"So we can build the business, and then when it's really good like the NBA is then we can get that money.". They deserve to be able to play the game they love without needing to get a second job to pay the bills. In 2017, the league aired 20 games live on Twitter, while also offering a new fantasy game on the fantasy platform FanDuel. Opinion: Women athletes do not deserve equal pay | HS Insider Its true that the WNBA generates about $60 million in revenue per year, while the NBA generates $7.92 billion. Realizing that FIFA awards much bigger prizes in men's events, the federation gave greater incentives and rewards to the men's national team, hoping they would bring home more cash. 2023 ABG-SI LLC. OPINION: WNBA players deserve fairer pay | Opinion | dailynebraskan.com The U.S.-Netherlands final reached an average live audience of 82.2 million, up 56%. But in a sense, it doesnt matter. The most common explanation about why players go overseas in the first place is often distilled to three words: to get rich. 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. The WNBA has also been eager to experiment with social media and new streaming platforms to connect with fans. From the point of view of the team owners, the measure of output that matters is the revenue the players generate. , WNBA players make $75,000 a year in the league, with only a few players earning as much as $113,000. So it doesn't seem the WNBA players are unreasonable to expect to be paid at least 50% of the league's revenue. It's when the number of people with them grows that the devices become valuable. 'Thank you to Auntie Shania': Washington State team sees its idol, Fantasy women's basketball: Why to focus on guards early in your draft. Following the success of the 2014 Pride Campaign, the league has continued to reach out to gay fans, promoting stories about their LGBT players, and offering special merchandise for Pride Month and Pride Night games. In 2014, ESPN paid the WNBA $17 million for broadcast rights. The Russian media isnt being particularly forthcoming with information about her detainment, but as of March 8, shes still in Russia. Like, I didn't make the meme! And overall, viewers consumed 2.49 billion hours of coverage across all platforms, a jump of 93%. This has been a common complaint from some of the best. 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. According to Summit Hoops, Fowles was paid $109,000 for all she did in 2017. This was a stellar season, where the final eight teams that made the playoffs werent determined until the last few games. As demands for equal pay spark across arenas, boardrooms, TV screens, Twitter feeds and even presidential campaigns, it's time to take a deeper look. "No one should expect any women's sports league to have the following we see in men's professional sports today," Berri says. Thats what makes me mad. 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. Meanwhile, over the same span, women's coach Jill Ellis, winner of back-to-back World Cups, earned $390,409.) Since most major sports are at around 50%, you could look at that and say the players are still leaving considerable cash on the table. And so these women are playing year-round, which is terrible for your body. The interview with Wealthsimple took place a month after Diggins-Smith told a Dallas Morning News writer it was appalling what WNBA players make compared to their male counterparts in the NBA. 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. In this article, we compare salaries in sports like soccer, basketball and tennis, and consider some notable changes over the past decade. To secure international friendlies, the men's team pays and sometimes earns appearance fees, which don't exist for women. If there's a way forward, it might be thanks to one more surprise from the past few months: The WNBA's new CBA is fundamentally different from every past labor agreement in women's sports. Many NBA players are vocal in their support of the womens league because of the quality of play and because they understand the hard work these women put into their game. Considering the widespread acceptance of something like Engels formula, to say that a hard days work doesnt guarantee a fair days pay is one of the more shocking things an economist can say in polite company. The NBA player whose salary is closest to Griner and other top WNBA players is Joe Wieskamp, a forward for the San Antonio Spurs who made $202,068 last year after playing 17 games out of 82 and scoring an average of 2.2 points per game. You are also agreeing to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Kelseys been in the WNBA for 5 seasons with a career average of 12.4ppg but she put up an average of 20.2 points/game in the 2022 season. 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. 