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Charles Barkley appeared on The Bird and Taurasi Show during the 2023 womens national title game on Sunday and didnt hold back his thoughts on what WNBA players go through in comparison to other sports leagues. And it's not just the rookies. 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 . And when LeBron James steps onto the court, it generates far more revenue for the Heat, Cavaliers, or Lakers than it does for the Lynx when Maya Moore does so. This is about more than pay; it's about recognition for their hard work as athletes. 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. ESPN, for instance, dedicated more than 16,000 hours across all its platforms and partners to the programming of women's sporting events last year, up from 7,500 in 2015 and just 1,500 in 2010. Last week, this exciting season of the WNBA ended after the Seattle Storm swept the Washington Mystics to win their third championship. Just as the Bangladeshis arent poor because they are lazy, Americans arent rich because of hard work. Looking ahead, the women's national team also has a collective bargaining agreement with U.S. Soccer that expires at the end of 2021. These women should be paid more. But in 2007, a furniture-store owner named Hilton Koch bought the club for $10 million, then couldn't pay its bills, and the team was disbanded the following year.) It's true players can substantially supplement their W income, which . That's the other kind of equity: ownership. Pay disparity between NBA, WNBA is a numbers game 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. A post shared by Kelsey Plum (@kelseyplum10). "Every time FIFA bundles broadcast rights, it ascribes no value to the Women's World Cup," Roux says. Do you really compare yourself to the NBA?' Essentially, the women and men all around the table decided to partner in growing their game. WNBA players arent asking to be paid on par with their NBA counterparts. From the point of view of the team owners, the measure of output that matters is the revenue the players generate. Meanwhile, WNBA revenues were probably around $70 million, estimates David Berri, a professor of economics at Southern Utah University and author of numerous studies about women's sports. 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. Draymond Green explains why NBA players make more than their WNBA Last year, the average WNBA salary was US$71,635, and this year appears to be closer to $75,000. Now, comparing the finances of the U.S women's and men's national soccer teams is complicated. The NBA's collective bargaining agreement indicates the players must receive about 50% of the league's basketball-related income. Cordeiro resigned three days later, and the federation switched lawyers within a week. "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.". This season, the maximum veteran salary is $115,500, not including potential bonuses. This year, all of the major professional sports leagues had a presence. 1-4 in the 2022 WNBA Draft, the base salary is expected to be $72,141 in year one. But the league has agreed to prepare and promote players for coaching and other jobs in the offseason. Whether youre toiling in a field in Bangladesh or shooting hoops in the USA, it is outputs, not inputs, that matter. Should the WNBA Be Paid Like NBA Players? - Medium Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items. It took the NBA 72 years to get to where the league is today, while the WNBA is only in its 21st season. Sydney Miller is a senior psychology major. Taylor remains the backup, but maybe for one just one more season, as this is the last . In 2017, ESPN stayed with a WCWS game that went to extra innings instead of switching to a previously scheduled MLB broadcast. The new CBA raises the WNBA salary cap by 30% and boosts maximum annual salaries from $117,500 to $215,000. "I believed," he said, "the WNT was much more likely to qualify for and succeed in their tournament than the MNT was.". As David Berri wrote for Forbes recently. Maybe most important, while TV ratings were way up, promotion and marketing remained extremely limited. 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. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. The State . In the WNBA the range of salaries is $117K to $215K for the highest-paid players. "The good news is that folks outside the federation, from sponsors to broadcasters to partners, are incredibly bullish on the U.S. women's national team and on women's football," Levinson says. He also found that the WNT made more money than the men's team from 2015 to 2019. As one writer explained. Those are honorable reasons to stick with the WNBA, but players shouldnt have to choose between these personal anchors to the league and their need to make a living. If the WNBA doesnt figure this out, players are going to opt out of the league. So not only are the players taking home 30% less than their NBA counterparts its 20% of a much smaller pie. Piece together all of these revelations about how the highest level of women's soccer has been functioning and you'll notice a new horizon is looming for the sport. The ability to turn inputs into outputs is what economists call productivity. Reach them at [email protected]. Not to discredit any work that they've put in, but you have women playing year-round basketball going overseas to have more opportunities for higher wages. Yet nobody is suggesting that Ogwumike ought to be paid $27 million a year -- not even the WNBA athletes who have been fighting the longest for better wages. Beyond anticipating the savings from that huge gulf, Gulati had a second simple reason for paying men and women differently: U.S. Soccer replicates the compensation practices of FIFA, the organization that is by far the biggest driver of unequal pay in global soccer. Or for the USSF to follow FIFA's lead in allocating prize money. 