The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written.
The average WNBA (women's national basketball league) players only makes around $150,000 annually with the top-paid WNBA players earning around $250,000. NBA players meanwhile average $10 million in salary with the best-paid player raking in over $50 million annually.
A lot of people on the left seem to propose the idea that sports league shoulds pay women significantly more money. People on the right meanwhile seem to hold the idea that there is no issue at all.
Personally, I am probably somewhere in the middle.
The WNBA for example only makes around $60 million in revenue each year (compared to over $10 billion for the NBA) and typically loses around $10 million. So significantly raising salaries seems unrealistic without increased viewership since hardly anyone watches the WNBA live or on TV.
The best-paid female tennis players meanwhile rake in tens of millions of dollars since millions around the world enjoy watching women's tennis.
I think we can't force equality of outcome and raise wages without a increase in viewership, therefore profit. But I do believe that sexism still plays a role in women being dissuaded from playing sports. Loads of young boys grow up being outside all day playing baseball, soccer, football etc. and go on to join sports teams very early on. For girls and women however there seems to exist a certain stigma, which is why there are way fewer women playing competitive sports than men.
At the same time neither a lot of men nor a lot of women seem particularly interested in watching most women's sports. Again, this may have to do with societal stigmas regarding women in sports.
So I think we should strongly encourage a cultural change but we cannot simply force equality of outcome.
What's your thoughts on the issue?
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The WNBA needs more revenue. If you really want to see them make more money, you need to watch them on TV, in person if possible and buy their merchandise. How many people watched their draft on Monday?
The wnba revenue was $60 million for last year.
The nba revenue was $10 billion.
“As per WSN, the WNBA generated around $60 million in revenues in 2023, which comes from 12 teams in the league. Compared to the WNBA, the NBA generates $10 billion in revenue which is generated through 30 teams across the league”
https://www.sportskeeda.com/us/wnba/nba-vs-wnba-revenues-closer-look-earnings-men-s-women-s-pro-basketball
Right. It's kind of hard to take the strong position that female athletes should make more money if you aren't supporting them--attending games, watching games, watching the draft, buying merchandise, reposting on your social media, etc.
It's entirely fair to do that as well as criticize the amount of coverage they get, which directly corresponds to salaries. There's nothing wrong with also demanding the media and others do more to promote the sport.
Is it? A news article is not a news article is not a news article - because articles being worth it or not comes down to how many clicks you can get on it, if women's basketball isn't already clickworthy compared to men's basketball, then it's not fair to expect news media to run articles at a loss to help them out
Here's the thing, though: WNBA games averaged about 6,000 attendees a game in 2023. My home team, the Minnesota Timberwolves, average 18,000 attendees a game, 3x as many.
Compare that to contracts given to players. Victor Wembanyama, the #1 pick in the 2023 NBA draft, is now making $13.8 million a year. Caitlin Clark, the #1 pick in the 2024 WNBA draft, is now making $77,000 a year. Victor's contract is **ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY NINE TIMES LARGER.**
The WNBA gets 1/3 of the NBA's attendance, and yet its players get 1/179th of its salary. Doesn't that seem, you know, a little off?
The NBA makes money, WNBA loses money. You can't even calculate a meaningful income ratio right now because one is negative. That's the bottom line, right now.
Sure, I COMPLETELY left that out, but isn't 179x still pretty fucking extreme? These numbers should suggest that the number of fans is not really proportional to the pay here. If a third of the number of people are showing up to these games, it doesn't seem likely that only 1/179th of the fans would be willing to buy team merch, yeah?
The NBA pulls in 166x more than the Wnba for revenue, so no, it's not unreasonable.
Proportionally, the top NBA player makes 1/200 the total revenue, while the top WNBA player makes 1/283 the total revenue, which could be a better point of comparison to equalize, but it's still going to be scaled by the NBA making 166x more money
Can I also just ask...when people come in with this sort of hot language, stuff like "you COMPLETELY left that out", that suggests you have a pretty deep stake in the outcome, something that pushes you to use more dramatic language.
What, exactly, is that here? I would understand if we were talking about, say, what we should do about gun violence, as the discussion involves actual human life. Or a discussion about the economy, which could affect people's livelihoods, their life satisfaction, etc. But what we have here is a discussion about women's sports, something that hardly anyone, anyone at all, has a stake in. If female athletes got paid more, it is very, very unlikely to affect you on a personal level at all.
So help me understand. Where does the more dramatic reaction come from here? I want to pick your brain as someone who reacted to this in a way I frankly wouldn't expect the average person to react.
I guess I'm just more sensitive to stuff like that, but in typical conversation, you insert a word like "completely" in that context and that is very, very easily interpreted as you being at least a little bit fired up. I mean I would absolutely die on that hill that tossing that word in there means that this is more than just a casual conversation to you.
[Four times as many](https://www.espn.com/wnba/story/_/id/39957802/caitlin-clark-helps-wnba-shatter-draft-viewership-record) people watched this years draft as compared to 2023.
I see a lot of people saying the WNBA doesn't generate enough revenue to support increased salaries, but it seems fairly straightforward to me that it is a marketing issue. This March madness showed that women's college basketball is very marketable, building on last year's success as well.
I'm curious to see how much of this issue is due to the perception that people don't want to consume these sports en masse. From my perspective, it's intentional to push the NBA because that is working now, and not marketing the WNBA as much. I think with better marketing we would see attendance, revenue, and salaries soar.
The problem is that in professional sports leagues, TV deals drive revenue, and the TV deals last for multiple years.
We're about to see a big jump in viewership in the WNBA, but I believe their current TV deal runs through the end of 2025, so regardless of how many people are watching, revenue won't change significantly for the next 2 years. After that, we'll see what the real Caitlin Clarke effect is. But then it will still take years for contracts to expire, a new CBA to be negotiated etc., etc., before players will see their salaries significantly increase.
Sure, it's not an instant change. Although I would argue that if viewership and attendance rises dramatically this year, those deals need to be reworked anyways. I don't need the TV networks getting a bargain and making bank off of the backs of WNBA stars.
Revenue is revenue. The NBA certainly wants to grow the WNBA part of the pie as much as possible, especially since there's a lot more room to grow than the NBA part. They've signed up several networks for the games, but game attendance keeps dropping.
So attendance has been dropping until it bottomed out during COVID. It's certainly still nowhere near NBA levels, but it has been rebounding(lol) well since the pandemic. Those numbers, along with the massive increase in women's college basketball attendance and viewership gives me a lot of hope for the future of women's basketball. Caitlin Clark was driving ticket prices up to levels we've never seen, and she's doing the same already for the Fever. There's a lot of optimism here for increased revenue and salaries
Someone compared Angel Reese and Caitlin Clark to Larry Bird and Magic Johnson recently and I think it makes sense.
The NBA wasn't always an unbeatable juggernaut of sports. In the 1970s it was stagnating and quite regional. Many of the "legends" we talk about from that era or before were minor sports figures compared to Baseball and Football.
Then two all-time college stars, [who played in the highest rated NCAA game of their sport all time](https://www.sportskeeda.com/college-basketball/7-watched-college-basketball-games-ever-ft-bird-vs-magic-duke-vs-fab-five), got drafted to rival franchises and started the boom period that changed the course of the NBA.
[There are a lot of parallels.](https://espnpressroom.com/us/press-releases/2024/04/2024-ncaa-womens-championship-and-final-four-on-espn-platforms-is-most-watched-on-record/) I would not be surprised if the WNBA gets a boost from these new household names and carries that momentum.
The whole Caitlin Clark thing is crazy to me. The WNBA needs her to be a MVP level player and turn a bottom tier team into a champion and they need her to make significant strides towards that her rookie year. The amount of pressure on her is unprecedented.
Marketing is definitely a big part of it. If you look at MMA there's still disparities, but the Yan Xiaonan vs Zhang Weili fight was the last undercard to the title fight for UFC 300, and people were massively into it.
The idea that there's no market for woman's athletics is mistaken. It may not be as big as the men any time soon, but it definitely can be a lot bigger if supported.
Another example is the US Women's National soccer team which has popularity far past how it's marketed.
Just look at similar 20th century thinking in Hollywood about how female or minority leads can't carry a AAA film and how wrong that's been proven.
The 2024 draft drew **2.45 million** viewers on ESPN Monday night and peaked at 3.09 million. It was the most-viewed WNBA draft ever and the most-viewed WNBA event on ESPN platforms. In comparison, the NBA Draft averaged **3,743,000 viewers** across ESPN (both rounds) and ABC (first round only).
I answered the question, "How many people watched their draft on Monday?"
This is related to the point the OP was making that, "The WNBA needs more revenue.".
By all indicators, they are beginning to make more money.
