Madrid
Ronaldo will be in the Spanish capital on tax charges related to his time at Real Madrid.
The Juventus forward is expected to appear before a judge and receive a suspended two-year sentence as part of a deal struck with Spain’s state prosecutor and tax authorities last year. The agreement will cost him nearly $21.6 million in fines.
In Spain, a judge can suspend sentences for two years or less for first-time offenders.
In 2017, a state prosecutor accused Ronaldo of four counts of tax fraud from 2011-14 worth $16.7 million. Ronaldo was accused of having used shell companies outside Spain to hide income made from image rights.
After being questioned for nearly 90 minutes in a Madrid court at the time, the Portuguese player told a judge he never tried to avoid taxes.
The accusations didn’t involve his salary from Real Madrid, his club from 2009 until joining Italian champion Juventus last year.
Ronaldo’s presence in court today is not expected to last long. Officials said he declined an option to address the court via video conference. The court on Monday dismissed Ronaldo’s request to enter the building directly from the parking lot, which would have allowed the player to avoid the media. The request was made for security reasons, but the court said it didn’t think the measure was needed despite the player’s notoriety.
Sources: Liberty Sale Set
New York
An investment group led by Brooklyn Nets minority owner Joseph Tsai has agreed to buy the New York Liberty, pending approval by the NBA Board of Governors, two people familiar with the purchase told The Associated Press on Monday. They said the WNBA Board of Governors approved the sale a few days ago.
Those speaking to the AP did so on condition of anonymity because no announcement has been made.
Tsai, co-founder of the e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, bought a 49 percent interest in the Nets in April.
Liberty owner James Dolan put his team up for sale in November 2017. There had been several potential buyers and a few were close to a purchase, but the deals fell through for various reasons.
New York is one of the three original WNBA franchises still in existence along with the Los Angeles Sparks and the Phoenix Mercury.
The team said before last season it had “lost money every year since its inception and cumulative losses exceed $100 million.” The franchise played most of its home games in 2018 at the suburban Westchester County Center, which saved the team a lot of money. Operating costs were nearly 20 times less than playing at Madison Square Garden.
The WNBA already has released its 2019 schedule, and the Liberty are set to play in Westchester again, with the two school and camp-day games listed without a venue. With dates locked in, it could be difficult to move games to Brooklyn’s Barclays Center if that’s what the new ownership group wanted.
The team dropped from fourth in attendance in 2017 to last in the league last season, averaging 2,823 fans. That number was even smaller when the two kids’ day games at MSG were taken out, with an average of just 1,886 fans coming to the 15 Westchester dates. The Liberty couldn’t routinely fill the arena, which was configured to hold only 2,319 fans.
Improved play on the court could help draw more fans. The Liberty struggled last season, finishing with the second-worst record in the league. They have the No. 2 pick in the WNBA draft in April.
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