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. without needing to get a second job to pay the bills. Playing overseas in Europe, Asia, or Australia can often pay substantially more than playing in the United States. (Including the very greatest: From 1997 to 2000, the Houston Comets won four straight WNBA championships with a core of Cynthia Cooper, Sheryl Swoopes and Tina Thompson, all top-shelf Hall of Famers. Jackson posted the phrase "language of investment" on her office wall. 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 . And yet, they do it, in large part, for the financial security it provides. 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. Demanding that female players be paid what they deserve is not about comparing the WNBA to the NBA as apples-to-apples salaries. Sabreena is an alum of Duke University, where she wrote for the . As important as the equal pay lawsuit is for the players who are seeking back pay and damages, it's essentially about the past. 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. Essentially, the women want to partner in growing their game. In the WNBA the range of salaries is $117K to $215K for the highest-paid players. If the NBA wanted to pay WNBA players more, they could. 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). In a way, this strategy makes perfect sense. Finally, sports need media to reach their full potential. The money isnt there. Why Is The Michael Jordan Of The WNBA Paid Less Than Adonis - Forbes According to Summit Hoops, Fowles was paid $109,000 for all she did in 2017. "I say this totally real I don't think we should get the same money as NBA players," Bird said. The U.S.-Netherlands final reached an average live audience of 82.2 million, up 56%. "We're just like 'Could I get the same media coverage, and the corporate sponsor looks, and things like that?'" The WNBA players clearly are not getting that much. Copyright 2008-2023 BroBible. That risk/reward ratio, combined with restricted-free-agency rules, has created more incentive to tank for teams in the WNBA than for those in any other major sport. 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. "So we can build the business, and then when it's really good like the NBA is, then we can get that money," Bird said. A small number of women players are truly dominant at the college level, which makes the first few picks in the WNBA draft extremely valuable. The U.S. womens national soccer team has been fighting for equal pay since 2016, and spring training for Major League Baseball is delayed due to issues surrounding the collective bargaining agreement between players and owners. 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. Stay up to date with what you want to know. They're looking for better training and travel budgets. And shes not alone playing in European and Asian leagues in the offseason is extremely common among WNBA players. "Have investments been equal? According to Forbes magazine, the NBA generated . Sometimes, it is pretty easy to see why vast amounts of effort generate little output and, hence, low incomes. In actuality, the WNBA's all-time assists leader said she believes that calls for equality between men's and women's professional basketball are less about exorbitant salaries than about equal investment and exposure for the WNBA. Now, Team USA is in Spain, about to play in the. She is the second-highest-paid player on the team just behind Aja Wilson who earns $202,155. But that gap has virtually disappeared since the women's team won the 2015 World Cup and then maintained its global supremacy: The women's team has brought in $63.4 million since 2016, compared with $66.3 million for the men, according to U.S. Soccer's most recent financial statements. Ertz in, Swanson out: Who will make USWNT's World Cup team after big shake-ups? And that's led to more viewers (Women's College World Series ratings have increased by nearly 40% since 2000), more revenues (up 360% from 2003 to 2016) and, in turn, more broadcasts (more than 1,600 games, including all of the playoffs, were scheduled for this season before the pandemic struck). The WNBA is a great product but yall should not have to do to these crap countries to make money, Barkley said. The players wanted a viable league where they could build careers, not just part-time jobs. Meanwhile, the U.S. women want more than a new pay structure. While the NBA pays its players roughly 50 percent of the total, the WNBA players are making less than 25 percent of league revenue. Thats right: These professional athletes have second jobs. In 2014, ESPN paid the WNBA $17 million for broadcast rights. Many of the women dont get lucrative endorsements, and