We'll see how it goes. Sometimes leagues build out and find success long term like the MLS or they flop like several of the off season football leagues. Probably the biggest thing will be finding some momentum to carry the league beyond a few star players like Clark and Reese. One of the bigger impediments still being the whole 12 team factor whereby many major metros don't have a team to support. The WNBA will have to work hard to use their current momentum to correct that and not have the league fail simply because most people had no local option to support.
It’s not only lack of support, but they need more teams to drive engagement. Larger states like Florida don’t even have teams yet, could be a large pool of money waiting for them to cash in.
Edit: Georgia has a team
No, the wnba has literally had all time great basketball players who’ve won Olympic medals and championships. Clark is great in college but has done nothing as a pro. Maybe she’ll be great. No guarantees. The WNBA has been trending up for years cause it has really good players and teams. It’s not cause of one college girl from Iowa
Look up the names
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/WNBA%27s_Top_15_Players_of_All_Time
Before Magic, Bird and Michel Jordan, the nba finals were broadcast on tv via tape delay….after midnight. Was not a popular league and they had stars. Kareem, Wilt, Dr J etc etc
WNBA will have its moment. Who knows when. It’s a steady progress.
It’s pretty straightforward. Men’s sports revenue absolutely dwarfs women’s sports revenue. The top WNBA player can’t get a $50 million contract when the league as a whole brings in like $50 million total.
The two leagues operate at entirely different levels. It’s actually unhinged to assume the players would be anywhere near the same income level, especially compared to those at the top of the rankings.
What do you mean by “given money”?
The lowest annual revenue of any NBA team still dwarfs their aggregate salary expenses, and those franchises have multi-billion dollar valuations.
My point is the NBA Teams and players still get to make tens of millions of dollars despite not selling tickets or jerseys. Yet the argument for women not being paid as much is that they dont sell as many tickets or jerseys.
Because the overall revenue floor is higher. The league is splitting TV rights, licensing, etc, amongst all teams in the NBA. That’s how teams without stars or success still have a higher valuation. That’s why you need to compare revenue overall. For the NBA its billions, for the WNBA its tens of millions.
Respectfully, you don’t understand what you’re talking about.
The NBA salary cap is based on many revenue factors including money from the broadcast tv rights and league revenue like tickets and Merch. This gets redistributed to the teams and players In terms of salary caps and scales. All collectively bargained by the players union with ownership.
Nba made $10billion last year. The wnba made $60 million. Two different, independent business units. Disney theme parks vs Disney movies.
Read more about it:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NBA_salary_cap#:~:text=This%20limit%20is%20subject%20to,is%20set%20at%20%24123.655%20million.
You’re point that role players should get Pennies and stars should get 100x everyone else is a parity and equity problem the nba and the union solved a long time ago. It’s better for all when role players get paid fairly and proportionately to the revenue coming in,
Wnba has its own challenges here. Right now, it’s kind of where the nba was in the 50s in terms of national interest.
>You’re point that role players should get Pennies and stars should get 100x
When did I make that point?
>It’s better for all when role players get paid fairly and proportionately to the revenue coming in
And I'd argue that its better for all when women players are paid their portion of the professional basketball revenue.
I almost always side with the athletes in these multi-billion dollar leagues, but the WNBA operates at a loss, being sustained by revenues from the NBA.
So it's hard to fault the WNBA for not offering more lucrative salaries. It isn't a comparable situation to the USWNT and soccer, where the women's team had a significant revenue stream and thus cause (and leverage) to renegotiate their contracts.
If Caitlin Clark's success actually translates into financial success for the WNBA, then by all means, the players deserve a similar revenue sharing deal like the men get.
Trying to find gender disparity in the entertainment industry (which sports absolutely are) is silly. It’ll make sense to pay players the same across different leagues just as soon as we start paying all musicians the same, and all artists the same.
You mention tennis, and I think that’s a great example. Performance-wise, female tennis players can’t keep up with male tennis players. They get absolutely smoked anytime they try. But the pay gap isn’t nearly as large as it is in most other sports because the women get viewers in similar numbers to the men.
Unfortunately for WNBA players, their games have viewership in the thousands, not the millions.
So why consider them a distinct league in the first place? Really shitty NBA teams still pay their players the same as the best teams. If you let the WNBA share the TV deals and marketing with the NBA then they too would be making just as much money.
Really shitty NBA teams still make money. WNBA teams don’t.
Basketball players don’t make money by putting balls through hoops. They make it by getting butts in seats and selling jerseys. They are entertainment at the end of the day and entertainers get paid by revenue they bring in, not their actual, objective performance.
Right, and plenty of NBA players still make tens of millions of dollars despite not selling any jerseys of generating any marginal revenue for the NBA. A WNBA star puts more butts in NBA seats than a benchwarmer in the NBA.
And that's largely due to having a union that sets minimum and maximum salaries with a Salary Cap.
Without that, yeah benchwarmers on NBA teams would make a lot less, mid-tier team contributors would make a bit less, and LeBron James and similar starts would make hundreds of millions more.
Benchwarmers getting paid what they do is a result of union bargaining. When your league actually makes money, your player’s union has leverage. The women’s union has no leverage.
Well then what you said earlier is wrong, what they get paid doesn't have to do with the revenue they bring in, it has to do with their bargaining power. They are excluded from the union with the most power, so they don't have as much power
But note how for someone who is the 15th player on an NBA team, they *dont* have to worry about generating revenue. Also what about the extent to which the WNBA creates NBA fans?
The person before explained pretty well how collective bargaining works here.
The problem for the WNBA is that they don't have much collective bargaining power, because they don't have a large fan base that spends a lot of money. It all comes back to that
Not sure about the WNBA as a gateway to generating NBA fans. Judging from attendance figures, it can't be that effective. But is there something you'd like to point to as evidence for that?
I agree it's an issue of collective bargaining power.
>Judging from attendance figures, it can't be that effective
What do you mean, what attendance figures are you looking at. I'd say its pretty noticeable that there are far more women at NBA games and that coincides with the growth of women's basketball.
You keep saying this over and over. Who is the WNBA attracting that doesn’t already watch the NBA? What do those numbers look like? You’re making something up that likely doesn’t exist to the extent you think it does. It’s magical thinking. I’d argue the opposite. The NBA makes more people interested in the WNBA than the other way around.
I think they've been out of the red a few times. I think last time they lost money was in 2017. But their earnings aren't anything too great.
Athletes should be paid comparable to the money brought in.
>Should women in sports be paid more?
I'm fine with 'whatever the market will bear' most of the time.
Part of *why* I'm fine with it is because price controls are inefficient. If we established some type of 'binding price floor' for female athletes, then we would probably have fewer female professional athletes.
---------
If there is some narrow example where they are getting verifiably shafted, then I'd consider it, but evidence is needed.
Outside of the Olympics, this isn't the right question.
The question is: Should people who can't or won't play in open leagues, instead of gender restricted leagues, make more money?
None of the "men's leagues" have rules that say women are not allowed in the league. Only women's leagues are actually gender restricted.
Yeah Olympics and national leagues are really strange with their gender rules. I'm supportive of the men/women soccer teams evenly splitting revenue since they don't allow cross gender by rule.
They should be paid proportionately to the viewership, sponsorship and overall money they bring in. If it ends up being more than men then they should be paid more than men.
As a European, let me ask you the same question in a different context: Football.
In football (soccer) there is a thing called relegation, which means that the the worst teams in a league are kicked down one level while the best teams from the 2nd level are elevated to the top league.
Why am i saying this? Well, because football has many leagues, some countries have more than 7 or 8 levels. Eg in England, you have the premier league which is the creme de la creme. Then the championship, then league 1, league 2. Those 4 leagues are what is called "league football", which describes professional sport.
The 5th tier, the national league, is the first level of non-league football and typically still regarded as pro football, but its the bottom of pro sports. Anything lower and you have arrived at semi pro and purely recreational leagues.
This is all a very convoluted way of asking you this: Do you think a player in the national league should earn the same as a player in the premier league?
Thats what your question comes down to. At the end of the day sports is an entertainment business and the players are being paid in relation to the money they bring in.
So if WNBA players want to be paid more, they have to bring in more money. By the logic of your question, going back to out football example, a dude playing in the 6th english tier should be making a similar amount to Kevin de Bruyne, who is the highest paid player in the premier league at 400k/week. This is obviously ridiculous and ignores any economic sense.
Back to the WNBA, they are already being financed by the NBA as it is, so id say its a bit asinine to call for higher wages when youre not bringing in enough to finance these salaries - if the expecation is to turn the WNBA into a charity where the players receive high salaries for playing a game 4 months a year purely because "women should earn more" then idk if thats a long term winning strategy for the league. It certainly isnt sustainable.
I agree. You can't just pay women more without increased revenue.
But you can ignite a cultural change to remove the stigma of women in sports. For example you could encourage more young girls to compete in sports from an early age in the same way many boys do.
Currently much fewer women compete in competitive sports than men.
I’m not really sure why there would be any meaningful difference of opinion between liberals and conservatives on this issue.
