tbf, Caitlin Clark is the only WNBA player that’s profitable, and she’s kinda limited salary wise by the fact that the women’s league in general is not profitable and heavily subsidised by the NBA.
People will bitch about how the men’s league gets paid so much in comparison, then proceed to not watch the women’s league…
If you want it to make money YOU need to support it 🫵
It's totally unfair to use Caitlin Clark as an example of the pay disparity as well. She's a rookie on a pay scale. Her salary is less than half the average wnba salary. What's really crazy to me is that the average salary is about 150k with only one woman making over 250k. For the salaries to be that flat seems odd compared to other pro sports but it's just a part of the W having less revenue. Athletes have very strong unions also.
I don't like watching basketball (love playing it, though), but oddly enough I know of more people that go to WNBA games than NBA games, which comes to think of it seems odd. Maybe the seats are a lot less expensive...
This is a great response. If you want to support them, great! Donate, volunteer, watch their games, whatever. For the rest of us, it's an entertainment product. I don't watch WNBA because I don't watch NBA, or any sports. But if you like basketball, yet draw the line at the players' genitals, that's weird.
I don't know how so many people are so devoid of understanding of something that is such an integral part if human civilisation the world over.
People find something they like. Let's say is basketball. They like playing the game and want to be better so like watching people better than them so they tend to watch the best. Then they also find out they like watching it for entertainment sake. But anyone that has ever watched kids play sport know watching lower quality sport rapidly decrease in entertainment value.
Why would you go actively out of your way to watch an inferior product?
There are so many amateur male athletes that are better than female athletes. But no one goes down to their local game and watch a load of randomers play sport.
People watch the top league usually the club and the international if that sport is international. Then they will watch not their favourite team but other teams to get a better idea of the league. Then they will watch the feeder youth league if they want to. Then other countries leagues or lower leagues. All of these link together and all of them will be a better level than top women's league.
Usually at the point you run out of time to watch any more or you just like sport in general and go watch the top tier of another sport.
There needs to be a reason to watch and the only reason I have found to watch women's sport was to watch the UFC because that's a player on player sport not achieving something. But the women have a lot less power and a lot more flexibility so the strategy is entirely different and sport looks different. In that sense in that entertainment value men can't achieve that, in all other sports men seem to do what women do but better.
I would think that the kind of people who watch NBA, would want to watch the WNBA.
It's the same concepts, but with women. I would think the mostly straight/male sports audience would want to watch their favorite sport where the players are also the gender they like to stare at.
Have you ever seen a WNBA game? Sure, it's the same sport but that logic applies to middle school basketball teams as well and no one gives a shit about those either regardless of the gender of the athletes involved.
The reason professional sports are fun to watch is you get to see the best athletes in the world push the limits of what is physically possible for a human to achieve. Top level women cannot compete with top level men in any regularly televised sport, including basketball. No one wants to watch Caitlin Clark on channel 3 when LeBron James is doing way more impressive things on channel 6. That's just the way it is. I don't get why people pretend that isn't obvious and get offended by it.
They should allow light gymnastics in the WNBA to even up the entertainment value. A series of backflips down the court before hitting nothing but net on a 3 would sure get my attention.
This has always been my stance, Women make up approximately 50% of the population and the WNBA generates 2% of the revenue that the NBA does...
My wife and her friends go to some restaraunt once a month and they buy brand name workout clothes. Go to a game, buy a jersey, take your daughter and make it a thing.
So basically, "gender pay-gaps are fine, because the value of a woman is decided by the free market."? Fuck that capitalist drivel...
Tear down the entire sexist gender-segregated professional sports industry for illegal/unconstitutional gender discrimination and require professional for-profit sports be co-ed like every other industry in this country is mandated to be.
The fact that the NBA doesn't admit women should be grounds for dissolving the NBA as an illegal organization. The fact that the NBA and WNBA operate in-tandem while maintaining such an egregious gender pay-gap is proof of a conspiracy to discriminate against women.
Fuck the centuries of sexist tradition around sports. Just because it's the way things have been, doesn't mean it's the way it ought to be. I'm sick and tired of the sexism and sexist apologia. If you think women deserve less, I don't care what your excuse is, especially if your excuse is "the free market". smh...
The fact that the NBA doesn't admit women should be grounds for dissolving the NBA as an illegal organization
The NBA, like most pro sports leagues, has no rule preventing women from trying out. They're already co-ed. The NBA doesn't admit women because they don't beat men in try-outs.
That last sentence is a bit misleading, women aren't trying out for the NBA left and right. There also is a massive cultural barrier there, some of the best wnba players could likely play in the NBA and yet it hasn't happened. I think someone would have to be willing to sacrifice their wnba career to try it out. If the person that does this isn't built physically for it, it could paint a negative perception for years to come. Thus far it's just been easier to keep separate. I do think we will see women start to enter sports dominated by men in the coming years though.
"Some of the best players in the wnba could likely play in the NBA..."
As an avid NBA fan (occasionally watch wnba) this is absolutely not true. Golf, Nascar, Tennis, yeah. It's more likely to happen in the NFL than it is in the NBA though, because specialists positions like kicker. The NBA, players are required to play both offense and defense. For a woman to have both the pure athleticism to be competitive with the best 500 male basketball players in the world? Not an impossibility but she'd still likely be bench depth and seen as a pr motivated move. That level of nba player gets paid, maybe, 3x the top paid WNBA player but it's give and take with potential endorsements etc.
If people don’t watch, then there’s fundamentally no money to be given to the players. If you want money to be given to the player, you need to watch.
That’s how it works for women’s sports, and that’s how it works for men’s sports as well.
Pay for all athletes is dictated by the viewership they bring in, not their performance. WNBA players actually make disproportionately more relative to viewership.
You honestly talk like someone who’s never watched a sport in their life.
In Brazil, is even more common now to people gather to watch the women football national team, not at the level of the men one, but there's even companies where they close up when any of the two teams play, to give people opportunity to see the game.
They built a gender segregated system where all of the marketing and airtime goes to the men's side. It's an industry where women get less than 1% of the pay that the men did for the same job.
This system is so deeply ingrained, it is a fundamental part of our higher education system, where it benefits men 100x more than women.
But it's my fault for not watching?
The corporate overlords thank you for redirecting the blame away from them.
You do know that professional sports is considered part of the entertainment industry, right? This is like you insisting that Margot Robbie and Christian Slater should be paid the same because they do the same job.
There is no rule stopping women from joining the NBA. It's just that no woman currently is able to compete at the highest level when men are included; the whole point of the WNBA is that, without it, there are no professional women in the sport.
In other words, it's not the same job: one is an NBA player, the other a WNBA player. The WNBA exists precisely because women can't do "the same job" but there is a market for watching women do the job. It's just not as big as the market for people playing at the highest level of competition.
The reality is that if the market were bigger, they'd make more money. Help make the market bigger. Be the change you want to see in the world.