The WNBA has been demanding justice for Black lives. Why hasn't anyone These deals have been great for teams -- and for MLS; its expansion fee has rocketed to $325 million. The money isnt there. Listen. OUR SERVICES. In 2015, the WNBA averaged 202,000 viewers on ESPN and ESPN2. But there's no clear business reason for FIFA to keep acting like the Women's World Cup is worth less than 10% of the men's game. Dallas Wings point guard Skylar Diggins-Smith recently told Wealthsimple that she wanted to be paid like a man. 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. According to Summit Hoops, Fowles was paid $109,000 for all she did in 2017. In the WNBA the range of salaries is $117K to $215K for the highest-paid players. This means the average NBA player makes 41 times what the average WNBA player makes. This is something that the 150-ish WNBA players have been fighting to change for quite some time. She is the second-highest-paid player on the team just behind Aja Wilson who earns $202,155. Meanwhile, over the same span, women's coach Jill Ellis, winner of back-to-back World Cups, earned $390,409.) Sign up for notifications from Insider! This per game mark is more than 10,000 fans below the per game mark seen in the NBA in 2016-17. Why Are WNBA Players Vastly Underpaid? - Genfluencer Women represent 44 percent of NFL fans, while 28 percent of women say they follow pro baseball, and 29 percent report that they follow the NBA. Kevin Durant doesnt produce more basketball per hour worked than Breanna Stewart, the Seattle Storm forward who claimed the WNBA MVP award in just her third season. All they want is better pay equity. The Russian media isnt being particularly forthcoming with information about her detainment, but as of March 8, shes still in Russia. 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. They shouldnt have to work so hard for so little. As Phoenix Mercurys Brittney Griner, earlier this year, I do believe we should get paid more in the WNBA before players decide to only play overseas and rest our bodies during the summer., Last year, Minnesota Lynxs Seimone Augustus. WNBA Journey to Equal Pay - Civic Issues - sites.psu.edu 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. The WNBA -- Or The NBA -- Should Pay Its Players More - Forbes Silver was ready to hear about investment and commitment and even empowerment. Copyright 2008-2023 BroBible. 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. 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. Her teamthe Minnesota Lynxalso finished with the best record in the WNBA. After pushing their bodies to the limit in their regular season and in an equally demanding World Cup, a whole lot of WNBA players will be spending a significant chunk of their year overseas playing on professional teams and in leagues in order to supplement their WNBA income. The athletes did want a larger share of league revenues. In 2023, the highest average WNBA salary is held by Aces guard Jackie Young as she makes $252,450 per year, according to Spotrac. Why increasing WNBA player salaries is more complex than you think Of course, the NBA rakes in far more revenue. If they wanted to, they could cut salaries of the owners most of whom are billionaires and redistribute that money to WNBA players. On the other hand, some others pay. The WNBA is a great product but yall should not have to do to these crap countries to make money, Barkley said. Plenty of signs indicate that will happen, and it should. The base salary for WNBA rookies varies on when (or if) players were selected in the WNBA Draft. , WNBA players make $75,000 a year in the league, with only a few players earning as much as $113,000. They want more open accounting and less obeisance to FIFA. For some players, the math just doesn't make sense when they're trying to . wells city council election results 2022. ford city mall shooting today. The league confirmed that all WNBA players other than Griner are out of Russia and Ukraine. 'Bet on me': Griner seems like old self in first interview since detainment, Serena announces she's pregnant with 2nd child, Healthy Delle Donne excited for Mystics' season, Griner: 1st practice 'everything I wanted it to be', Alcaraz, Swiatek cruise into Madrid round of 16, Hannah Green wins LPGA at Wilshire in a playoff, Halep questions long delay for doping hearing, Suns, Mercury cut cable, moving to new TV setup, How Hailey Van Lith's transfer impacts NCAA champion LSU. As important as the equal pay lawsuit is for the players who are seeking back pay and damages, it's essentially about the past. SPORTS ILLUSTRATED is a registered trademark of ABG-SI LLC. "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 post shared by Kelsey Plum (@kelseyplum10). Many. It has lost the support of the men's national team, which has accused U.S. Soccer of "working very hard to sell a false narrative" and called for a sharp increase in women's compensation. This was a stellar season, where the final eight teams that made the playoffs werent determined until the last few games. To grow the WNBA, he and the owners were prepared to, as he put it, "double down." But once two sides establish good faith in a negotiation, both can see spending -- or sacrifice -- as an investment. Yes, the flights may have given the New York Liberty an unfair advantage in games, but how do you not look at this situation and realize that the issue isnt the team thats chartering the flight, but rather the collective bargaining agreement that does not allow charter flights for the WNBA while private planes are the norm for the NBA? 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. Clearly, the WNBA still needs to work on establishing its long-term viability, and some might argue that the players shouldnt request raises until the league has become more financially stable. These women should be paid more. Why do WNBA athletes compete overseas? - NBC News On May 1, a federal judge sided with U.S. Soccer on most of the key issues at stake in the lawsuit. "I think they're going to all drag the federation along, hopefully to a place where there's equal pay and beyond.". The most common explanation about why players go overseas in the first place is often distilled to three words: to get rich. 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. 63). Last month, Russian authorities arrested WNBA star Brittney Griner at the Moscow airport after they found cannabis vape cartridges in her luggage. For instance, NBA teams took in a total of $8.8 billion this year, according to Forbes. 