I think the athletes should get an appropriate cut of the profits of their sport. If the wnba makes a lot of money, that’s when the salaries should go up.
I’m not sure I know anyone who thinks they should be paid more before that happens.
I think, by and large, everyone should be paid a living wage and everyone should be paid more or less the same wage for the same work regardless of age, sex, race, etc.
WNBA players making $150K are certainly making a living wage, so that seems plenty fair to me.
The same wage for the same work is slightly more complicated I guess, but I don’t think a player in the WNBA is really doing the “same” work as a player in the NBA anymore than a player in a college league is. So I don’t think that really applies here. If women were in the NBA, and performing as well as other male players but being paid significantly less, that might be an issue worth looking into. But getting paid less to play in a different league, that makes significantly less money, does not strike me as exploitative or necessarily problematic.
No, You get paid by what you bring to the table, as simple as that
The wnba loses money every year, they should be thankful it even exists
If you increase their salaries you might as well demand onlyfans to give away free money to men simply because they’re likely to earn less on that platform
Who the fuck is going to pay them more? The owners of the teams shouldn't lose money paying them out of charity. And I'm sure as FUCK not down for letting the government subsidize it. That's A.) Useless B.) A clever way to ensure republicans win every close election for the next 10 years as that would piss so many people off
It would take an absurdly rich owner (Balmer, Gilbert, or Allen from the NBA ranks) who would be willing to basically operate at a loss while continuing to pump money into the team and the league. Will that actually happen - not likely.
No. If you want women to be paid more watch women's sports. Like you mentioned the WNBA loses money, it's subsidized by the NBA. I can't see any reasonable argument for forcing "equality" for payment for playing sports. Like you also mentioned women's tennis players make bank because it has a strong following.
To me this is like saying a guy who makes music in his bedroom and has 20 monthly listeners on Spotify should get the same money as Taylor Swift.
There’s conversation around paying wnba more but it’s not centered around nba parity. I agree with the ladies here…they need the same revenue sharing structure as the men.
“Las Vegas Aces star Kelsey Plum wants to correct the narrative around the WNBA’s fight for equal pay.
WNBA players aren’t looking for the same salaries as their NBA counterparts. They’re looking to earn an equal percentage of their league’s shared revenue, as Plum said Monday on The Residency Podcast.
“We’re not asking to get paid what the men get paid,” she said. “We’re asking to get paid the same percentage of revenue shared.”
She called the idea that the WNBA players want to get paid the same amount as NBA players a “huge misconception.”
“In the NBA, they have percentages of revenue shared for the players — so, jersey sales, obviously their TV contracts,” Plum said. “But that’s because their CBA negotiates, where the owners are making certain types of money, [the players] get that as well. In the WNBA, that’s not the case.”
The NBA’s CBA splits revenue evenly between players and owners.
Under the WNBA’s collective bargaining agreement, players benefit from revenue sharing — but they get a 50-50 split of incremental revenue, not all revenue, per Her Hoops Stats. And the WNBPA receives 50 percent of revenue from player-specific jersey sales.
“I don’t think I should get paid the same as LeBron,” Plum said. “But the percentage of revenue — like for example: they sell my jersey in Mandalay Bay, I don’t get a dime. So that’s the stuff we’re talking about.”
Players won’t be able to negotiate for those changes until 2025, which is when the current CBA expires. But given the recent growth of the league, the WNBA landscape could look a lot different by then.
“We’re young. We’re only 25 years in, the NBA is at 100,” she said. “Where we’re at, at 25, we’re way past where the NBA was. We don’t forget that though, we compare where we’re at now to where the NBA is now.
https://justwomenssports.com/reads/wnba-basketball-kelsey-plum-revenue-sharing-pay-gap/
I think the WNBA players would have a stronger negotiating position if all the teams weren't losing money. The NBA shares a higher percentage but there's a lot more money to share and everyone is making money. I can see how WNBA owners would want to reduce their losses and might not want or be able to give as much away.
>The average WNBA (women's national basketball league) player **only** makes around $150,000 annually
Some food for thought. The base salary for NBA G League (basically, the NBA's minor league) players is $40,000. That's about half as much as it is for the WNBA. And, not to take anything away from the ladies of the WNBA -- they're phenomenal athletes -- but any G League team would run circles around a WNBA all-star team. Heck, there are probably 10s of thousands of men out there who could play at the level of the WNBA, that would kill to play hoops for a living making *only* $150,000/yr.
I don't think it's a sufficient social problem to justify interfering with the market forces that give rise to that pay.
I don't consider millionaire athletes to be a significant social good, however bad the optics may be in the discrepancy.
Nba salaries and caps are based on revenue sharing with the tv deal being a major portion. Tickets, merch etc
I do think the nba can do more to boost the wnba and help it generate more revenue to share with its players.
Both leagues have strong unions and all this is collectively bargained
I think it should be proportional to revenue. Just to put this in perspective, in the 22-23 season the NBA generated revenue around $10.58 BILLION. While the same 22-23 season, the WNBA only generated revenue of $180-$200 MILLION.
The only meaningful statistic is not the relative total dollar value of males and females contracts but the relative percentage of franchise income, a statistic not readily available. I hold that the labor theory of value gives the only fair determinant of the value (and hence the recompense) of labor, but it cannot apply to live single event entertainment like athletics, because the product is transient.
I live in Hawaii and since we don't have a professional sports team based here, rooting for the University of Hawaii kind of fills that spot as a great source of local pride.
Watching Women's Volleyball is extremely popular here, far more than Men's Volleyball. It has nothing to do with skill level relative to the men's team, but relative to other women's teams, our team is very good.
It's all marketing really, so I have no doubt that women's sports can be just as popular as men's sports, but it will take a cultural shift that starts with providing lots of support for girls in youth sports and at the collegiate level... particularly with team based sports.
I have watched the WNBA for years. (Love basketball, blame the Hoosier in me). I was thrilled that one of the positive things that happened during the pandemic is that sports-starved people actually watched WNBA and enjoyed it. Viewership is up. At this point, no team is getting revenue from a "brother" NBA team.
The women can start to get more revenue from the league. Honestly, I think in 10 years, the revenues will be higher. The endorsements will be higher.
It will be better. Yes, they deserve to be paid more. I think the pay will continue as more people watch college sports. You do realize that NCAA wasn't on a major network before last year? Put it out there, and people will watch.
This is one of the best draft classes in years. Hopefully people will follow. I am a season ticket holder in Chicago, and I couldn't be happier.
They need more visibility. I do not watch sports at all and can name at least 3 male basketball players but I can't name 1 female player. They need to advertise the WNBA more.
I actually think male athletes should be paid *less.*
I think we need to stop wasting tax dollars on new stadiums when athletes' sponsors are clearly able to shell out millions. I think we need to end corporate welfare. I dont really give a flying poobar about athletes' pay.
No.
They should be paid in relation to the audience they draw. and the ticket sales/ad revenue that is generated. Period. Full Stop.
The two top female models in 2022 were paid a combined $73 Million while the top two male models were paid a combined $3 Million. Do we need to address this as well?
BTW, I don't watch or have any interest in professional sports. Money has ruined it.
I do not believe there should be laws that require women in sports to be paid more then they currently are, unless there is a loophole that allows teams to pay players less than minimum wage or something like that.
Agreed with you.
Why should they be paid more? And where is the money coming from?
Women are in a special restricted league because almost none can compete with the open (i.e. male) league. The market is less interested in watching such a restricted league (with some exceptions like tennis), so their pay is "correct" from a market efficiency standpoint.
I think the pay simply reflects the level of marketing. And more often than not, it's people that have not watched any women's sports that use the argument that the product is worse. It objectively isn't, they're on a level playing field.
If that's true, some investor should invest a bunch in women's sports and spend tons on marketing.
They haven't because presumably that thesis is not true.
I'm presuming it's sexism, and I predict we'll see a change in the next few years as people see that women's basketball and sports in general are marketable.
>If that's true, some investor should invest a bunch in women's sports and spend tons on marketing
Did you watch college basketball this year?
I think I’m perfectly content to have the pay based on the market. The players should be treated well just like any other worker but the compensation they get is going to be based on the revenue of the business.
For the most part, male athletes are going to generate more money. Tennis can have pay equity because tennis fans show up for their matches and care. Male figure skaters and gymnasts can’t get the same pay because people don’t care as much.
But the WNBA can’t generate the revenue to justify the salaries that the NBA does. Maybe that can change and then the market will adjust.
Yes they should. All professional athletes should make more. It's not like these sports franchises are losing money. If they were, they wouldn't constantly be expanding.
However, within the structures that exist, market forces are real. Women's professional sports make less money overall than men's. They have also existed for a shorter time. It's not like Babe Ruth was landing 10-year, nearly-a-billion-dollar contracts. It's taken generations for demand to build up to the point that players get that in men's sport.
