Caitlin Clark's reward for a record-smashing NCAA career: A $76,000 WNBA salary
Caitlin Clark's reward for a record-smashing NCAA career: A $76,000 WNBA salary
As women's pro basketball soars in popularity, player compensation lags.
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I always find the forced interest in women sport weird.
There are men that train and work just as hard as professional women and don't get paid for it. We don't owe them anything just because they play a game and you can't even say it's because amateur men aren't as good because amateur men are better than professional women.
The fact there is money there at all is because of entertainment and entertainment alone and I don't like being told I need to enjoy any type of entertainment.
If I do watch a sport I'm going to want to watch the most entertaining version of that sport which will be the top mens league. If I want to watch more sport I'll watch other mens leagues around the world. If i want to wathc more then the youth teams are good because you ca follow people up through the ranks. If I really want to watch more sport I'll go support my local club which is probably still higher quality than the women's game.
The way I see it is you can either watch a oscar winning movie or you can watch some b rated poor quality movie. Watching either is fine, enjoying either is fine. But don't act like a b movie needs to make the same at box office just because a women made it.
Forced interest? Again, the recent game was the most watched basketball game in ESPN history. There’s no forced interest. The women just want the same share of revenues that men get
The NCAA isn't paying her professional salary, the WNBA is. Yearly revenue of the WNBA is $60 million. The NBA is $10 BILLION. Average viewership for WNBA games about 400,000 people; NBA is 12.4 million.
The highest NBA rookie contract is 12 Million/year. That is .0012% of NBA revenue.
76K/year is .00126% of WNBA revenue. Technically she's getting a bigger percentage of WNBA revenue than Wembamyama is of the NBA's.
It's like complaining that the Canadian Football League players aren't being paid as much as NFL players.
Average NBA viewership is 1/10th of your claim. Forgive me for doubting your argument.
Estimated 2023 revenue for WNBA = $200 million. Your entire argument is predicated on inaccurate data. WNBA revenue doubled YOY, while player pay remained the same. But if you are all for our corporate overlords keeping our money, you do you. It’s fine to be a conservative ig. Just odd that Lemmy keeps putting forth these right wing arguments about revenue when the population tends to support fair pay for workers in other domains.
Viewership was for finals games, since that was the most equivalent for what you're talking about. And I was using 2022 statistics, since we still don't know official revenue numbers for FY23.
I don't think the WNBA opting out of the CBA was great for the WNBA players, but this has nothing to do with politics. The point is that viewership for the WNBA is a fraction of the NBA and the WNBA has never turned a profit in its entire history. It is entirely subsidized by the "corporate overlords" of the men's game.
The fundamental problem is that far more people will complain about WNBA player contracts and/or discuss the gender politics around the game, like you are doing, then, you know, actually watch the WNBA.
Why not unbundle the subsidization of the WNBA from the NBA revenues? That would give a better picture of the solvency of the WNBA as a business. Professional sports aren't social programs, as you note; they're corporate business endeavors. With that considered, being unprofitable for 25 years puts the WNBA in a difficult situation.