Players in the WNBA get paid significantly less than NBA players, have less opportunities for branding partnerships and support, and are arguably putting more on the line than their male . The athletes are planning to appeal, but at least for the moment, crucial parts of the suit have been dismissed. Because these women deserve more money. Listen. The minimum for three or more years of service was $56,100, and $41,202 for two or fewer years, with a rookie scale between $40,000 and $50,000. But that is still a pittance. That's the chain reaction of network externalities. Successful sports build enough familiarity and loyalty that their followers spread, find one another and reach a critical mass that, like a chain reaction in a nuclear power plant, creates a new energy that feeds on itself over time. Please do not edit the piece, ensure that you attribute the author and mention that this article was originally published on FEE.org. "ONE THING I DO KNOW," Sunil Gulati, president of U.S. Soccer from 2006 to 2018, said in a declaration to the equal pay lawsuit. TV viewership tells a similar story. There actually isn't any correct number, because income data isn't broken out anywhere for the Women's World Cup. But the league has agreed to prepare and promote players for coaching and other jobs in the offseason. And he'll get paid this massive sum to go championship-chasing with an in . The U.S. women have been playing so well that they now generate nearly as much money as the men on game days, despite typically lower official ticket prices. This is not what happens as women basketball players would be payed on average around 3.5 million (the average men's salary is 7 million). At the same time, there's very little downside if a player happens to go bust, because even top rookies earn only about $50,000 a year. Once again, though, we don't know expenses in the WNBA. More recently, men's soccer clubs have kept the gravy train rolling. Plenty of signs indicate that will happen, and it should. She told the reporter that she wants there to be something for future generations to aspire to. On May 1, a federal judge sided with U.S. Soccer on most of the key issues at stake in the lawsuit. The league average in 2022 is just $102,751 for WNBA players. What many of the women are asking for is equity in revenue sharing, as economist David Berri has written about repeatedly at Forbes. He estimated that WNBA player salaries constitute 22 percent of league revenue, while NBA player salaries amount to roughly 50 percent of league revenues. And there is seemingly, to the people who tell them to be quiet, who. It took the NBA 72 years to get to where the league is today, while the WNBA is only in its 21st season. Then, in a voice mocking the trolls in her mentions, she said: "'Maybe if you had viewership you would have that money. While the NBA pays its players roughly 50 percent of the total, the WNBA players are making less than 25 percent of league revenue. Why WNBA players are not paid as much as NBA players? Marketing researchers have discovered that consumers respond more favorably to marketing initiatives that cater to their identities. Diana . The base salary for WNBA rookies varies on when (or if) players were selected in the WNBA Draft. The reason Griner is in Russia in the first place was because she plays for UMMC Ekaterinburg in the Russian Womens Basketball Premier League. Professor of Educational Psychology & Higher Education, University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Demanding that female players be paid what they deserve is not about comparing the WNBA to the NBA as apples-to-apples salaries. With this deadline looming, the players would be wise to take advantage of this opportunity and compel the league to come to the table with an offer commensurate to their worth. And there is seemingly no end to the people who tell them to be quiet, who disparage their talent and work and even lie about what they have said to make them seem petty or jealous. Many of the women dont get lucrative endorsements, and getting into broadcasting or some other sports-adjacent field once they retire is not guaranteed. It was an unprecedented moment for a commissioner of a professional sports league and a head of a union: The labor deal they were about to negotiate could become a major platform for women's empowerment. Compare that to the NFL average of $2.7 million (median is $860K), $4.41 million in the MLB, $3.5 million in the NHL, and the average NBA salary is a whopping $9.662 million for the 2022-23 season. High. It's when the number of people with them grows that the devices become valuable. WNBA players arent asking to be paid on par with their NBA counterparts. The answer is that reward is not necessarily proportional to effort. He certainly was right about that. For all that backbreaking labor, in Bangladesh, it was just $662. They