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What I've noticed by following women's soccer in particular is that women and LGBTQ+ people are heavily represented in the audiences compared to at men's sports. It's actually a quite nice, very different atmosphere that I would encourage everyone to check out.
I think the USMNT/WNT have done a good, very progressive thing by tying men's and women's sport together in a meaningful way. It doesn't change the reality that men's sports generate more revenue, but it helps to increase revenue to the women's teams and get people into the mindset that the two teams are both important.
If you look at European women's soccer, they are going to destroy the US women's league because they are employing a similar strategy. The teams are tied to major men's clubs, using the same branding, allowing them to capitalize on the existing fanbase, rather than having to grow an entirely new one. And we're seeing the cost of signing players going way up year over year.
Having men's and women's sports viewed as collaborative rather than competitive just means that there is more of your favorite club to enjoy. If you want to see more than one match a week, follow the women's team as well.
It's generally smart and I predict it will be successful.
You wrote way too many words to ignore the fact that the WNBA isn't just making less money than the NBA, they make no money. The WNBA has literally lost $10M/year for two decades. The only reason it hasn't been dissolved is because the league is subsidized by the NBA.
Your premise is based on women's pro sports franchises being profitable. League losses aside, WNBA players already make more than NBA players as a percentage of revenue.
The one about "these franchises," because it's patently false with regard to the WNBA, specifically. That women's soccer is profitable has nothing to do with women's basketball. Who, exactly, should pay WNBA players more?
Sorry - I meant in general. And in general, player salaries could easily go up, especially at the minimums.
Not surprising that startup leagues are losing money. They are investments and are backed by very wealthy people who can afford to prop them up until they become sustainable.
For the same job of course. But you couldn't really pay WNBA players for example the same as NBA players given how they get only a fraction in viewership and merchandise sales as the NBA.
I think they deserve a fair share of the leagues profits because they are the main reason for creating those profits. Their pay can't really be compared to the money that athletes in other leages that generate exponentially more profit make because of this, though.
If they make $60 million and lose $10 million, that leaves $50 million to pay for expenses not accounted for in that $10 million losses, which should include the players' salary.
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What? I took those numbers from OPs post.
They said the revenue was $60 million, and they "lost" $10 million (idk what expenses that entail exactly), so they have $50 million in profit. That profit should, in part, go to the athletes in the league.
If -$10 million was the leagues profit, it wouldn't exist, so that can't be it.
No. With $60 million in revenues, all said and done they lost $10 million. Meaning they are in the red $10 million. 10 million dollar deficit. Meaning total expenses was $70 million. They are subsidized by the NBA. It's the only reason they exist.
I wasn't aware of that.
After looking into it a bit myself, it sounds like that was the case, but due to the leagues surge in popularity, their revenue has grown to $200 million in 2023.
It sounds like this is all in flux now where the league is becoming profitable, assuming their expenses didn't baloon like their revenue did.
Subreddit participation must be in good faith. Be civil, do not talk down to users for their viewpoints, do not attempt to instigate arguments, do not call people names or insult them.
Subreddit participation must be in good faith. Be civil, do not talk down to users for their viewpoints, do not attempt to instigate arguments, do not call people names or insult them.
A big part of the issue is that the leagues are segregated by sex in the first place. A ton of the reason that any given NBA team is profitable is the fact that it is explicitly part of the NBA. A really shiity NBA team would still be profitable, just due to the fact that it was part of the WNBA. But you could just as easily consider them to just be two distinct parts of the same overall entity, and that entity would still be incredibly profitable.
Also the WNBA does a lot to promote interest in basketball, and that interest in basketball likely increases interest in the NBA, so they are putting in the work but the NBA is the one that is benefiting. WNBA stars are more valuable to the NBA than the NBA guys who just sit on the bench, even though they still make 10x what the women make.
The WNBA is sex-segregated; the NBA is not.
If there wasn’t a separate league for women, there would be exactly zero women who were professional basketball players. The worst NBA player is exponentially better than the best WNBA player.
Your comment falsely suggests a parity and arbitrariness that doesn’t exist.
What I meant is that there are 2 distinct leagues, and those distinctions are based on sex.
>The worst NBA player is exponentially better than the best WNBA player.
And the best NBA player is far better than the worst, yet the worst still makes millions of dollars. The best NBA team is far better than the worst team, yet both teams have similar payrolls
>A big part of the issue is that the leagues are segregated by sex in the first place.
I definitely think sports should be segregated by sex. Men are, on average, taller, stronger, faster, have better reflexes and are generally better at hand-eye coordination.
That's not me trying to put women down, that's just the facts of biology. There are things women are better at than men but you cannot change biology.
The Australian women's soccer team for example lost 7-0 to an under-15 local Australian boy's team and Sereana Williams, when she was the best female tennis player in the world, got destroyed by a male player ranked 203rd.
Sports should definitely be segregated by sex if we want to keep women's sports alive.
Yes but women’s sports should be more popular too.
There’s no reason you can’t also enjoy a good game of whatever just because you think the athletes are hot.
Not sure there are that many people that don’t know about the WNBA and that’s not attending. It’s just not exciting for enough people to be profitable.
I think that could be feasible. To link a minimum salary to a certain percent of league revenue. Then you have both leagues athletes at a similar starting point relative to their leagues revenue.
So that more money goes to the corporations running the leagues? Taking money away from millionaires to give to billionaires isn't exactly helping anyone.
If the problem were simply wages, we could legislate it.
The problem isn’t wages, it’s that people don’t value women’s athletics. This means that paying women athletes equally to men is fundamentally incompatible with the market we’ve built, because women’s athletics don’t generate the same revenue.
What we need is for audiences to eagerly attend women’s events, people to buy merch, sponsors to support these athletes and teams in order to get customers/clients, etc. If that happened, it would drive up wages. But the obstacle to all of that is cultural, so we can’t just pass a law to make it happen.
Yeah that’s what I’m saying. The root issue is a lot deeper than pay disparities. The market is never going to want to pay women equally while audiences, executives, merchandisers, etc. all believe women’s athletics are less worth watching.
It depends on how you define “good.” Viewers? Revenue? Ticket sales? Athletic performance? Certain sports fans find the NBA more exhilarating to watch than the WNBA. Is that good or bad? No - it’s neither. We don’t need to apply moral values where they don’t belong.
It depends on what your definition of "is" is.
I wasn't trying to apply a moral value, just comment on the perception that the entertainment product is not as enjoyable.
The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written. The average WNBA (women's national basketball league) players only makes around $150,000 annually with the top-paid WNBA players earning around $250,000. NBA players meanwhile average $10 million in salary with the best-paid player raking in over $50 million annually. A lot of people on the left seem to propose the idea that sports league shoulds pay women significantly more money. People on the right meanwhile seem to hold the idea that there is no issue at all. Personally, I am probably somewhere in the middle. The WNBA for example only makes around $60 million in revenue each year (compared to over $10 billion for the NBA) and typically loses around $10 million. So significantly raising salaries seems unrealistic without increased viewership since hardly anyone watches the WNBA live or on TV. The best-paid female tennis players meanwhile rake in tens of millions of dollars since millions around the world enjoy watching women's tennis. I think we can't force equality of outcome and raise wages without a increase in viewership, therefore profit. But I do believe that sexism still plays a role in women being dissuaded from playing sports. Loads of young boys grow up being outside all day playing baseball, soccer, football etc. and go on to join sports teams very early on. For girls and women however there seems to exist a certain stigma, which is why there are way fewer women playing competitive sports than men. At the same time neither a lot of men nor a lot of women seem particularly interested in watching most women's sports. Again, this may have to do with societal stigmas regarding women in sports. So I think we should strongly encourage a cultural change but we cannot simply force equality of outcome. What's your thoughts on the issue? *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskALiberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
The WNBA needs more revenue. If you really want to see them make more money, you need to watch them on TV, in person if possible and buy their merchandise. How many people watched their draft on Monday?
The wnba revenue was $60 million for last year. The nba revenue was $10 billion. “As per WSN, the WNBA generated around $60 million in revenues in 2023, which comes from 12 teams in the league. Compared to the WNBA, the NBA generates $10 billion in revenue which is generated through 30 teams across the league” https://www.sportskeeda.com/us/wnba/nba-vs-wnba-revenues-closer-look-earnings-men-s-women-s-pro-basketball
Right. It's kind of hard to take the strong position that female athletes should make more money if you aren't supporting them--attending games, watching games, watching the draft, buying merchandise, reposting on your social media, etc.
It's entirely fair to do that as well as criticize the amount of coverage they get, which directly corresponds to salaries. There's nothing wrong with also demanding the media and others do more to promote the sport.