getting into broadcasting or some other sports-adjacent field once they retire is not guaranteed. Basically, they want a fair share of the total revenue of the WNBA. WNBA draft is Monday, but a lot of best players aren't in a rush All they want is better pay equity. As for the players, well, they deserve to be able to play the game they love (that theyre good at!) 1 draft choice, and in which they won the WNBA championship with Brittney Griner, whom they selected with that pick? I've never been overseas to playBut 90% of the league goes overseas. NBC and its fleet of cable channels showed a record 631.5 hours of the 2018 Winter Olympics -- and for the first time ever, a majority of prime-time airtime was devoted to women's sports, according to research by Andrew Billings of the University of Alabama and James Angelini of the University of Delaware. That's one kind of equity: equality. But a generation is still a generation. By clicking Sign Up, you also agree to marketing emails from both Insider and Morning Brew; and you accept Insiders. 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. That's the chain reaction of network externalities. The two sides channeled that willingness into the areas Engelbert and the league's negotiators discussed with Jackson, Ogwumike and the players, and reached an eight-year agreement in January. "It centers contracts around the men's World Cup and uses TV coverage of women's games as a dry run for the men.". That's a stable wage until you take note of the NBA, where the average player makes approximately 7.5 million dollars annually. 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. Investment includes public money too, usually in the form of taxpayer-financed stadiums. Also a six-time All-Star, she had a nearly identical 0.248 win shares per 48 minutes in 2019. As totals, these numbers are considerably smaller than for the men's game, but they are also generally growing much faster. Putting together all of the factors that affect league revenues -- investment, time and media -- it's apparent that most women's sports have struggled for years with what the Statista report calls a vicious cycle, which reverses the pattern that college softball has experienced. 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. Women's professional soccer was actually banned in Germany until 1970, England until 1971 and Brazil until 1979; the NWSL, its latest and longest-lived incarnation in the U.S., has now been playing for seven years. "I think they're going to all drag the federation along, hopefully to a place where there's equal pay and beyond.". These short-term issues could blow up U.S. Soccer's priorities, and new labor negotiations are an even bigger threat. Pow!) Please, enable JavaScript and reload the page to enjoy our modern features. But suddenly the USSF has a new president in Parlow Cone and a new CEO in William Wilson, formerly an executive at Wasserman and MLS. We put bad NBA players in commercials before some of yall superstars. jsemu2 gba emulator. "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. The raw numbers make it easy to assume that women make less money simply because fans prefer men's games -- that pay follows revenues, and revenues follow popularity. 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. "If that's the case, then we should talk," Silver agreed. But because the WNBA has a strict salary cap that . Which, again, Kelsey Plum isnt arguing for NBA salaries she just believes the league should pay out 50% of shared revenue the same as the NBA does. But WNBA players only take less than 25 percent of the total earnings of their league. 2023 ABG-SI LLC. She believes the athletes deserve more money. For some players, the math just doesn't make sense when they're trying to . Meanwhile, Leandro Barbosa is scheduled to earn $500,000 from the Phoenix Suns in 2017-18. For instance, NBC Sports had pages for horse racing and the National Dog Show, but not for the WNBA or NWSL. Whichever it is, the answer is not for WNBA teams simply to start paying their players as much as the NBA does theirs. Enes Kanter: WNBA Players Deserve Equality | Time U.S. Soccer's lobbyists even used it to argue that the American women's national team is paid fairly, simply because there's so much less available to pay them. He covers an array of topics including NFL, Pop Culture, Fishing News, and the Outdoors. Much more than ever before, the women who become professionals are now building the public support, partnerships and organizations they need to get paid what they are fully worth. It's when the number of people with them grows that the devices become valuable. TV viewership tells a similar story. WNT members wore their jerseys inside out in protest. Reward is not a function of inputs such as work or effort; it is a function of the outputs, the product. As just one brutal example, 2018 league MVP Breanna Stewart ruptured her right Achilles tendon in April 2019 while playing for Dynamo Kursk in the EuroLeague women's championship. Meanwhile, for the upcoming NBA season, the minimum salary of a professional NBA player is $838,464. Of course, a bump to 50 percent of WNBA league revenue isnt realistic, because theres a difference between revenue and profit. SPORTS ILLUSTRATED is a registered trademark of ABG-SI LLC. The WNBA has also been eager to experiment with social media and new streaming platforms to connect with fans. The rate continues to go up this season, as shown by . 