could advertise the womens league better. In the court of public opinion, however, something snapped after those March filings. It felt like, According to the WNBA . WNT members wore their jerseys inside out in protest. Under side-by-side photos of Bird and James, the photo compared the ballers' seasons in their respective leagues, number of championships, annual salary, and bonus for winning the Finals. Heading into this season, he had made six All-Star teams, and he created 0.247 win shares per 48 minutes in 2018-19. But by the time Megan Rapinoe, Alex Morgan and their mates were celebrating their triumph, the world knew they would earn just $4 million collectively, a fraction of what their male counterparts had taken home a year earlier. The WNBA continues to trail most professional sports in the United States when it comes to player salaries and compensation. As an Englishman, my knowledge of basketball amounts to Nike Air Jordans, White Men Cant Jump, and Space Jam. In 2017, for example, a majority of the most popular sports sites on the Internet didn't dedicate even one page to a women's sport or league, according to research by Berri. Reach them at sydneymiller@dailynebraskan.com. The league average in 2022 is just $102,751 for WNBA players. Considering the widespread acceptance of something like Engels formula, to say that a hard days work doesnt guarantee a fair days pay is one of the more shocking things an economist can say in polite company. "It centers contracts around the men's World Cup and uses TV coverage of women's games as a dry run for the men.". Nancy Lough does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment. It all. To grow the WNBA, he and the owners were prepared to, as he put it, "double down." The NBA, which partially owns the WNBA, needs to dedicate more time and money to their female players so they dont have to forgo an offseason and play overseas to support themselves. I didn't make the meme. While the NBA is quite profitable with a blockbuster $24 billion TV deal, billions of dollars in advertising and a robust revenue sharing system only about half of WNBA franchises finish the season in the black. Please, enable JavaScript and reload the page to enjoy our modern features. Carter, 22, was a key player on Georgia's back-to-back national championship team, earning 2022 first-team All-American honors while being named a Lombardi Award finalist after posting three sacks . Sabreena is an alum of Duke University, where she wrote for the . The NBA player whose salary is closest to Griner and other top WNBA players is Joe Wieskamp, a forward for the San Antonio Spurs who made $202,068 last year after playing 17 games out of 82 and scoring an average of 2.2 points per game. Cook found that under the men's wage scales, members of the women's team would have earned $91.8 million from 2014 to 2019. The women's national team filed a wage discrimination act against US Soccer, and in turn received a significant raise, increased game bonuses, improved per diem stipends, better travel benefits,. As important as all these changes are, their total cost is about $1 million per WNBA team per year, which means the proportion of league revenues paid to players will rise only from about 20% to approximately 30%. Bangladeshis, on average, work very hard but lack the institutions and the capital to be productive, As a result, they produce very little output and so, despite their intensive physical efforts, they remain poor. [Harrison Barnes, the highest paid player on the Dallas Mavericks, made $24 million last season. "Let me stop you," Jackson said. why wnba players should be paid morespillover david quammen sparknotes record attendance at old wembley curiosity daily podcast cancelled mega foods vitamins class action lawsuit passo della forcola webcam why wnba players should be paid more The contract, which runs through 2027, pays players an average of $130,000, with the top stars able to earn more than $500,000 through salary, marketing agreements, an in-season tournament and bonuses. CBS Sports Network struck a deal in 2019 to show 40 WNBA games a year, increasing the number of regular-season contests on national television by more than 60%. Sustained exposure has certainly been a boon to college softball, to which ESPN has held the rights for 40 years. News coverage of women's sports seems to have shifted considerably in just the past few years, though there aren't any published studies yet to say by just how much. WNBA players have free agency, of course, so players can negotiate with more than one team. In 2017, the WNBA posted its highest attendance in six years, more than 10,000 fans below the per game mark seen in the NBA in 2016-17, NBA broadcasts averaged around five times that. By contrast, the highest scoring team in the NBA that year was the Golden State Warriors, who averaged 112.8 points per game. BroBible is the #1 place on the internet for the very best content from the worlds of sports, culture, gear, high tech, and more. But while women's clubs are sharing some of the new pitches (and a handful of NBA facilities too), when it comes to securing arenas as primary occupants, the women's game has barely arrived at the table. 