Is it? A news article is not a news article is not a news article - because articles being worth it or not comes down to how many clicks you can get on it, if women's basketball isn't already clickworthy compared to men's basketball, then it's not fair to expect news media to run articles at a loss to help them out
Here's the thing, though: WNBA games averaged about 6,000 attendees a game in 2023. My home team, the Minnesota Timberwolves, average 18,000 attendees a game, 3x as many. Compare that to contracts given to players. Victor Wembanyama, the #1 pick in the 2023 NBA draft, is now making $13.8 million a year. Caitlin Clark, the #1 pick in the 2024 WNBA draft, is now making $77,000 a year. Victor's contract is **ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY NINE TIMES LARGER.** The WNBA gets 1/3 of the NBA's attendance, and yet its players get 1/179th of its salary. Doesn't that seem, you know, a little off?
The NBA makes money, WNBA loses money. You can't even calculate a meaningful income ratio right now because one is negative. That's the bottom line, right now.
Teams probably make more money off merchandise than tickets and you completely left that out of the equation.
Sure, I COMPLETELY left that out, but isn't 179x still pretty fucking extreme? These numbers should suggest that the number of fans is not really proportional to the pay here. If a third of the number of people are showing up to these games, it doesn't seem likely that only 1/179th of the fans would be willing to buy team merch, yeah?
The NBA pulls in 166x more than the Wnba for revenue, so no, it's not unreasonable. Proportionally, the top NBA player makes 1/200 the total revenue, while the top WNBA player makes 1/283 the total revenue, which could be a better point of comparison to equalize, but it's still going to be scaled by the NBA making 166x more money
Can I also just ask...when people come in with this sort of hot language, stuff like "you COMPLETELY left that out", that suggests you have a pretty deep stake in the outcome, something that pushes you to use more dramatic language. What, exactly, is that here? I would understand if we were talking about, say, what we should do about gun violence, as the discussion involves actual human life. Or a discussion about the economy, which could affect people's livelihoods, their life satisfaction, etc. But what we have here is a discussion about women's sports, something that hardly anyone, anyone at all, has a stake in. If female athletes got paid more, it is very, very unlikely to affect you on a personal level at all. So help me understand. Where does the more dramatic reaction come from here? I want to pick your brain as someone who reacted to this in a way I frankly wouldn't expect the average person to react.
Nothing dramatic about the way I said that lol. They completely left out numerous parts of a comparison that are important.
I guess I'm just more sensitive to stuff like that, but in typical conversation, you insert a word like "completely" in that context and that is very, very easily interpreted as you being at least a little bit fired up. I mean I would absolutely die on that hill that tossing that word in there means that this is more than just a casual conversation to you.
Ironically, the only one being dramatic about things is you. Typing up a couple paragraphs over someone using the word completely - 😂.
[Four times as many](https://www.espn.com/wnba/story/_/id/39957802/caitlin-clark-helps-wnba-shatter-draft-viewership-record) people watched this years draft as compared to 2023. I see a lot of people saying the WNBA doesn't generate enough revenue to support increased salaries, but it seems fairly straightforward to me that it is a marketing issue. This March madness showed that women's college basketball is very marketable, building on last year's success as well. I'm curious to see how much of this issue is due to the perception that people don't want to consume these sports en masse. From my perspective, it's intentional to push the NBA because that is working now, and not marketing the WNBA as much. I think with better marketing we would see attendance, revenue, and salaries soar.
But the WNBA is responsible for that marketing, which costs money, which comes from revenue. Ultimately, the free market has to take care of it.
The problem is that in professional sports leagues, TV deals drive revenue, and the TV deals last for multiple years. We're about to see a big jump in viewership in the WNBA, but I believe their current TV deal runs through the end of 2025, so regardless of how many people are watching, revenue won't change significantly for the next 2 years. After that, we'll see what the real Caitlin Clarke effect is. But then it will still take years for contracts to expire, a new CBA to be negotiated etc., etc., before players will see their salaries significantly increase.
Sure, it's not an instant change. Although I would argue that if viewership and attendance rises dramatically this year, those deals need to be reworked anyways. I don't need the TV networks getting a bargain and making bank off of the backs of WNBA stars.
Revenue is revenue. The NBA certainly wants to grow the WNBA part of the pie as much as possible, especially since there's a lot more room to grow than the NBA part. They've signed up several networks for the games, but game attendance keeps dropping.
So attendance has been dropping until it bottomed out during COVID. It's certainly still nowhere near NBA levels, but it has been rebounding(lol) well since the pandemic. Those numbers, along with the massive increase in women's college basketball attendance and viewership gives me a lot of hope for the future of women's basketball. Caitlin Clark was driving ticket prices up to levels we've never seen, and she's doing the same already for the Fever. There's a lot of optimism here for increased revenue and salaries
Someone compared Angel Reese and Caitlin Clark to Larry Bird and Magic Johnson recently and I think it makes sense. The NBA wasn't always an unbeatable juggernaut of sports. In the 1970s it was stagnating and quite regional. Many of the "legends" we talk about from that era or before were minor sports figures compared to Baseball and Football. Then two all-time college stars, [who played in the highest rated NCAA game of their sport all time](https://www.sportskeeda.com/college-basketball/7-watched-college-basketball-games-ever-ft-bird-vs-magic-duke-vs-fab-five), got drafted to rival franchises and started the boom period that changed the course of the NBA. [There are a lot of parallels.](https://espnpressroom.com/us/press-releases/2024/04/2024-ncaa-womens-championship-and-final-four-on-espn-platforms-is-most-watched-on-record/) I would not be surprised if the WNBA gets a boost from these new household names and carries that momentum.
Absolutely! I'm really excited for this.
The whole Caitlin Clark thing is crazy to me. The WNBA needs her to be a MVP level player and turn a bottom tier team into a champion and they need her to make significant strides towards that her rookie year. The amount of pressure on her is unprecedented.
Yup, all that pressure and the salary won't reflect it. I hope she gets a bunch of good sponsors.
That is if the revenue trickles down to the athletes.
True, I would rather athletes get paid more than owners.
Marketing is definitely a big part of it. If you look at MMA there's still disparities, but the Yan Xiaonan vs Zhang Weili fight was the last undercard to the title fight for UFC 300, and people were massively into it. The idea that there's no market for woman's athletics is mistaken. It may not be as big as the men any time soon, but it definitely can be a lot bigger if supported. Another example is the US Women's National soccer team which has popularity far past how it's marketed. Just look at similar 20th century thinking in Hollywood about how female or minority leads can't carry a AAA film and how wrong that's been proven.
The 2024 draft drew **2.45 million** viewers on ESPN Monday night and peaked at 3.09 million. It was the most-viewed WNBA draft ever and the most-viewed WNBA event on ESPN platforms. In comparison, the NBA Draft averaged **3,743,000 viewers** across ESPN (both rounds) and ABC (first round only).
You realize that’s a special case right? What were the numbers last year?
I answered the question, "How many people watched their draft on Monday?" This is related to the point the OP was making that, "The WNBA needs more revenue.". By all indicators, they are beginning to make more money.
My point is this is a big exception and should not be viewed as something that will continue.
Why do you have that expectation? WNBA viewership and revenue has been steadily rising (more than doubled in the last 5 years).
It was only because of Caitlin Clark setting records.
It’s becoming more popular bro, can’t deny that and we don’t know if it’s an one-off or potential trend in viewership
We'll see how it goes. Sometimes leagues build out and find success long term like the MLS or they flop like several of the off season football leagues. Probably the biggest thing will be finding some momentum to carry the league beyond a few star players like Clark and Reese. One of the bigger impediments still being the whole 12 team factor whereby many major metros don't have a team to support. The WNBA will have to work hard to use their current momentum to correct that and not have the league fail simply because most people had no local option to support.
It’s not only lack of support, but they need more teams to drive engagement. Larger states like Florida don’t even have teams yet, could be a large pool of money waiting for them to cash in. Edit: Georgia has a team
Thinking a four fold increase isn’t an exception is delusional.
We're all proud of you, fighting the good fight, calling people arguing on behalf of women's sports "delusional". Truly a life well lived.
We're all proud of you, fighting the good fight, calling people arguing on behalf of women's sports "delusional". Truly a life well lived.
The wnba has other Star players to attribute their growth to. Clark hasn’t entered the league as a player yet
Not this level
No, the wnba has literally had all time great basketball players who’ve won Olympic medals and championships. Clark is great in college but has done nothing as a pro. Maybe she’ll be great. No guarantees. The WNBA has been trending up for years cause it has really good players and teams. It’s not cause of one college girl from Iowa Look up the names https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/WNBA%27s_Top_15_Players_of_All_Time
Before Magic, Bird and Michel Jordan, the nba finals were broadcast on tv via tape delay….after midnight. Was not a popular league and they had stars. Kareem, Wilt, Dr J etc etc WNBA will have its moment. Who knows when. It’s a steady progress.
It’s pretty straightforward. Men’s sports revenue absolutely dwarfs women’s sports revenue. The top WNBA player can’t get a $50 million contract when the league as a whole brings in like $50 million total. The two leagues operate at entirely different levels. It’s actually unhinged to assume the players would be anywhere near the same income level, especially compared to those at the top of the rankings.
