Bill Burr had a good take on this one. Basically, how many of the people complaining about the pay disparity in women’s basketball actually watch women’s basketball? If you want them to get paid more, you need to watch their sport so they will bring in higher ticket sales and ad revenues. His take is a lot women are complaining about this pay disparity and few of them actually even watch the WNBA, so it’s kind of hypocritical since they’re not doing the very thing that would help increase their salaries.
Joke’s on Bill, I don’t watch men’s sports either
Closest thing to a sport that I watch is pro wrestling, and I greatly enjoy women’s wrestling, so…
What a chad
No, but billions of others do.
Except WNBA players don’t get revenue shares like NBA players do. That’s what they’re asking for.
Well, they should get it. I imagine some of the things NBA players have now were won through bargaining and negotiations.
And I love that he says that as someone who watches many sports regularly and spends money on everything from going to games to merchandise to even giving them air time in announcing specific events that he’s interestend in during his podcast.
I don’t know what the finances of the WNBA are but people should be paid by their talent and expertise. Someone preforming at a high enough level to make it into the WNBA is exceptionally rare and their salary should reflect that. Else, soon enough there won’t be any WNBA players.
Hey that’s about what most engineers graduating from college get. And they won’t be able to do sponsorships and ad deals. I would say $76k is a much more appropriate salary to start with than what the men make in basketball. That is just crazy
She has north of 3m in sponsorship deals right now, and we can only assume that number will go up in the WNBA
It may go down in the WNBA. Caitlin Clark isn’t the first player who was expected to make the WNBA popular (Maya Moore, Brittany Griner, etc). It’s far too early to tell if she will have any impact on WNBA viewership.
The issue is that NIL money is also a way for boosters to pay players to stay instead of the shadowy back door deals that used to happen. Now NIL just allows boosters to pay players through a legitimate channel.
A lot of NIL money during the off-season is booster money, yes. That’s money that basically will only go to athletes signed with a particular school.
But there’s also a lot of NIL money for actual big budget TV/print advertising from national corporations for ads produced by major ad agencies. That’s money that follows the athlete.
Not all of it will follow the athlete to the pros (and not every athlete goes pro), especially since the WNBA seems to have lower viewership than NCAA women’s basketball. But if anyone is gonna be making good money on sponsorships in the WNBA, it’ll be Caitlin Clark.
76k is barely enough to get by in a lot of urban areas … this is a shameful compensation for one of the best players.
I barely make 20k and would do a lot of things to nearly 4x my yearly income
The problem is that the NBA pays way too fucking much
I always push back when I hear people say athletes get paid too much. The money’s on the table. It either goes to the owners, who likely inherent the team or are independently billionaires, or the players. The players are lucky to get 5 years to make as much money as possible, they deserve it way more than the owners.
Neither you nor the WNBA players are being compensated fairly. Solidarity, man, don’t bring others down.
I’m not gay, but 20k is 20k. Agreed the extreme disparity between ownership and median player pay is out there, and the disparity against other leagues is off the wall.
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Women’s basketball has soared in popularity in recent years, with this year’s March Madness tournament dwarfing its men’s counterpart. There are plenty of reasons for this, but one of them is that the game is just fun to watch.
This should result in more media money, which should result in higher salaries. We’ll see. Football really does suck a lot of the oxygen out of the room, financially speaking.
Another part of the discussion is that popularity is sort of meeting in the middle, since as women’s basketball rises, men’s college basketball has been gutted by (among other things) stars leaving after one year, as well as court-forced rule changes (completely reasonable, IMHO, because players should get agency) that have everyone else playing musical chairs as they switch schools to pursue their financial and athletic dreams rather than buckle down to get a degree, which is often nerfed anyway.
College athletics in general, and “revenue sports” in particular, try to meet the letter of the “Student Athlete” rules without giving a single shit about graduating players who have the same level of mastery and accountability as even a garden variety liberal arts major. It’s not really a new thing, either. I muddled my way through an English degree, learning study skills as I went, and while I’m under no delusions that meeting the minimum standards was as hard as it would have been in an engineering program, there weren’t exactly any athletes in my classes on Elizabethan Drama or the History of the English Language, either.