1 draft choice, and in which they won the WNBA championship with Brittney Griner, whom they selected with that pick? Just one woman was ranked among the 100 highest-paid athletes in the world in 2019, according to Forbes (Serena Williams, at No. Check out the clip of Bird's and Ray's conversation below: Access your favorite topics in a personalized feed while you're on the go. Looking ahead, the women's national team also has a collective bargaining agreement with U.S. Soccer that expires at the end of 2021. And no one wants to see the WNBA die, least of all the players. (In its most recent fiscal year, ending in March 2019, the USSF paid $304,113 to current men's coach Gregg Berhalter for four months of work, $241,869 to former coach David Sarachan, whom Berhalter replaced in December 2018, and $1.475 million to former coach Jurgen Klinsmann, who was fired in 2016. The main argument against paying WNBA players more is that the league simply isnt profitable, because no one watches it. But on a fundamental economic level, it is wrong, and the disparities we see between athletes salaries illustrate why. I know this is a controversial statement because women are never supposed to ask for more than they have, lest they be ungrateful for whatever theyve been given thus far. According to Forbes magazine, the NBA generated . From the point of view of the team owners, the measure of output that matters is the revenue the players generate. From the highest-paid athletes to the newest rookies, professional male athletes are still making significantly more money than women. Griner is a starter for the Phoenix Mercury who averages 17.7 points per game and has won two gold medals with Team U.S.A. in the Olympics. Three teams experienced double-digit growth: Attendance was up 17.8 percent for the Los Angeles Sparks, 15.3 percent for the Connecticut Sun and 12.3 percent for the Minnesota Lynx. The U.S.-Netherlands final reached an average live audience of 82.2 million, up 56%. But here's the thing. Players will also be able to earn up to $250,000 apiece from a $1.6 million pool the league is dedicating to marketing agreements and will gain free agency after five years, down from six. For instance, NBA teams took in a total of $8.8 billion this year, according to Forbes. The WNBA is scheduled to play its 24th season this year. In the NBA, players take home around 50% of shared revenue and in the WNBA players only take home 20% of shared revenue. Pay disparities between men and women is totally unfair in most arenas, but NBA star Draymond Green argued a valid point as to why NBA player salaries outweigh their WNBA counterparts. And yet, for all this effort, there is little economic reward. As demands for equal pay spark across arenas, boardrooms, TV screens, Twitter feeds and even presidential campaigns, it's time to take a deeper look. Last year, Delanie Gourley, a star pitcher in National Pro Fastpitch softball, disclosed that she makes less than a Yankees bat boy. Only 14 players in the league make $200,000 or more, according to Spotrac data. In 1953, at the same stage in its timeline, the NBA had total revenues of less than $16 million in today's dollars, according to data collected by the House Judiciary Committee in 1957, and drew only 3,583 fans per game. Consider a comparison: Anthony Davis was the No. The WNBA is a great product but yall should not have to do to these crap countries to make money, Barkley said. As Las Vegas Aces forward Kelsey Plum pointed out in 2018, 50% of the revenue in the NBA goes to players salaries, while only 20% of the WNBAs revenue goes to their players. Sometimes, it is pretty easy to see why vast amounts of effort generate little output and, hence, low incomes. Jessica Luther is a freelance journalist, an author and a co-host of the feminist sports podcast Burn It All Down.. Im not going to call out some of the bad NBA players we got in commercials but yall know who they are.. The disparity is so wide that the money pulls skilled men into a career in sports, while the lack of money makes it impossible for many talented women to earn a living as an athlete. Playing in other countries during the WNBA offseason can allow players to make double, triple or even quadruple of what they make in the United States. "I believed," he said, "the WNT was much more likely to qualify for and succeed in their tournament than the MNT was.". terry mcdonough aerodata. But interest is also clearly driven by media: If a network highly values a property, itll market and promote it as a way to build an audience. I'm