The Dallas Wings WNBA franchise has gone through several names and owners since its first incarnation in 1998.
Bill Cameron is the current majority owner of the Dallas Wings. He led an investment group to purchase the WNBA franchise in 2009.
When Cameron moved the franchise from Tulsa to Dallas, Greg Bibb joined as a minority owner and President.
Chris Christian, a music producer, is another minority owner.
This article runs through the backgrounds of each owner.
Bill Cameron, Majority Owner Of The Dallas Wings
When sports fans want to know who owns a team, they are usually wondering if the owners have deep enough pockets to sustain a sports franchise in the long term.
So, let’s look first at Cameron’s business background.
Outside of his sports investments, Bill Cameron is the Chairman of American Fidelity Group. This is a bundle of companies founded and owned by three generations of the Cameron family.
American Fidelity Assurance Company is one of the biggest firms in Cameron’s stable. It manages life and health insurance for companies in the public sector and healthcare industries.
The company was founded in 1960 by Bill Cameron’s grandfather and father. Bill was born around the same time as the father and son were getting the business going.
The company grew successfully in Oklahoma over the next decades. Unfortunately, the Cameron family experienced tragedy in 1977.
Plane crash
Most of the family went skiing over Thanksgiving and were returning home on a small plane. A snowstorm swept in and the pilot was forced to crash land.
Bill’s mother was seriously injured. Bill, his sister, and the pilot broke their backs. Thankfully, they survived and recovered. Sadly, Bill’s father died from injuries in the crash.
Bill’s friend was also on the flight but less injured than the others. He walked for hours in the snow to raise help. A rescue party spotted his tracks and eventually located the victims and wreckage a day later.
Joining the family business
Bill’s grandfather continued to grow the insurance company.
Meanwhile, Bill went to Dartmouth College where he studied history. After graduation, he worked for Liberty Bank for a few years.
Eventually, his grandfather asked him to join the family firm. Bill got fully involved in 1984 and eventually took over as CEO.
The family firm is now the biggest insurance company in Oklahoma.
The Cameron family businesses also include a bank operating in Arizona and Oklahoma (First Fidelity Bank), as well as other companies in finance and real estate.
Now, let’s look at Bill Cameron’s early involvement in sports franchises.
Cameron And Other Sports
The Dallas Wings aren’t the first basketball franchise that Cameron got involved with.
In 2006, he joined several Oklahoman businessmen in relocating an NBA franchise from Seattle to Oklahoma City. Cameron became a minority owner of the Oklahoma City Thunder.
Cameron was also a minority owner of an indoor football team in the now defunct minor league called af2. The ownership group sold the Tulsa Talons in 2011.
The success of the Dallas Wings led to Cameron deciding to expand his sports ownership into box lacrosse. The National Lacrosse League granted his company an expansion franchise in 2020.
The new lacrosse club is based in Fort Worth. We’ve written more about it in our article on the ownership of the Panther City lacrosse club.
Ownership Of The Detroit Shock
The original franchise was based in Michigan and was called the Detroit Shock.
The Detroit Shock was owned by Bill Davidson, who also owned the NBA’s Detroit Pistons. The Shock was the sister team to the Pistons.
It was established in 1998 to play in the second season of the WNBA.
Davidson brought in Nancy Lieberman as their first coach. Lieberman had been recruited the previous year to play in the WNBA by the owner of the Phoenix Mercury.
When Bill Davidson died in 2009, the ownership passed to his widow. She sold the franchise to a company called the Tusla Pro Hoops.
Tusla Pro Hoops is a sports investment company co-founded by Bill Cameron and another Oklahoman businessman, David Box. Box runs the biggest talent agency in the state.
Cameron and Box put together a wider group of Oklahoman businesspeople who wanted to bring a sports franchise to Tusla.
The new ownership group moved the team to Tulsa and rebranded it as the Tulsa Shock.
The list of investors included Stuart Price who reportedly paid $250K for a 7.21% stake. Price is in real estate and the energy business in Tulsa.
Although Bill Cameron had now brought in several minority owners, he retained the majority shares in the limited company that owned the Shock.
Becoming The Dallas Wings
By 2015, Bill Cameron felt that the location of Tulsa wasn’t working out as well as he’d hoped.
He decided that Dallas-Fort Worth was more attractive from a business point of view.
When he consulted the minority owners, several wanted a buy-out to end their involvement. That’s understandable, given that these were Tulsa people.
Stuart Price was fiercely opposed to the move. He filed a lawsuit against Cameron to try and stop it.
However, there was a get-out clause in the ownership documents that allowed Cameron to proceed.
He relocated the team and renamed it the Dallas Wings. Cameron had lost some minority shareholders but he brought in some new ones based in Dallas.
I’ll look at those next.
Greg Bibb, Minority Owner
When Cameron relocated the team to Dallas, he put Greg Bibb in charge as President and CEO.
Bibb’s prior career was mostly in sports. He started in public relations for the Major Indoor Soccer League in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
He spent five years as Chief Operating Officer of the Washington Mystics in the WNBA. He was a Vice President at the Washington Wizards for three years.
He was also involved in volleyball and the cycling industry.
He joined the management team of the Dallas Wings in 2015.
Chris Christian, Minority Owner
Chris Christian joined Bill Cameron as a minority owner in the Dallas Wings in the year that it was renamed (2015). He lives in Dallas, Texan.
This Texan has an interesting background as a music writer and producer. His list of credits includes writing for:
- Elvis Presley
- The Carpenters
- The Pointer Sisters
- Dionne Warwick
- Donnie Osmond
Impressive, right? (Depending on your age, you may not recognize a few of the golden oldies).
But what’s Chris Christian’s connection with sport? Well, he also wrote jingles for sports broadcasts including:
- The Super Bowl
- The Olympics
- The U.S. Open (tennis)
- NCAA Basketball
You may think that this is a somewhat tenuous link to sports management. But Christian has managed music production companies since 1975.
Mark Yancey, Former Minority Owner
Mark Yancey had a long career in financial services before founding a mergers & acquisitions firm in Dallas.
Yancey took stakes in the team in 2016 but relinquished ownership in 2018. He ran for election to the U.S. Senate in 2020 but lost in the Republican primary.