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. Refresh the page, check Medium 's. Its true that the WNBA generates about $60 million in revenue per year, while the NBA generates $7.92 billion. Iowa's transfer portal options? Van Lith to LSU?: Women's college Of 199 countries for which the World Bank has GDP data for, in 2012 Bangladesh ranked 175th. In 2021, Tacoma and Louisville are scheduled to open the first soccer-specific stadiums with National Women's Soccer League clubs as their highest-level tenants. This year, the WNBA gave companies the opportunity to sponsor a second jersey patch, while offering sponsors the chance to include a logo on the court during games that dont air on ESPN. THE CHANTS BEGAN almost as soon as the U.S. women's soccer team won the World Cup last July. Of course, the NBA rakes in far more revenue. 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. The case for boosting WNBA player salaries - The Conversation Low investment and media coverage have led to limited viewership, rights deals and sponsorships, which leads to low pay, which hampers the development of new talent and initiatives, which leads to low investment and media coverage. According to a 2012 report in The Lancet, Bangladesh has the most physically active population in the world. OPINION: WNBA players deserve fairer pay | Opinion | dailynebraskan.com You have permission to edit this article. But the truth is more complicated, because a league's financial data also embeds its history, opportunities and labor relations. The WNBAs current collective bargaining agreement wont 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 year, which barely keeps pace with inflation at its current rate. The WNBA -- Or The NBA -- Should Pay Its Players More - Forbes "So we can build the business, and then when it's really good like the NBA is then we can get that money.". Meanwhile, over the same span, women's coach Jill Ellis, winner of back-to-back World Cups, earned $390,409.) Last year, Delanie Gourley, a star pitcher in National Pro Fastpitch softball, disclosed that she makes less than a Yankees bat boy. players had reached out to the American soccer . * Mina Kimes talks with two-time World Cup and Olympic soccer champion Julie Foudy for a candid, inside look at the battle over fair pay for female players. Matches across the 2019 Women's World Cup, for example, had an average live viewership of 17.3 million people, a whopping 106% more than the 2015 WWC. | by Yannick Ondoa | Medium Write Sign up Sign In 500 Apologies, but something went wrong on our end. In 2009, the WNBA decided to include sponsor logos on their jerseys. 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. Jackson met with Engelbert even before her hiring was official and told her the players were concerned about salary and compensation, player experience, and health and wellness. "No one should expect any women's sports league to have the following we see in men's professional sports today," Berri says. , in large part, for the financial security it provides. Dallas Wings point guard Skylar Diggins-Smith recently told Wealthsimple that she wanted to be paid like a man. 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). 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. For instance, 994 million people watched at least one minute of the 2019 Women's World Cup on linear television, a 30% increase from 2015, while 3.26 billion watched a minute or more of the men's World Cup in 2018, up just 2% from four years earlier. What part of fining the New York Liberty $500,000 for taking charter flights to games is politically correct? The league confirmed that all WNBA players other than Griner are out of Russia and Ukraine. Diana . They should fight for it because theyve earned it. But that is still a pittance. In the same way, if you're the only fan you know of a new sports team, your experience will be extremely limited. We had incredibly thrilling semifinals series that went a full five games apiece. 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. So did Major League Soccer commissioner Don Garber. Currently, the NBA pays its players 50 percent of its total revenue. Note: This piece has been updated with a response from the WNBA indicating that the league does share its financials with the players union. For instance, NBA teams took in a total of $8.8 billion this year, according to Forbes. A Breakdown Of The Gender Pay Gap In The WNBA And NBA - Yahoo News From 1990 to 2012, for instance, MLB, NBA, NFL and NHL teams got a mammoth $17 billion in public funds for new homes, according to research by economists Robert Baade and Victor Matheson. 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. I personally love watching the WNBA because these women are extremely talented shooters, ball handlers and passers and I find the teamwork displayed by WNBA teams to be something that the NBA could take a lesson or two from. 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. Last season, Ogwumike earned $115,000. 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. 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.