not going to call out some of the bad NBA players we got in commercials but y'all know who they are." In 2023, the highest average WNBA salary is held by Aces guard Jackie Young as she . I do not know if the difference in demand for mens and womens basketball is because of a difference in the quality of the product or because of sexism on the part of consumers. Meanwhile, Steph Curry, the highest-paid player in the NBA, will make $45.7 million this season. Do you really compare yourself to the NBA?' One of the reasons we're even talking about equal pay in sports today is because of the courageous fight of. The WNBA's current collective bargaining agreement won't expire until October 2021, with the maximum salary paid to WNBA veterans set to increase $8,000 - from $113,500 to $121,500 - by that. Playing overseas in Europe, Asia, or Australia can often. She believes the athletes deserve more money. It sounds unarguable. On the other hand, some others pay. This simple. So Barbosa will be paid nearly five times what the WNBA MVP earned, and Barbosa wont even play for the Suns. They cant. Top players earn vastly more, such as Stephen Curry and Russell Westbrook, who make $48 million and $47 million a year, respectively. The fact that NBA players get a much larger piece of the revenue pie does seem to say something about how each respective league values its players. "It's not just FIFA that needs to be clear about the revenue that it's making from the Women's World Cup," says Molly Levinson, spokesperson for the U.S. women's national team. Has commitment been equal? As important as the equal pay lawsuit is for the players who are seeking back pay and damages, it's essentially about the past. As someone who has studied the WNBA for years, only about half of WNBA franchises finish the season in the black, a market segment worth around $830 million, have argued that interest drives coverage, Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA), Lecturer in Environmental Art - School of Art and Design. "Have investments been equal? The new WNBA calendar will make it harder to play overseas and stateside in the same year, which could force athletes earning big money internationally to make some tough decisions. And men's leagues have proved adept at getting state and local governments to defray the costs of that development. Dallas Wings point guard Skylar Diggins-Smith recently told Wealthsimple that she wanted to be paid like a man. This season, the maximum veteran salary is $115,500, not including potential bonuses. As someone who has studied the WNBA for years, Ive been excited to witness, over the course of this season, continued growth in viewership and attendance, along with sponsorship revenue. Even the WNBA's highest-paid players aren't making particularly lofty sums. "It's more merit-based, it will make us feel more professional and well-established, and kids are going to be able to see you can have a full-on career in the WNBA.". That is a staggering gap. The WNBA has reached an agreement with the players union to phase in pay rises, getting the average up to $130,000 and the top players over $500,000 by 2027. You ladies should be on commercials everywhere. In August, WNBA president Lisa Borders said, While I encourage WNBA players to speak out on issues important to them, it is equally important that they understand the realities of our business., Nows a good time for players to advocate for themselves because the product in the WNBA has never been better. The success of this campaign resulted in the WNBA being the first pro league to take part in the NYC Pride Parade in 2016. For all this, Fowles was named league MVP. The maximum veteran salary is $113,500. Yet as WNBA players came to a crossroads in 2018, nobody told their union leaders to demand million-dollar salaries. While speaking with WNBA legends Sue Bird and Diana Taurasi, the NBA legend called out American companies for not investing more in the WNBA, because, otherwise, the players could earn enough money to not have to play in international leagues in the offseason. And so these women are playing year-round, which is terrible for your body. Ertz in, Swanson out: Who will make USWNT's World Cup team after big shake-ups? This per game mark is more than 10,000 fans below the per game mark seen in the NBA in 2016-17. I've never been overseas to playBut 90% of the league goes overseas. It felt like records were set on an almost weekly basis. They are often separated from their families and have to deal with the instability of uprooting their lives multiple times a year. Instead, she has a very reasonable argument for why the players deserve more: Kelsey Plum was a guest on The Residency Pod where she laid out an obvious and easily fixable discrepancy between the NBA and WNBA. What if non-player. A post shared by Kelsey Plum (@kelseyplum10). All rights reserved. Leagues and