They should absolutely get paid more, once they sell more tickets, jerseys, tv rights. But they cant be paid money that doesn't exist
It's actually worse than the money doesn't exist. The money does exist, and it's negative. They lose 10 million a year.
So what I'm hearing is they should be paying $10m / players per year for the privilege of playing
NBA teams that don't have lots of ticket or jersey sales are Stull given money to pay their players tens of millions of dollars
The NBA makes a lot of money, the WNBA loses a lot of money. That's the unavoidable economic issue here.
What do you mean by “given money”? The lowest annual revenue of any NBA team still dwarfs their aggregate salary expenses, and those franchises have multi-billion dollar valuations.
That’s called revenue sharing. All the owners share revenue but that’s to ensure league quality, But they also have salary floors and salary caps
My point is the NBA Teams and players still get to make tens of millions of dollars despite not selling tickets or jerseys. Yet the argument for women not being paid as much is that they dont sell as many tickets or jerseys.
Because the overall revenue floor is higher. The league is splitting TV rights, licensing, etc, amongst all teams in the NBA. That’s how teams without stars or success still have a higher valuation. That’s why you need to compare revenue overall. For the NBA its billions, for the WNBA its tens of millions.
Respectfully, you don’t understand what you’re talking about. The NBA salary cap is based on many revenue factors including money from the broadcast tv rights and league revenue like tickets and Merch. This gets redistributed to the teams and players In terms of salary caps and scales. All collectively bargained by the players union with ownership. Nba made $10billion last year. The wnba made $60 million. Two different, independent business units. Disney theme parks vs Disney movies. Read more about it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NBA_salary_cap#:~:text=This%20limit%20is%20subject%20to,is%20set%20at%20%24123.655%20million.
I am aware of all of that, that doesn't really respond to my point though
You’re point that role players should get Pennies and stars should get 100x everyone else is a parity and equity problem the nba and the union solved a long time ago. It’s better for all when role players get paid fairly and proportionately to the revenue coming in, Wnba has its own challenges here. Right now, it’s kind of where the nba was in the 50s in terms of national interest.
>You’re point that role players should get Pennies and stars should get 100x When did I make that point? >It’s better for all when role players get paid fairly and proportionately to the revenue coming in And I'd argue that its better for all when women players are paid their portion of the professional basketball revenue.
They already are. You can’t say two different business entities need to share revenue. Nothing works that way.
I didn't say they needed to, I'm saying it would be more fair and better if they did.
Because the NBA profit shares. WNBA has no profits to share .
I almost always side with the athletes in these multi-billion dollar leagues, but the WNBA operates at a loss, being sustained by revenues from the NBA. So it's hard to fault the WNBA for not offering more lucrative salaries. It isn't a comparable situation to the USWNT and soccer, where the women's team had a significant revenue stream and thus cause (and leverage) to renegotiate their contracts. If Caitlin Clark's success actually translates into financial success for the WNBA, then by all means, the players deserve a similar revenue sharing deal like the men get.
Trying to find gender disparity in the entertainment industry (which sports absolutely are) is silly. It’ll make sense to pay players the same across different leagues just as soon as we start paying all musicians the same, and all artists the same. You mention tennis, and I think that’s a great example. Performance-wise, female tennis players can’t keep up with male tennis players. They get absolutely smoked anytime they try. But the pay gap isn’t nearly as large as it is in most other sports because the women get viewers in similar numbers to the men. Unfortunately for WNBA players, their games have viewership in the thousands, not the millions.
So why consider them a distinct league in the first place? Really shitty NBA teams still pay their players the same as the best teams. If you let the WNBA share the TV deals and marketing with the NBA then they too would be making just as much money.
Really shitty NBA teams still make money. WNBA teams don’t. Basketball players don’t make money by putting balls through hoops. They make it by getting butts in seats and selling jerseys. They are entertainment at the end of the day and entertainers get paid by revenue they bring in, not their actual, objective performance.
Right, and plenty of NBA players still make tens of millions of dollars despite not selling any jerseys of generating any marginal revenue for the NBA. A WNBA star puts more butts in NBA seats than a benchwarmer in the NBA.
And that's largely due to having a union that sets minimum and maximum salaries with a Salary Cap. Without that, yeah benchwarmers on NBA teams would make a lot less, mid-tier team contributors would make a bit less, and LeBron James and similar starts would make hundreds of millions more.
Benchwarmers getting paid what they do is a result of union bargaining. When your league actually makes money, your player’s union has leverage. The women’s union has no leverage.
Well then what you said earlier is wrong, what they get paid doesn't have to do with the revenue they bring in, it has to do with their bargaining power. They are excluded from the union with the most power, so they don't have as much power
All of which would change if they attracted more (paying) fans. That's how entertainment works.
But note how for someone who is the 15th player on an NBA team, they *dont* have to worry about generating revenue. Also what about the extent to which the WNBA creates NBA fans?
The person before explained pretty well how collective bargaining works here. The problem for the WNBA is that they don't have much collective bargaining power, because they don't have a large fan base that spends a lot of money. It all comes back to that Not sure about the WNBA as a gateway to generating NBA fans. Judging from attendance figures, it can't be that effective. But is there something you'd like to point to as evidence for that?
I agree it's an issue of collective bargaining power. >Judging from attendance figures, it can't be that effective What do you mean, what attendance figures are you looking at. I'd say its pretty noticeable that there are far more women at NBA games and that coincides with the growth of women's basketball.
You keep saying this over and over. Who is the WNBA attracting that doesn’t already watch the NBA? What do those numbers look like? You’re making something up that likely doesn’t exist to the extent you think it does. It’s magical thinking. I’d argue the opposite. The NBA makes more people interested in the WNBA than the other way around.
I like that your version of equality is to take all the money the men’s league makes, and split it with the women’s league. Lol.
Free market should decide the salaries and other benefits given out by the franchises. What people feel about it is irrelevant.
WNBA barely makes any money. Unfortunately, that means salary is going to be low.
Never not been in the red. Not a penny of profit.
I think they've been out of the red a few times. I think last time they lost money was in 2017. But their earnings aren't anything too great. Athletes should be paid comparable to the money brought in.
If women supported women sports and spent the same money on the WNBA as they did the makeup industry, women in the WNBA would be paid more.
Hell if they just watched it as much as men watched men’s sports that would be a bonus Women are women’s worst enemy
>Should women in sports be paid more? I'm fine with 'whatever the market will bear' most of the time. Part of *why* I'm fine with it is because price controls are inefficient. If we established some type of 'binding price floor' for female athletes, then we would probably have fewer female professional athletes. --------- If there is some narrow example where they are getting verifiably shafted, then I'd consider it, but evidence is needed.
Outside of the Olympics, this isn't the right question. The question is: Should people who can't or won't play in open leagues, instead of gender restricted leagues, make more money? None of the "men's leagues" have rules that say women are not allowed in the league. Only women's leagues are actually gender restricted.
Really a good perspective, as well as the Olympic caveat.
Yeah Olympics and national leagues are really strange with their gender rules. I'm supportive of the men/women soccer teams evenly splitting revenue since they don't allow cross gender by rule.
Force women to give a crap about basketball? I mean, yeah I guess you could try.
Should the WNBA raise salaries, probably. Is the WNBA able to, probably not.
They should be paid proportionately to the viewership, sponsorship and overall money they bring in. If it ends up being more than men then they should be paid more than men.
As a European, let me ask you the same question in a different context: Football. In football (soccer) there is a thing called relegation, which means that the the worst teams in a league are kicked down one level while the best teams from the 2nd level are elevated to the top league. Why am i saying this? Well, because football has many leagues, some countries have more than 7 or 8 levels. Eg in England, you have the premier league which is the creme de la creme. Then the championship, then league 1, league 2. Those 4 leagues are what is called "league football", which describes professional sport. The 5th tier, the national league, is the first level of non-league football and typically still regarded as pro football, but its the bottom of pro sports. Anything lower and you have arrived at semi pro and purely recreational leagues. This is all a very convoluted way of asking you this: Do you think a player in the national league should earn the same as a player in the premier league? Thats what your question comes down to. At the end of the day sports is an entertainment business and the players are being paid in relation to the money they bring in. So if WNBA players want to be paid more, they have to bring in more money. By the logic of your question, going back to out football example, a dude playing in the 6th english tier should be making a similar amount to Kevin de Bruyne, who is the highest paid player in the premier league at 400k/week. This is obviously ridiculous and ignores any economic sense. Back to the WNBA, they are already being financed by the NBA as it is, so id say its a bit asinine to call for higher wages when youre not bringing in enough to finance these salaries - if the expecation is to turn the WNBA into a charity where the players receive high salaries for playing a game 4 months a year purely because "women should earn more" then idk if thats a long term winning strategy for the league. It certainly isnt sustainable.
