New York
CNN
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Caitlin Clark, who grew to become the main scorer in NCAA basketball historical past and the primary decide within the WNBA draft this week, will make a $76,535 wage this 12 months. The highest NBA decide will make $10.5 million.
Clark’s wage in comparison with prime Nationwide Basketball Affiliation gamers is drawing consideration to Ladies’s Nationwide Basketball Affiliation gamers’ pay and the usually large gender hole in skilled sports activities salaries. The very best-paid WNBA participant made a $242,000 wage, whereas the league minimal wage within the NBA is over a million dollars in 2023.
Clark, who dominated on the College of Iowa, in addition to different school stars who’ve turned professional like Louisiana State College’s Angel Reese, lifted ladies’s school basketball to heights it’s by no means seen earlier than. Clark helped entice record-breaking TV audiences and sellout crowds in arenas across the nation in her remaining collegiate season.
However Clark shouldn’t be merely the primary decide within the draft. She is so fashionable that a ticket to her Final Four game in the NCAA tournament this 12 months value greater than a ticket for a males’s Remaining 4 recreation. The 22-year-old is the all-time scoring leader in men’s and women’s NCAA Division I history.
The WNBA’s stars aren’t asking to be paid an equal greenback quantity to NBA gamers, nevertheless. Not proper now, anyway. They acknowledge the truth of being in a league with a smaller pool of income to go round, and one that may be a lot youthful — with out 50 previous years of contract negotiations and the next hard-won employee protections and salaries that include that longevity.
What they need is extra a problem of equity, they are saying.
“W gamers need to be invested in, correctly valued and pretty paid like different professionals,” Terri Jackson, head of the WNBA Gamers’ Affiliation, the union representing the gamers, instructed CNN.
Ladies obtain round 10% of the WNBA’s total income, whereas the NBA collective bargaining settlement offers gamers 50% of income, mentioned David Berri, a professor of economics at Southern Utah College and writer of an upcoming guide on ladies and sports activities.
“We’re not asking to receives a commission what the boys receives a commission. We’re asking to receives a commission the identical share of income shared,” Las Vegas Aces star Kelsey Plum mentioned in an interview in 2022.
Even the highest athletes within the WNBA generally threat hazard to play in abroad leagues — the place there is no such thing as a wage cap and gamers could make as much as double or triple their US wage — within the WNBA’s low season to complement their revenue.
The star heart for the Phoenix Mercury, Brittney Griner, was headed to Russia to play within the WNBA’s offseason in 2022 when she was wrongfully detained in Russia for 10 months. Griner was finally launched as a part of a prisoner alternate. (The WNBA says it has been investing to make sure that gamers keep stateside within the low season.)
Rookie salaries and participant contracts in each the NBA and WNBA are set by their respective leagues’ collective bargaining agreements with their gamers’ union. The agreements embody an annual wage cap for groups — $136 million within the NBA and $1.5 million for the WNBA. However the NBA has what’s often called a “comfortable wage cap,” in that there are a number of exceptions that assist gamers usher in extra money. The WNBA, in distinction, has a tough wage cap, which means there are only a few exceptions.
A WNBA spokesperson mentioned that Clark stood to make greater than $500,000 in complete compensation, together with money from participant advertising and marketing agreements with the league and workforce offers.
However Jackson mentioned that together with compensation “blurred the traces” as a result of few gamers are eligible for these offers.
WNBA gamers have made progress on salaries since 2020, after they reached their newest collective bargaining settlement with the league. However the large hole is a results of the financial variations between the 2 leagues; years of underinvestment within the WNBA; and the shortage of bargaining energy ladies historically have had negotiating wage, advantages and different points like journey lodging with the league.
“If you speak about pay fairness, you’re speaking about sources, the extent of funding, what the strategic plan is, and the way intentional it’s to develop [the WNBA] in a sustainable means,” Jackson mentioned. “This can be a mannequin that has been under-resourced for thus lengthy.”
The NBA is 50 years older than the WNBA, has greater than double the variety of groups and video games in a season, and brings in $10 billion a 12 months in income, in comparison with a reported $200 million for the WNBA.
The WNBA has additionally been paid much less by broadcasters and advertisers compared to the NBA. The NBA’s nationwide media offers pay it $2.8 billion, whereas the WNBA is getting about $65 million this 12 months for its media rights.
“It’s not an apples to apples comparability. It comes all the way down to the place this league is in its enterprise cycle,” mentioned Alicia Jessop, an affiliate professor of sport administration at Pepperdine College.
As a result of it’s a smaller and youthful league, ladies’s gamers have had much less bargaining energy with workforce house owners over their pay than males.
Whereas NBA gamers obtain 50% of complete NBA income, the WNBA should hit a sure income threshold yearly earlier than any income sharing agreements kick in. This has held again ladies’s salaries.
“That’s a league selection. They don’t must do it that means,” David Berri mentioned. However the gamers have been caught.
“They’ll’t simply go off and create a brand new league with new groups. It takes a very long time to develop attachment to skilled sports activities groups.”
If the WNBA paid 50% of its income to gamers, prime gamers would earn greater than $3 million in wage, he mentioned.
The WNBA launched in 1997, spearheaded by longtime former NBA commissioner David Stern, who believed making a ladies’s league would develop the sport total.
However some critics say the NBA may have accomplished extra to learn the WNBA.
“The NBA is dangerous at negotiating for girls. The ladies find yourself being throw-ins to their offers,” mentioned Berri.
WNBA gamers need to see extra funding from the NBA, broadcasters and company companions into the league. The WNBA shouldn’t be an afterthought to the boys’s league, Jackson added.
WNBA participant salaries may rise in coming years as curiosity from followers and advertisers grows. The WNBA is coming off its most-watched common season in 21 years, and attendance at video games final season hit its highest degree in 13 years.
WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert just lately instructed CNN that subsequent few years of the WNBA will set the league up for the following 30-40 years.
The league plans to expand to 16 teams by 2028. It’s negotiating new media rights which are anticipated to usher in tens of millions of {dollars} of further income and elevated visibility for star gamers and groups. And the WNBA reportedly hopes to obtain as much as $100 million a season from broadcast companions in its new offers.
The gamers’ union is anticipated to choose out of its settlement on the finish of the 2025 season. With a brand new media rights settlement and a brand new collective bargaining settlement, salaries may go up and advantages increase — as they did after the gamers opted out of the final settlement in 2018.
“If we’ve video games which are doing 18 million viewers, all proper, let’s elevate issues up a little bit bit extra. Salaries will go up, advantages will go up,” Breanna Stewart of the New York Liberty and vp of the gamers’ union mentioned in a recent interview.