Mat Ishbia is exactly where he wants to be in PHOENIX. Saturday evening at the Footprint Center will host the WNBA All-Star Game. The Mercury’s$ 100 million training center was christened Friday—three weeks ahead of schedule—just south of the industry city and featuring authorities named after sun Diana Taurasi.
The NBA All-Star Game will be held in Ishbia in 2027, too. Not bad for 18 weeks owning the Suns and Mercury.
” We’re trying to make Phoenix a destination”, Ishbia said in an interview Friday standing near core judge at the new training center. The best sports city in America is what we want to make it. I think it is. We’re going to keep displaying it.”
Just three months have passed since the beginning of opposite state-of-the-art offices and the NCAA men’s hockey Final Four are being held at State Farm Stadium in local Glendale, Ariz., for the sport and facility comeback. The children’s Last Four is slated for April 3-5, 2025, at Footprint.

Saturday evening, the WNBA All-Stars may experience the U. S. Women’s Olympic staff as it prepares for the Paris Olympics in a unique All-Star Game style. Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese, two former WNBA stars, may play for the All-Stars in Ishbia. His own stars— Taurasi, Brittney Griner and Kahleah Copper—are playing for the U. S. Olympians in a nationally televised game on ABC.
It’ll get the next WNBA selling of 17, 071 around in a matter of days. The drawing cards for June 30 was Clark. She is always present when the Indiana Fever go to T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, where they drew a potential audience of 20, 366, earlier this month.
The Fever defeated the Mercury, 88-82, in their June meet, and the audience was the largest for a Mercury match since 1997 and second-largest in league history. The Suns often sell out the market, with 121 in a column, including finals, since Dec. 19, 2021.
Ishbia invests the funds, and he’s getting his economic profit, though no championships however. He has a baseball history as a walk-on place shield at Michigan State, playing on the 2000 team that won the NCAA people’s national finals.
” They’re genuinely going all out”, Clark said Friday about the holidays. ” Certainly Mat Ishbia is really investing in the children’s part of their equity. For me, that’s really nice to view. He truly cares. He wants it to be fantastic. His staff merits it a lot.
For Ishbia,” It’s all part of the strategy”, he said.
Ishbia has since made significant investments in the market, practice facility, business room, players, and personnel for both businesses since purchasing a bulk promote of the package from Robert Sarver, who has been suspended, for$ 4 billion. Although the town owns the building and property, Ishbia and the area of Phoenix are partners in the Footprint Center.
The company buys became established on Feb. 7, 2022, as the NBA deal deadline approached. Kevin Durant’s purchase from the Brooklyn Nets was quickly approved by Ishbia.

The Suns were the Mercury’s depressed stepchildren under Sarver, and Ishbia has now made the WNBA player’s features an NBA-level facility. The 123, 000-foot training house is comparable to the Sarver-built downtown Suns service as part of a significant$ 30 million market reconstruction in 2020. The city, which built the arena for the Suns in 1992 at the cost of$ 89 million in public funds, invested$ 130 million, with Sarver adding$ 100 million,$ 50 million of that for the practice facility.
The Suns and Mercury are on a lease to the arena through 2036.
Ishbia claimed he paid the$ 100 million in cash without getting paid by the city to run the Mercury practice facility, and that he will continue to do so. He’s worth$ 10.1 billion and is chief executive of Michigan’s United Wholesale Mortgage.
” I’m going to be here for a long time”, said Ishbia, who at 44 is n’t kidding. ” It’s an investment I made, and we made as an organization for the Mercury. We’re going to continue to evolve. The basketball and community investment is going to continue. Investments sometimes pay off in a really large way, but other times it does n’t. But we’re going to adjust and make it happen”.
The players have, of course, been impressed by the investment in the Mercury and the WNBA in general. Ishbia stated that he hopes that everything he’s doing in Phoenix will set the standard for the sport everywhere.
Taurasi, now 42 and near the end of her career, has seen it all during her 20 years in the league, all with the Mercury. She recalls a time when both the Suns and Mercury fought in a subterranean facility deep in the heart of the current arena, which she less than affectionately refers to as” the dungeon.” She was reminded, though, that” the dungeon” was state of the art when the arena opened in 1992.
” I have some great memories of practicing in that bunker”, Taurasi said on Thursday. ” But it’s kind of nice now to get a smoothie after practice”.
Some things do n’t age well, including the Suns ‘ current practice facility, which Ishbia said will eventually be replaced. The “dungeon” has been transformed into a party suite, complete with the lines on the floor to encapsulate what had actually occurred there.
Since Taurasi arrived on the scene in 2004, Taurasi acknowledges that the WNBA has taken significant steps, including flying charter from city to city for the first time this year. She claims that Ishbia is a businessman who really cares about his people and the finished product, much like Clark.
” Mat has found a way to push things to the limit”, Taurasi said. ” He’s just changed the perception of this city and the franchise,” he said, not only building this facility in the time he’s built it, but also bringing All-Star here. He’s moved the needle. He pushes boundaries, which is what you need from a WNBA owner if you want to compete”.
Ishbia said he’s pleased about that kind of praise. He wants to be known as a first-class owner, and he’s done that so far.
” It feels great”, he said. The Suns and Mercury were not purchased until less than 18 months ago. We talked about putting them on a pedestal. We’re going to treat them great. We’re going to invest in them. It’s simple to say and occasionally more difficult to do. Seeing it come to fruition, it’s not because of me. It’s because of my amazing]front office ] team”.