EXCLUSIVE: The New York Liberty refunded a lesbian hip-hop artist after the team attempted to change her paid scoreboard message thanking Jennifer Sey and XX-XY Athletics.
Julie Potter claims she purchased 25 tickets for a group attending the Liberty vs Fever game at Barclays Center to support Sophie Cunningham, saying the tickets cost more than $2,000.
Potter also paid $100 to display a message on the arena scoreboard during halftime. A receipt shows the payment was processed Aug. 17 for the Libertys Aug. 22 game against Indiana.
Potter says she submitted the message: “Thank you Jennifer Sey! XX-XY Athletics will Save the Day!!”
Potter added that the Liberty initially approved the message and accepted her payment. But the teams sales department contacted her Friday, one day before the game, and said it had changed the wording.
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“Your scoreboard message for 8/[22] has been modified to: Thank you Jennifer Sey, thank you for all you do for XX-XY Athletics,” an email to Potter from the Liberty’s sales team said. “This will run during halftime.”
Potters receipt identifies the game of her purchased “scoreboard message” as “August 22 vs. Indiana.” The receipt shows the Liberty charged Potter $100 on Aug. 17 and refunded the payment on Aug. 21. But the Liberty email to Potter referred to Aug. 29.
The Liberty have not responded to a request for clarification on the date of Potter’s scoreboard message, but Potter said she believes it was a typo by the Liberty employee.
Potter also explained why she objected to the changing of her message and asked the Liberty either to display her original message or return her money, in email exchanges reviewed by Fox News Digital. The team refunded her, and then gave a brief explanation for the attempted change of her message.
“Our scoreboard messages are limited to positive, celebratory content, and submissions that may intentionally or unintentionally violate that spirit are not eligible for display,” the Liberty sales team wrote in one email.
Potter accused the team of “censorship.”
“Unfortunately, this is censorship. My message was approved and payment was accepted. You then changed it without giving me any opportunity to revise or respond, and you did so inside your own 48-hour window,” Potter wrote.
“Why would I pay to let you speak for me?”
The Libertys publicly available scoreboard-message form says requests must be submitted at least 48 hours before tipoff. It also says proceeds support the Brooklyn Nets and New York Liberty Foundation. The form does not publicly list additional content restrictions.
Potter acknowledged that her original wording carried a broader message about protecting female sports. She said she intentionally avoided explicitly referencing Cunningham or the “Save Womens Sports” movement.
“I wanna say I purposely didn’t put Sophie’s name in it, ’cause I thought that would trigger, trigger them,” Potter told Fox News Digital.
XX-XY Athletics is an apparel company founded by Sey, a former national champion gymnast and former Levi Strauss & Co. brand president. The company advocates for keeping transgender athletes out of female sports categories.
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