clubs are subject to what economists call "network externality," which means the value of something depends on how many consumers use it. The financial disparities between the leagues are undeniable, and these women arent asking for the same multimillion-dollar salaries their male counterparts make (though that would be nice). Which is kind of unbelievable, as WNBA All-Star point guard for the Dallas Wings, Skylar Diggins-Smith, put it recently: Before we even talk about base salary or anything like that, we dont even get paid the same percentage of the revenue that we bring in., Unfortunately, its not clear what the WNBAs exact revenue is, or individual teams, or their profits. In the 2018 All-Star Game, for example, 32 percent of the roster identified as gay. When Carlos Cordeiro, then president of the U.S. Soccer Federation, began speaking in front of City Hall, shouts drowned him out: At that time, U.S. Soccer was already battling the women's national team in court, after all 28 members sued their national federation in March 2019 for "purposeful gender discrimination." According to Summit Hoops, Fowles was paid $109,000 for all she did in 2017. I know this is a controversial statement because women are never supposed to ask for more than they have, lest they be ungrateful for whatever theyve been given thus far. Thats right: These professional athletes have second jobs. "Their attendance is. At peak popularity, marketability and leverage, they are also seeking more equitable spending on coaching. In the WNBA the range of salaries is $117K to $215K for the highest-paid players. "U.S. Soccer has purposefully withheld and obscured the revenues that it has received through similar marketing deals. Diggins-Smith also spoke about the sheer physical efforts of female basketball players. But they were actually paid just $27.7 million. The State . But a generation is still a generation. 1 pick in the WNBA draft in 2012. Jackson, whose husband and son are both NBA veterans, kept asking, "What motivates you?" Engelbert wrote those items down. When it comes to others opinions, I feel as though we get picked on enough, and not getting paid fairly makes it even worse. For example, according to World Bank data, in 2012, the value added per agricultural worker was $61,634 in the United States. And I dont want to lose the WNBA or miss out on seeing the best female basketball players playing in the league. It's not about the amount of effort or the quantity of inputs. Hart has played at such a high level that his $13 million player option should be declined without a second thought. Meanwhile, for the upcoming NBA season, the minimum salary of a professional NBA player is $838,464. "So we can build the business, and then when it's really good like the NBA is then we can get that money.". For decades, sports media figures have argued that interest drives coverage. The NBA commissioner complained publicly that the WNBA was losing more than $10 million a year, but that number said more about how the women's game was still small scale than about any significant damage to the bottom line of NBA teams. The ability to turn inputs into outputs is what economists call productivity. As fans, we deserve to see them playing at their highest level after a restful off-season. Maybe most important, while TV ratings were way up, promotion and marketing remained extremely limited. Whether youre toiling in a field in Bangladesh or shooting hoops in the USA, it is outputs, not inputs, that matter. The athletes did want a larger share of league revenues. Players who go overseas end up playing almost year-round, with little break for their bodies to recover. As one writer explained. The reasons people give for not watching the WNBA are plentiful and familiar. Jackson posted the phrase "language of investment" on her office wall. It's true players can substantially supplement their W income, which . Most major sites have now joined ESPN, which launched espnW in 2010, in allocating space to women's sports across multiple dedicated pages, particularly for basketball and soccer. Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items. Cass Anderson is the Editor-in-Chief of BroBible. By clicking Sign Up, you also agree to marketing emails from both Insider and Morning Brew; and you accept Insiders. Just maybe, however, that cycle is breaking at this moment, because women athletes are changing the terms of business in two of the world's biggest sports. But using league revenue, economics professor Dave Berri was recently able to calculate a significant gender wage gap in another respect. The league minimum for a player with two or fewer years of service is $41,202; for three or more years of . plenty of action," Cheryl Cooky of Purdue and Michael Messner and Michela Musto of USC wrote in a 2015 report that studied SportsCenter and local TV news broadcasts in Los Angeles.