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. That includes outlays by committed owners with deep pockets, rather than the unstable financing that has so often plagued franchises in women's sports. BroBible is the #1 place on the internet for the very best content from the worlds of sports, culture, gear, high tech, and more. Pay is so low that it has compelled most American athletes to play overseas as well as in the WNBA just to make a living, increasing their wear and tear and their injury risk. A WNBA spokesperson reached out to HuffPost after this op-ed was published, however, and said the WNBA has lost significant money every year and has shared its financials with the Players Association. ", "And then it's like a 15-year-old boy," she added. Griner's current yearly salary in the WNBA is $227,900, which is just about a fourth of what she made in Russia this winter, and there are only three players in the WNBA who make more than Griner by $194. Yet as WNBA players came to a crossroads in 2018, nobody told their union leaders to demand million-dollar salaries. Barkley reiterated his feelings by expressing how he doesnt get how some NBA players earn more sponsorship deals than superstar WNBA players. All rights reserved. Its so much wear and tear. 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. U.S. Soccer is at a crossroads: Whatever happens with the equal pay lawsuit, the USSF has to negotiate a new collective bargaining agreement with the women's national team by the end of next year, and its long-term relationship with the National Women's Soccer League is up in the air. For all this, Fowles was named league MVP. Diana . 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. Beyond money, a sport needs time to grow into its potential audience. Or for the USSF to follow FIFA's lead in allocating prize money. (These numbers include gate receipts but not sponsorship or broadcast-rights money, which account for about half of all USSF revenue but which the federation does not report separately for the MNT and WNT.) In 2023, veteran players who report late to their WNBA team's training camp because of overseas commitments will be fined one percent of their salary for each day missed and could be suspended. 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. 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. "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.". 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. 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. 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. Pay WNBA Players What They Deserve | HuffPost Opinion Archive So it doesn't seem the WNBA players are unreasonable to expect to be paid at least 50% of the league's revenue. One might argue that male players produce more points. Any sport needs three kinds of support to grow into a large-scale, sustainable business. Economy, Not Misogyny, Drives Unequal Pay in Sports Now, as the league begins a 25th season of soldiering on in the face of those tired arguments, perhaps the time has. We had incredibly thrilling semifinals series that went a full five games apiece. 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. John Phelan is an economist at the Center of the American Experiment and fellow of The Cobden Centre. And we need access to better stadiums, facilities and everything that makes a better entertainment product.". 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. ", FIFA has a notoriously checkered past with women athletes. Can you guess in which season they rested Diana Taurasi and earned the league's No. Kelsey Plum currently makes $200,000/year as a point guard for the Las Vegas Aces. Why WNBA players are not paid as much as NBA players? Male vs Female Professional Sports Salary Comparison The NFL was the same age in 1943, a year when it fielded only eight teams, including the Brooklyn Dodgers, and averaged a third of its 2019 per-game attendance. But, in comparison, the highest-paid NBA star is Warriors guard Steph Curry, who will earn $48,070,014 this season. Nows a good time for players to advocate for themselves because the product in the WNBA has never been better. It felt like, According to the WNBA, this was most-watched regular season since 2014, with viewership across ESPN networks and NBA TV up by 31 percent. They could, for example, have tighter shorts." Last week, this exciting season of the WNBA ended after the Seattle Storm swept the Washington Mystics to win their third championship. Why WNBA Stars Make (Way) Less Than NBA Backupsand Why That's Okay Sue Bird: 'I Don't Think We Should Get the Same Money As NBA Players' 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. So female basketball players work just as hard as male basketball players, yet even the best WNBA players are paid much less than the mediocre and below average NBA ones. So what's really at stake? Charles Barkley on WNBA Stars: 'Y'all Should Not Have to Go to These As an example, the Global Sports Salary Survey (GSSS), produced by the U.K.-based research firm Sporting Intelligence, counted 137,021 men who played professional soccer in the world in 2017 and just 1,287 women -- a ratio of 106 to 1. Union president Ogwumike announced the move in an essay for The Players' Tribune titled "Bet on Women.". And while companies have shown more interest in backing female athletes recently, men's leagues and teams still captured 93% of the $31 billion that corporations around the globe spent on sports last year, according to a November 2019 report by the German research firm Statista. But the risk also offered reward: 15 million Americans self-identify as LGBTQ, and they represent a market segment worth around $830 million. "We have to consider why the revenue is different, what bias and discrimination are in play," says Lindsay Kagawa Colas, senior vice president for women's sports at Wasserman, whose clients include a bevy of the WNBA's biggest stars, such as Diana Taurasi and Maya Moore, as well as gymnast Katelyn Ohashi and swimmer Simone Manuel. 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 true players can substantially supplement their W income, which . Meanwhile, for the upcoming NBA season, the minimum salary of a professional NBA player is $838,464. WNBA players arent asking to be paid on par with their NBA counterparts. 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. But on a fundamental economic level, it is wrong, and the disparities we see between athletes salaries illustrate why. Major sponsors, including Coca-Cola and Procter & Gamble, released statements supporting the athletes. Until recently, it seemed that, at least from a business perspective, FIFA pursued that strategy because the money it brought in from the men's tournament dwarfed that from the women's game. From 2011 to 2015, the Phoenix Mercury went 19-15, 7-27, 19-15, 29-5 and 20-14. Viewing stories about men's sports was like "watching that classic 1960s Batman TV show (Bam! The WNBA has also been eager to experiment with social media and new streaming platforms to connect with fans. It would seriously impair our ability to support our mission and invest in these other critical developmental areas.". "None of which is laudable," the GSSS report says, "but it makes 1% of professional footballers look more pitiful still.