It should, but hasn’t. That’s why this is newsworthy
It hasn’t? Women’s Final Four broke records in 2023. ESPN inked a $920m deal in Jan. 2024. None of this is instant. If it keeps building people will keep investing.
…and millions in sponsorship deals
According to the article, it sounds like those go to the team and owners, not the players. WNBA players don’t even get a dime when someone buys their jersey.
Pretty sure that State Farm money is with her, Jimmy Butler, and Reggie Miller.
Excuse me, the money goes to who?
Imma need to see a source for that claim.
Sure if she’s doing a team endorsement deal as a part of her contact that goes to the WNBA, but if Vuori or State farm or whoever just sign Caitlin Clark to a deal to appear as Caitlin Clark the WNBA doesn’t just take a cut of that.
The issue is that men make orders of magnitude more just for being men. No reason to handwave that disparity away.
Technically they make orders of magnitude more because the money they bring in is orders of magnitude more
Yeah, I saw an argument about considering not only what they’re paying the athletes but also what those athletes are bringing in as far as advertisments, ticket sales, merch, etc. I can’t find the video but I remember it clearly because it hadn’t occurred to me before then. I’ll look for it to make sure I’m not making any part of it up, but the numbers were ridiculous as far as how much money was being made from male leagues compared to female leagues.
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One argument that I have heard is that most women don’t have the height to make dunks, so they have to focus on shooting. That’s arguably a more pure form of the sport.
Something similar happens in pinball leagues. Tilting is generally an accepted practice, though this is often to the surprise of people who don’t know a lot about pinball. If the table is setup to let you do it, you can do it in a tournament. However, most women don’t have the upper body strength to shove a pinball table around, and many women’s leagues do ban tilting. Bumps are allowed, but not moving the table. Again, arguably, this is a more pure form.
It doesn’t though. That’s the problem. As a % of league profit, the pays don’t match. Women don’t get much on sales of apparel either.
Profit or revenue? Idk latest numbers but iirc the wnba lost 12 million in 2019 alone. The total value of the wnba is 1 billion dollars. For context, Steve Ballmer bought the clippers for 2 billion.
The entire wnba has a value that is half the value of the number 2 team in the LA market. Baller bought the team in 2014 btw, so it’s half the value from 10 years ago. I think the most recent sale was when an investment group paid 3 billion for majority share of the hornets about a year ago. By that measure the wnba is worth, maybe a quarter, of one of the least valuable franchises in the nba.
Plus these are rookie scale contracts. That’s pretty standard part of union collective bargaining. The union wants available funds to go to veteran players. You can’t really make a strong argument for those funds being too low when the league has never turned a profit in 25 years.
The Sun’s sold for $4 billion last year. That roughly a mid league team.
They need a union, if they don’t already have one.
They do have a union. They just have zero leverage because the wnba isn’t profitable. They go on strike, lose an entire year and the owners save money. I’m not going to call the wnba a charity case for the NBA because it does have value in promoting the sport itself. That value is too abstract to put into a cba negotiation though.
We all need a union. Maybe we should set up a union that we can be born into. That way we get a better start than the non-union babies.
Why is NBA “traditional” and WNBA isn’t? Name the differences.
The nba has been around for 50 years longer. The WNBA is a subsidiary of the NBA. There was never really a market for women’s basketball. There barely is now, after 25 years of the WNBA existing. The NBA runs at a 1.6 billion dollar profit while the WNBA runs at a 22 million dollar loss.
Making a profit is, traditionally, a part of a professional sports league.
Damn. You can’t force higher wages if the revenue isn’t coming in though. Maybe make a mixed gender league with co-ed teams.
It’d probably be dominated by the men.
While you do make a fair point…
I imagine the rules would be somewhat similar to my co-ed soccer rec league team. At least every third pass has to be to a girl etc etc.