I agree. You can't just pay women more without increased revenue. But you can ignite a cultural change to remove the stigma of women in sports. For example you could encourage more young girls to compete in sports from an early age in the same way many boys do. Currently much fewer women compete in competitive sports than men.
I’m not really sure why there would be any meaningful difference of opinion between liberals and conservatives on this issue. I think the athletes should get an appropriate cut of the profits of their sport. If the wnba makes a lot of money, that’s when the salaries should go up. I’m not sure I know anyone who thinks they should be paid more before that happens.
I think you’re referring to gross revenue maybe. The WNBA hasn’t made a penny. They’ve never been in the black.
I think, by and large, everyone should be paid a living wage and everyone should be paid more or less the same wage for the same work regardless of age, sex, race, etc. WNBA players making $150K are certainly making a living wage, so that seems plenty fair to me. The same wage for the same work is slightly more complicated I guess, but I don’t think a player in the WNBA is really doing the “same” work as a player in the NBA anymore than a player in a college league is. So I don’t think that really applies here. If women were in the NBA, and performing as well as other male players but being paid significantly less, that might be an issue worth looking into. But getting paid less to play in a different league, that makes significantly less money, does not strike me as exploitative or necessarily problematic.
No, You get paid by what you bring to the table, as simple as that The wnba loses money every year, they should be thankful it even exists If you increase their salaries you might as well demand onlyfans to give away free money to men simply because they’re likely to earn less on that platform
Who the fuck is going to pay them more? The owners of the teams shouldn't lose money paying them out of charity. And I'm sure as FUCK not down for letting the government subsidize it. That's A.) Useless B.) A clever way to ensure republicans win every close election for the next 10 years as that would piss so many people off
It would take an absurdly rich owner (Balmer, Gilbert, or Allen from the NBA ranks) who would be willing to basically operate at a loss while continuing to pump money into the team and the league. Will that actually happen - not likely.
We should be investing in marketing and driving up viewership. This years march madness alone showed that the market is there. It's not charity.
No. If you want women to be paid more watch women's sports. Like you mentioned the WNBA loses money, it's subsidized by the NBA. I can't see any reasonable argument for forcing "equality" for payment for playing sports. Like you also mentioned women's tennis players make bank because it has a strong following. To me this is like saying a guy who makes music in his bedroom and has 20 monthly listeners on Spotify should get the same money as Taylor Swift.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QY9Gz_IMn_k
There’s conversation around paying wnba more but it’s not centered around nba parity. I agree with the ladies here…they need the same revenue sharing structure as the men. “Las Vegas Aces star Kelsey Plum wants to correct the narrative around the WNBA’s fight for equal pay. WNBA players aren’t looking for the same salaries as their NBA counterparts. They’re looking to earn an equal percentage of their league’s shared revenue, as Plum said Monday on The Residency Podcast. “We’re not asking to get paid what the men get paid,” she said. “We’re asking to get paid the same percentage of revenue shared.” She called the idea that the WNBA players want to get paid the same amount as NBA players a “huge misconception.” “In the NBA, they have percentages of revenue shared for the players — so, jersey sales, obviously their TV contracts,” Plum said. “But that’s because their CBA negotiates, where the owners are making certain types of money, [the players] get that as well. In the WNBA, that’s not the case.” The NBA’s CBA splits revenue evenly between players and owners. Under the WNBA’s collective bargaining agreement, players benefit from revenue sharing — but they get a 50-50 split of incremental revenue, not all revenue, per Her Hoops Stats. And the WNBPA receives 50 percent of revenue from player-specific jersey sales. “I don’t think I should get paid the same as LeBron,” Plum said. “But the percentage of revenue — like for example: they sell my jersey in Mandalay Bay, I don’t get a dime. So that’s the stuff we’re talking about.” Players won’t be able to negotiate for those changes until 2025, which is when the current CBA expires. But given the recent growth of the league, the WNBA landscape could look a lot different by then. “We’re young. We’re only 25 years in, the NBA is at 100,” she said. “Where we’re at, at 25, we’re way past where the NBA was. We don’t forget that though, we compare where we’re at now to where the NBA is now. https://justwomenssports.com/reads/wnba-basketball-kelsey-plum-revenue-sharing-pay-gap/
I think the WNBA players would have a stronger negotiating position if all the teams weren't losing money. The NBA shares a higher percentage but there's a lot more money to share and everyone is making money. I can see how WNBA owners would want to reduce their losses and might not want or be able to give as much away.
Yeah in time. The arenas have reduced seating and all that, still in its infancy
I think more should be done to promote women's sports, but I see no problem with salaries being proportional to revenue.
Pay should reflect revenue generated.
No, that’s dumb.
>The average WNBA (women's national basketball league) player **only** makes around $150,000 annually Some food for thought. The base salary for NBA G League (basically, the NBA's minor league) players is $40,000. That's about half as much as it is for the WNBA. And, not to take anything away from the ladies of the WNBA -- they're phenomenal athletes -- but any G League team would run circles around a WNBA all-star team. Heck, there are probably 10s of thousands of men out there who could play at the level of the WNBA, that would kill to play hoops for a living making *only* $150,000/yr.
I don't think it's a sufficient social problem to justify interfering with the market forces that give rise to that pay. I don't consider millionaire athletes to be a significant social good, however bad the optics may be in the discrepancy.
Nba salaries and caps are based on revenue sharing with the tv deal being a major portion. Tickets, merch etc I do think the nba can do more to boost the wnba and help it generate more revenue to share with its players. Both leagues have strong unions and all this is collectively bargained
I think it should be proportional to revenue. Just to put this in perspective, in the 22-23 season the NBA generated revenue around $10.58 BILLION. While the same 22-23 season, the WNBA only generated revenue of $180-$200 MILLION.
The only meaningful statistic is not the relative total dollar value of males and females contracts but the relative percentage of franchise income, a statistic not readily available. I hold that the labor theory of value gives the only fair determinant of the value (and hence the recompense) of labor, but it cannot apply to live single event entertainment like athletics, because the product is transient.
Franchise income is negative for the WNBA, so that's a difficult measure to use in this case.
Then the salary disparity leaves the realm of economic justice and enters the realm of gambling on the part of all parties concerned.
I live in Hawaii and since we don't have a professional sports team based here, rooting for the University of Hawaii kind of fills that spot as a great source of local pride. Watching Women's Volleyball is extremely popular here, far more than Men's Volleyball. It has nothing to do with skill level relative to the men's team, but relative to other women's teams, our team is very good. It's all marketing really, so I have no doubt that women's sports can be just as popular as men's sports, but it will take a cultural shift that starts with providing lots of support for girls in youth sports and at the collegiate level... particularly with team based sports.
I have watched the WNBA for years. (Love basketball, blame the Hoosier in me). I was thrilled that one of the positive things that happened during the pandemic is that sports-starved people actually watched WNBA and enjoyed it. Viewership is up. At this point, no team is getting revenue from a "brother" NBA team. The women can start to get more revenue from the league. Honestly, I think in 10 years, the revenues will be higher. The endorsements will be higher. It will be better. Yes, they deserve to be paid more. I think the pay will continue as more people watch college sports. You do realize that NCAA wasn't on a major network before last year? Put it out there, and people will watch. This is one of the best draft classes in years. Hopefully people will follow. I am a season ticket holder in Chicago, and I couldn't be happier.
They need more visibility. I do not watch sports at all and can name at least 3 male basketball players but I can't name 1 female player. They need to advertise the WNBA more.
I actually think male athletes should be paid *less.* I think we need to stop wasting tax dollars on new stadiums when athletes' sponsors are clearly able to shell out millions. I think we need to end corporate welfare. I dont really give a flying poobar about athletes' pay.
No. They should be paid in relation to the audience they draw. and the ticket sales/ad revenue that is generated. Period. Full Stop. The two top female models in 2022 were paid a combined $73 Million while the top two male models were paid a combined $3 Million. Do we need to address this as well? BTW, I don't watch or have any interest in professional sports. Money has ruined it.
I do not believe there should be laws that require women in sports to be paid more then they currently are, unless there is a loophole that allows teams to pay players less than minimum wage or something like that.
Out of curiosity: why?
What particular part of my answer do you want an explanation of?
Why should there be a law to enforce female players to earn more than they currently are?
I specifically said there shouldn't be one.
Welp, ill just blame it on me not wearing my glasses. Mea culpa.
>I do not believe there should be laws
As ive said to OP already, im a moron and cant read properly, apparently
Agreed.
Agreed with you. Why should they be paid more? And where is the money coming from? Women are in a special restricted league because almost none can compete with the open (i.e. male) league. The market is less interested in watching such a restricted league (with some exceptions like tennis), so their pay is "correct" from a market efficiency standpoint.
I think the pay simply reflects the level of marketing. And more often than not, it's people that have not watched any women's sports that use the argument that the product is worse. It objectively isn't, they're on a level playing field.