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. Last year, Minnesota Lynxs Seimone Augustus told The Undefeated that the reasons players continue in the league is for history and for the future. These women should be paid more. Currently, the NBA pays its players 50 percent of its total revenue. [Harrison Barnes, the highest paid player on the Dallas Mavericks, made $24 million last season. Heading into this season, he had made six All-Star teams, and he created 0.247 win shares per 48 minutes in 2018-19. The WNBA is scheduled to play its 24th season this year. Last season, NBA broadcasts averaged around five times that. The WNBAs growing popularity has made pay equity a hot topic in the sport, and over the course of this season, several players have drawn attention to the issue. Nows a good time for players to advocate for themselves because the product in the WNBA has never been better. BroBible is the #1 place on the internet for the very best content from the worlds of sports, culture, gear, high tech, and more. "As many rights for FIFA competitions are sold to commercial affiliates as a package, specific commercial revenues for the FIFA Women's World Cup cannot be distinguished from the overall revenue from FIFA competitions," FIFA said in a statement to ESPN. Indeed, in the developed world, we work much less than our ancestors did, and we do it for a far higher standard of living. NBAs teams generated $5.9 billion in revenue in 2015-16. On the other hand, sports news and highlight segments have historically focused overwhelmingly on men. She is the second-highest-paid player on the team just behind Aja Wilson who earns $202,155. Cindy Parlow Cone, then U.S. Soccer's vice president, condemned the USSF's legal arguments. Finally, sports need media to reach their full potential. Hart has played at such a high level that his $13 million player option should be declined without a second thought. Is the allocation of the best talent to thinking about ways to grow fan engagement, innovation or player experience happening?". These deals have been great for teams -- and for MLS; its expansion fee has rocketed to $325 million. "Their attendance is. In the WNBA the range of salaries is $117K to $215K for the highest-paid players. Today, grassroots support for the national teams seem to be at parity. People argue that since women in sports work just as hard as men, they should receive equal pay. 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). 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. 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. The State . 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. She also said it would be a letdown of all the work the founders of the league put into it if the current players decided to forgo the league for increased earnings.. Teams will provide housing with two bedrooms for athletes with children, individual hotel rooms on the road and flight upgrades. Bird said direct comparisons like the one above "comes back on me.". 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 . Instead, the federation proceeded to file thousands of pages of documents asserting that, as one motion put it, "WNT and MNT players do not perform equal work requiring equal skill, effort and responsibility under similar working conditions." Total attendance in the WNBAs 21st season was 1,574,078, with teams averaging 7,716 fans per game. But on a fundamental economic level, it is wrong, and the disparities we see between athletes salaries illustrate why. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. In 2014, the WNBA launched the first marketing campaign in professional sports to directly appeal to the LGBTQ market. "Every time FIFA bundles broadcast rights, it ascribes no value to the Women's World Cup," Roux says. While speaking with WNBA legends Sue Bird and Diana Taurasi, the NBA legend called out American companies for not investing more in the WNBA, because, otherwise, the players could earn enough money to not have to play in international leagues in the offseason. 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. As for the players, well, they deserve to be able to play the game they love (that theyre good at!) At the same time, there's very little downside if a player happens to go bust, because even top rookies earn only about $50,000 a year. Meanwhile, Steph Curry, the highest-paid player in the NBA, will make $45.7 million this season. "It centers contracts around the men's World Cup and uses TV coverage of women's games as a dry run for the men.". Any sport needs three kinds of support to grow into a large-scale, sustainable business. Nancy Lough does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment. "Female players are pretty, if you excuse me saying so," former FIFA president Sepp Blatter opined in 2004. Your joys and agonies and memories increase exponentially as your network of friends and family involved with the same team expands. Brittney Griner's detention in Russia: What it says about - NPR But that is still a pittance. The ability to turn inputs into outputs is what economists call productivity. He covers an array of topics including NFL, Pop Culture, Fishing News, and the Outdoors. The players wanted a viable league where they could build careers, not just part-time jobs. Im asking these American companies to step up so yall dont have to go play in these other countries.. What many of the women are asking for is equity in revenue sharing, as economist David Berri has written about repeatedly at Forbes. Just as the Bangladeshis arent poor because they are lazy, Americans arent rich because of hard work. 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. No Matter The Sport, Women Athletes Are Always Paid Less