prominent hard-line candidate for the presidential election, speaks in his campaign gathering in Tehran, Iran, Wednesday, June 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
A supporter of Saeed Jalili, a candidate for the presidential election, holds his poster as he flashes a victory sign during a campaign gathering in Tehran, Iran, Wednesday, June 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
Supporters of reformist candidate for Iran's presidential election Masoud Pezeshkian attend his campaign meeting in Tehran, Iran, Sunday, June 23, 2024. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
Women walk through the old main bazaar of Tehran, Iran, Thursday, June 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
A supporter of Saeed Jalili, a candidate for the presidential election, holds up his poster during a campaign gathering in Tehran, Iran, Wednesday, June 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
A supporter of Iran's parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, the most prominent hard-line candidate for the presidential election, holds up his poster in a campaign gathering in Tehran, Iran, Wednesday, June 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
FILE - The entrance to the former U.S. Embassy, which has been turned into an anti-American museum, is seen in Tehran, Iran, Aug. 19, 2023. The next president could be "forced to either sell Iran to Trump or spark a dangerous tension in the country” if economic problems aren't solved, warned Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, Iran’s parliament speaker and a candidate in the election to be held on Friday, June 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)
FILE - People walk past a state-organized, anti-U.S. mural painted on the wall of the former U.S. Embassy in Tehran, Iran, Aug. 19, 2023. The next president could be "forced to either sell Iran to Trump or spark a dangerous tension in the country” if economic problems aren't solved, warned Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, Iran’s parliament speaker and a candidate in the election to be held on Friday, June 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)
FILE - Iranian demonstrators burn representations of British and U.S. flags during a protest against the U.S. and British military strike against Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen, in front of the British Embassy in Tehran, Iran, Jan. 12, 2024. The next president could be "forced to either sell Iran to Trump or spark a dangerous tension in the country” if economic problems aren't solved, warned Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, Iran’s parliament speaker and a candidate in the election to be held on Friday, June 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)