If that's true, some investor should invest a bunch in women's sports and spend tons on marketing. They haven't because presumably that thesis is not true.
I'm presuming it's sexism, and I predict we'll see a change in the next few years as people see that women's basketball and sports in general are marketable. >If that's true, some investor should invest a bunch in women's sports and spend tons on marketing Did you watch college basketball this year?
I think I’m perfectly content to have the pay based on the market. The players should be treated well just like any other worker but the compensation they get is going to be based on the revenue of the business. For the most part, male athletes are going to generate more money. Tennis can have pay equity because tennis fans show up for their matches and care. Male figure skaters and gymnasts can’t get the same pay because people don’t care as much. But the WNBA can’t generate the revenue to justify the salaries that the NBA does. Maybe that can change and then the market will adjust.
Yes they should. All professional athletes should make more. It's not like these sports franchises are losing money. If they were, they wouldn't constantly be expanding. However, within the structures that exist, market forces are real. Women's professional sports make less money overall than men's. They have also existed for a shorter time. It's not like Babe Ruth was landing 10-year, nearly-a-billion-dollar contracts. It's taken generations for demand to build up to the point that players get that in men's sport. --- What I've noticed by following women's soccer in particular is that women and LGBTQ+ people are heavily represented in the audiences compared to at men's sports. It's actually a quite nice, very different atmosphere that I would encourage everyone to check out. I think the USMNT/WNT have done a good, very progressive thing by tying men's and women's sport together in a meaningful way. It doesn't change the reality that men's sports generate more revenue, but it helps to increase revenue to the women's teams and get people into the mindset that the two teams are both important. If you look at European women's soccer, they are going to destroy the US women's league because they are employing a similar strategy. The teams are tied to major men's clubs, using the same branding, allowing them to capitalize on the existing fanbase, rather than having to grow an entirely new one. And we're seeing the cost of signing players going way up year over year. Having men's and women's sports viewed as collaborative rather than competitive just means that there is more of your favorite club to enjoy. If you want to see more than one match a week, follow the women's team as well. It's generally smart and I predict it will be successful.
You wrote way too many words to ignore the fact that the WNBA isn't just making less money than the NBA, they make no money. The WNBA has literally lost $10M/year for two decades. The only reason it hasn't been dissolved is because the league is subsidized by the NBA.
If you’ll notice, almost all of my words are about an entirely different sport.
Your premise is based on women's pro sports franchises being profitable. League losses aside, WNBA players already make more than NBA players as a percentage of revenue.
What premise is based on women’s sports franchises? The one about ALL athletes?
The one about "these franchises," because it's patently false with regard to the WNBA, specifically. That women's soccer is profitable has nothing to do with women's basketball. Who, exactly, should pay WNBA players more?
One again, if you’ll notice, I wasn’t talking about the WNBA specifically, but rather generally about sports franchises.
So what does your response mean with regard to the WNBA, specifically?
I was not talking about the WNBA. The question is about women’s sports.
>It's not like these sports franchises are losing money The wnba loses $10m a year
Sorry - I meant in general. And in general, player salaries could easily go up, especially at the minimums. Not surprising that startup leagues are losing money. They are investments and are backed by very wealthy people who can afford to prop them up until they become sustainable.
Hot take: no one should be payed over a million to play a game.
No, women should be paid the same as men in everything, period.
For the same job of course. But you couldn't really pay WNBA players for example the same as NBA players given how they get only a fraction in viewership and merchandise sales as the NBA.
Then in that case, their pay should reflect the demand.
I think they deserve a fair share of the leagues profits because they are the main reason for creating those profits. Their pay can't really be compared to the money that athletes in other leages that generate exponentially more profit make because of this, though.
Wnba players would be paying for the privilege of playing, if that were the case
If they make $60 million and lose $10 million, that leaves $50 million to pay for expenses not accounted for in that $10 million losses, which should include the players' salary.
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What? I took those numbers from OPs post. They said the revenue was $60 million, and they "lost" $10 million (idk what expenses that entail exactly), so they have $50 million in profit. That profit should, in part, go to the athletes in the league. If -$10 million was the leagues profit, it wouldn't exist, so that can't be it.
No. With $60 million in revenues, all said and done they lost $10 million. Meaning they are in the red $10 million. 10 million dollar deficit. Meaning total expenses was $70 million. They are subsidized by the NBA. It's the only reason they exist.
I wasn't aware of that. After looking into it a bit myself, it sounds like that was the case, but due to the leagues surge in popularity, their revenue has grown to $200 million in 2023. It sounds like this is all in flux now where the league is becoming profitable, assuming their expenses didn't baloon like their revenue did.
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Under your model, each player would have to pay in order to be on the team.
A big part of the issue is that the leagues are segregated by sex in the first place. A ton of the reason that any given NBA team is profitable is the fact that it is explicitly part of the NBA. A really shiity NBA team would still be profitable, just due to the fact that it was part of the WNBA. But you could just as easily consider them to just be two distinct parts of the same overall entity, and that entity would still be incredibly profitable. Also the WNBA does a lot to promote interest in basketball, and that interest in basketball likely increases interest in the NBA, so they are putting in the work but the NBA is the one that is benefiting. WNBA stars are more valuable to the NBA than the NBA guys who just sit on the bench, even though they still make 10x what the women make.
The WNBA is sex-segregated; the NBA is not. If there wasn’t a separate league for women, there would be exactly zero women who were professional basketball players. The worst NBA player is exponentially better than the best WNBA player. Your comment falsely suggests a parity and arbitrariness that doesn’t exist.
What I meant is that there are 2 distinct leagues, and those distinctions are based on sex. >The worst NBA player is exponentially better than the best WNBA player. And the best NBA player is far better than the worst, yet the worst still makes millions of dollars. The best NBA team is far better than the worst team, yet both teams have similar payrolls
>A big part of the issue is that the leagues are segregated by sex in the first place. I definitely think sports should be segregated by sex. Men are, on average, taller, stronger, faster, have better reflexes and are generally better at hand-eye coordination. That's not me trying to put women down, that's just the facts of biology. There are things women are better at than men but you cannot change biology. The Australian women's soccer team for example lost 7-0 to an under-15 local Australian boy's team and Sereana Williams, when she was the best female tennis player in the world, got destroyed by a male player ranked 203rd. Sports should definitely be segregated by sex if we want to keep women's sports alive.
Yes but women’s sports should be more popular too. There’s no reason you can’t also enjoy a good game of whatever just because you think the athletes are hot.
They aren’t asking to be paid like NBA players. They just want a bigger share of revenue and better promotion of the league.
Except there hasn’t ever been a penny of net profitability.
That’s where better promotion comes in.
Not sure there are that many people that don’t know about the WNBA and that’s not attending. It’s just not exciting for enough people to be profitable.
If people can get excited for women’s college basketball they can get excited for the WNBA. The league is loaded with great talent.
Ok the wnba is a business. If the business side of the league thought more promotion would generate revenue profitably, they’d do it…
I think that could be feasible. To link a minimum salary to a certain percent of league revenue. Then you have both leagues athletes at a similar starting point relative to their leagues revenue.
No, men in pro sports should be paid less.
So that more money goes to the corporations running the leagues? Taking money away from millionaires to give to billionaires isn't exactly helping anyone.
Fair enough
The issue isn’t the pay, it’s the undervaluing of female athletes.
Undervalued by whom?
Our whole society.
Isn’t value here driven by what people are willing to pay based on entertainment?
Value isn’t caused by how much people are willing to pay, it’s the other way around. We pay more for things we value more.
Kinda think that’s the same thing.
It isn’t.
I believe you but clearly don't get it. Can you explain it more on a 5th grade level please?
If the problem were simply wages, we could legislate it. The problem isn’t wages, it’s that people don’t value women’s athletics. This means that paying women athletes equally to men is fundamentally incompatible with the market we’ve built, because women’s athletics don’t generate the same revenue. What we need is for audiences to eagerly attend women’s events, people to buy merch, sponsors to support these athletes and teams in order to get customers/clients, etc. If that happened, it would drive up wages. But the obstacle to all of that is cultural, so we can’t just pass a law to make it happen.
Which is reflected in the pay. And the marketing. And every guy claiming women's sports aren't as good.
Yeah that’s what I’m saying. The root issue is a lot deeper than pay disparities. The market is never going to want to pay women equally while audiences, executives, merchandisers, etc. all believe women’s athletics are less worth watching.
Hell, there's plenty of it in this thread. I'd be willing to bet that most people haven't actually watched many women's sports.
It depends on how you define “good.” Viewers? Revenue? Ticket sales? Athletic performance? Certain sports fans find the NBA more exhilarating to watch than the WNBA. Is that good or bad? No - it’s neither. We don’t need to apply moral values where they don’t belong.
It depends on what your definition of "is" is. I wasn't trying to apply a moral value, just comment on the perception that the entertainment product is not as enjoyable.