There’s ways to keep it competitive and fun for a co-ed non-contact sport. Not sure how that translates to any kind of professional setting though.
Badly!
For a recreational game, it’s about having fun, so that rule works. I don’t think it will work in competitive games. People watch them to see the players exhibiting skill and ability.
I think it would be easier than that if they alter the scoring. E.g. with 2 women, 3 men on the court then you have normal scoring. With 3 women, 2 men then you have 3 pointers as standard and 4 for what would normally be a 3. 3 free throws instead of 2 etc. Would really push getting more good women in for a power play. Especially when chasing a game.
I imagine “soaring in popularity” would also mean more revenue…
The article says the women’s college tournament ‘dwarfed the men’s tournament’, but the ratings numbers I’ve seen show the men’s tournament has had 5x the viewership. So someone’s not doing their research. Plus, this is college, not the pros. If the WNBA viewership increases, then,yes, more revenue should come with the next media contract. But that remains to be seen.
Yeah the author got something mixed up. The men’s tournament so far has been one of the most watched years ever. It is true the women’s final is most watched game so far. But that’s comparing a final to other games. And NC State vs Duke last weekend had almost as many people watch. So a men’s Elite 8 game nearly matched the women’s final.
The sub header implies WNBA numbers are up though:
As women’s pro basketball soars in popularity, player compensation lags.
I can only go by the actual numbers I’ve seen, and it seems like most articles are cherry picking, at least so far. Saying ‘popularity is soaring’ isn’t the same as hard numbers.
For example, the NBA could claim their popularity is soaring during the NBA Finals, but their actual numbers are dwarfed the the Super Bowl. A lot of this is spin. But if the WNBA numbers actually do increase, then sure, more money would be coming.
It’s up to us to keep watching the WNBA to keep their salaries raising
The world will be just fine when we stop worshiping athletes. Hopefully this news turns more people off to it.
She already got a 5 million a year offer from big 3. Ice cube did an interview about it.
The rapper? I hate it here.
Ya but what’s Ja Rule sayin?
Yeah he runs a basketball league. You can hate him for other stuff but this is legit lol
To join a joke of a league though. Much better sponsorships available if she goes into a legit league
Play for 1 year, cash 5mil for a very short season and then go do the WNBA. Sponsorship will be there regardless
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I’m curious now what Ice Cube was offering her to join his league
I thought it was more than she’d make in her career.
I didn’t say that anyone else didn’t deserve more money.
hey I caught this on ABC the same parent company of ESPN
How many women sit down every weekend together to watch WNBA games the way the guys do though? How many fans do they have? How much merch do they sell? Seems like they want equal pay to the men but there’s no equal demand
That’s not what they are asking for if you did any research at all, they are asking for an equal revenue share.
From a league that loses money?
I said revenue share, not profit share. Every other sports league does revenue share. Profitability is irrelevant on what share of the revenue players make.
“Profitablity is irrelevant.”
It’s not possible to take your opinion seriously. The WNBA has existed for 25 years and has never turned a profit. If it was an independent league it wouldn’t exist. Thinking that’s irrelevant in a cba is goofy af.
When the NBA sells a jersey with Curry’s name on it, Curry gets a cut of the profit. When the WNBA sells a Breanna Stewart jersey she gets $0. This isn’t complicated, they are obviously getting fucked over if you’ve read anything about how the business actually runs.
Take a look at this. https://www.vogue.com/article/rise-of-womens-sports-bars
How much money is put in advertising NBA vs WNBA?
Women sports get shit coverage no matter what.
The reason there is so many ads everywhere is because it works.
The women’s final four games were the most watched ESPN sporting events in history lol. At least look it up before you make inane comments
No they weren’t. They were the second best non-football event on ESPN. The game on Friday was the best basketball game ever on ESPN, but it had roughly half the viewership of the highest rated Monday Night Football game and about the same as the lowest rated Monday Night Football game. You are also comparing the final two games of a one-and-done tournament to non-final best of 7 series games (ESPN doesn’t show NBA Finals). The NBA Finals games average almost twice what this NCAAW Final Four had per game.
At least look it up before you make inane comments.
Also, the person asked about WNBA viewership on a weekly basis, not about a single NCAAW tournament final.
Well with fans like you no wonder people refuse to join and watch
Not a fan, just calling you out for making misleading statements. As others have pointed out, they just want a fair share, a similar percent of revenue as the men get.
So if you don’t watch either why are you upset for them? You’re part of the problem
Yes, let’s solve pay inequity by forcing people to do things they don’t like!
The problem, once again, is not the lack of viewers or revenue. The women do not get the same cut that men get, AS A PROPORTION of total revenue for the league.
This is sports. We’re not talking about unionized laborers here. Being a sports star who makes big bucks isn’t a right. They’re free to quit and go make money elsewhere. I’m not gonna cry so they raise the minimum wage for sports stars who make way more than any of us
That’s a good paying job straight out of college. Man, I wish I had a job like that first thing. She worked hard and I wish her well. Dang…76K…just dang.
I always find the forced interest in women sport weird.
There are men that train and work just as hard as professional women and don’t get paid for it. We don’t owe them anything just because they play a game and you can’t even say it’s because amateur men aren’t as good because amateur men are better than professional women.
The fact there is money there at all is because of entertainment and entertainment alone and I don’t like being told I need to enjoy any type of entertainment.
If I do watch a sport I’m going to want to watch the most entertaining version of that sport which will be the top mens league. If I want to watch more sport I’ll watch other mens leagues around the world. If i want to wathc more then the youth teams are good because you ca follow people up through the ranks. If I really want to watch more sport I’ll go support my local club which is probably still higher quality than the women’s game.
The way I see it is you can either watch a oscar winning movie or you can watch some b rated poor quality movie. Watching either is fine, enjoying either is fine. But don’t act like a b movie needs to make the same at box office just because a women made it.
Forced interest? Again, the recent game was the most watched basketball game in ESPN history. There’s no forced interest. The women just want the same share of revenues that men get
The NCAA isn’t paying her professional salary, the WNBA is. Yearly revenue of the WNBA is $60 million. The NBA is $10 BILLION. Average viewership for WNBA games about 400,000 people; NBA is 12.4 million.
The highest NBA rookie contract is 12 Million/year. That is .0012% of NBA revenue.
76K/year is .00126% of WNBA revenue. Technically she’s getting a bigger percentage of WNBA revenue than Wembamyama is of the NBA’s.
It’s like complaining that the Canadian Football League players aren’t being paid as much as NFL players.
Average NBA viewership is 1/10th of your claim. Forgive me for doubting your argument.
Estimated 2023 revenue for WNBA = $200 million. Your entire argument is predicated on inaccurate data. WNBA revenue doubled YOY, while player pay remained the same. But if you are all for our corporate overlords keeping our money, you do you. It’s fine to be a conservative ig. Just odd that Lemmy keeps putting forth these right wing arguments about revenue when the population tends to support fair pay for workers in other domains.
Viewership was for finals games, since that was the most equivalent for what you’re talking about. And I was using 2022 statistics, since we still don’t know official revenue numbers for FY23.
I don’t think the WNBA opting out of the CBA was great for the WNBA players, but this has nothing to do with politics. The point is that viewership for the WNBA is a fraction of the NBA and the WNBA has never turned a profit in its entire history. It is entirely subsidized by the “corporate overlords” of the men’s game.
The fundamental problem is that far more people will complain about WNBA player contracts and/or discuss the gender politics around the game, like you are doing, then, you know, actually watch the WNBA.
Why not unbundle the subsidization of the WNBA from the NBA revenues? That would give a better picture of the solvency of the WNBA as a business. Professional sports aren’t social programs, as you note; they’re corporate business endeavors. With that considered, being unprofitable for 25 years puts the WNBA in a difficult situation.
