Cordeiro resigned three days later, and the federation switched lawyers within a week. Playing overseas in Europe, Asia, or Australia can often. But when it comes to getting the kind of daily, comprehensive news, analysis and statistics that multiple media outlets and platforms routinely provide for men's teams, most women's sports still lag. That's one kind of equity: equality. Basically, they want a fair share of the total revenue of the WNBA. 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. Which is kind of unbelievable, as WNBA All-Star point guard for the Dallas Wings, Skylar Diggins-Smith, put it recently: Before we even talk about base salary or anything like that, we dont even get paid the same percentage of the revenue that we bring in., Unfortunately, its not clear what the WNBAs exact revenue is, or individual teams, or their profits. Last season, Ogwumike earned $115,000. New arenas allow teams to improve their game experience, hike prices and build up adjoining land. Whether youre toiling in a field in Bangladesh or shooting hoops in the USA, it is outputs, not inputs, that matter. They are often separated from their families and have to deal with the instability of uprooting their lives multiple times a year. Only 14 players in the league make $200,000 or more, according to Spotrac data. 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." One might argue that male players produce more points. But the truth is more complicated, because a league's financial data also embeds its history, opportunities and labor relations. And when LeBron James steps onto the court, it generates far more revenue for the Heat, Cavaliers, or Lakers than it does for the Lynx when Maya Moore does so. 1 pick in the WNBA draft in 2012. Do you really compare yourself to the NBA?' 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. 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. And shes not arguing they deserve NBA-sized salaries. 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. AP Photo/Elaine Thompson In 2009, the WNBA decided to include sponsor logos on their jerseys. This would give them the opportunity to negotiate a new deal that increases the salary cap, along with maximum and minimum salaries. It happened again three days later, after a ticker tape parade through New York's Canyon of Heroes honored the four-time Cup winners. 2023 ABG-SI LLC. As Phoenix Mercurys Brittney Griner wrote on Instagram 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.. The base salary for WNBA rookies varies on when (or if) players were selected in the WNBA Draft. Last year, Minnesota Lynxs Seimone Augustus told The Undefeated that the reasons players continue in the league is for history and for the future. Where is the fair days wage for the fair days work? (Including the very greatest: From 1997 to 2000, the Houston Comets won four straight WNBA championships with a core of Cynthia Cooper, Sheryl Swoopes and Tina Thompson, all top-shelf Hall of Famers. And it's not just the rookies. The U.S. women have been playing so well that they now generate nearly as much money as the men on game days, despite typically lower official ticket prices. It's true players can substantially supplement their W income, which . "No one should expect any women's sports league to have the following we see in men's professional sports today," Berri says. The NBA, which partially owns the WNBA, needs to dedicate more time and money to their female players so they dont have to forgo an offseason and play overseas to support themselves. 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. 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. "If that's the case, then we should talk," Silver agreed. The more exposure they receive, the more theyll dole out the cash for sponsorships, endorsements and advertisements. 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. At the end of the day, people will still complain that the WNBA is boring, less competitive and that theres no dunking. If WNBA players demand a higher salary that would match the NBA, the league could not afford it because the WNBA simply does not bring in the same amount of money as the NBA. Griner is a starter for the Phoenix Mercury who averages 17.7 points per game and has won two gold medals with Team U.S.A. in the Olympics. "Right now, WNBA fans are just beginning to pass their fan preferences down to their children.". That risk/reward ratio, combined with restricted-free-agency rules, has created more incentive to tank for teams in the WNBA than for those in any other major sport. 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. They're looking for better training and travel budgets. This per game mark is more than 10,000 fans below the per game mark seen in the NBA in 2016-17. While men have always played on grass, FIFA staged the 2015 Women's World Cup at arenas with artificial turf, which American striker Sydney Leroux, one of dozens of athletes who protested, likened to "running pretty much on cement." According to Forbes magazine, the NBA generated . But here's the thing. If the WNBA Players Association wants to opt out of its current collective bargaining agreement with the league and renegotiate terms, they have to do so by Oct. 31. 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. This simple. The Athletic, for example, expanded its reporting in 2019 to include regular coverage of all 12 WNBA clubs and women's college basketball. "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. They shouldnt have to work so hard for so little. Jackson, whose husband and son are both NBA veterans, kept asking, "What motivates you?" And yet, for all this effort, there is little economic reward. Diggins-Smith has made hundreds of thousands of dollars during her five seasons in the WNBA, yet she feels its unfair that she makes considerably less than NBA players. So not only are the players taking home 30% less than their NBA counterparts its 20% of a much smaller pie. This means the average NBA player makes 41 times what the average WNBA player makes. It all. And no one wants to see the WNBA die, least of all the players., The WNBA will suffer if they dont figure out some way to pay players more. Which leads us here: The average NBA salary is about $7.5 million; according to the league, the average WNBA salary in 2019 was reportedly about $116,000, but a new collective bargaining agreement which runs from 2020 to 2027 provides a 53% pay increase, plus maternity leave at full salary, $5,000 for child care, and as much as $60,000 for Beyond anticipating the savings from that huge gulf, Gulati had a second simple reason for paying men and women differently: U.S. Soccer replicates the compensation practices of FIFA, the organization that is by far the biggest driver of unequal pay in global soccer. Her teamthe Minnesota Lynxalso finished with the best record in the WNBA. Of course, a bump to 50 percent of WNBA league revenue isnt realistic, because theres a difference between revenue and profit. In the 2018 All-Star Game, for example, 32 percent of the roster identified as gay. We had incredibly thrilling semifinals series that went a full five games apiece. Steph Curry's salary ($40 million) is more than three times as much as what every player in the WNBA earned in 2019 combined ($12.5 million). 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. 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 women of the WNBA are simply seeking the recognition they deserve for their performances. But while women's clubs are sharing some of the new pitches (and a handful of NBA facilities too), when it comes to securing arenas as primary occupants, the women's game has barely arrived at the table. 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. WNBA players arent asking to be paid on par with their NBA counterparts. High. Heading into this season, he had made six All-Star teams, and he created 0.247 win shares per 48 minutes in 2018-19. A post shared by Kelsey Plum (@kelseyplum10). But in a sense, it doesnt matter. Since the WNBA costs $70 million to run, it has technically lost an average of $10 million every year that it has existed which, as one lovely blogger puts it, the NBA subsidizes out of the goodness of its politically correct heart.. In the court of public opinion, however, something snapped after those March filings. Taurasi ranks third in the league with a $234,936 salary. 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. U.S. District Court Judge R. Gary Klausner held that the women's national team had agreed to the terms of the deal that paid them. Putting together all of the factors that affect league revenues -- investment, time and media -- it's apparent that most women's sports have struggled for years with what the Statista report calls a vicious cycle, which reverses the pattern that college softball has experienced. 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. Listen, * Peter Keating joins Mina to discuss the U.S. Soccer's court victory and what's next for the U.S. women's national team. Meanwhile, the Women's Super League in England has gone fully professional. Today, grassroots support for the national teams seem to be at parity. Total revenue for the NBA hit $7.4 billion in 2022. Shes played in Russia for the past seven years, and she makes over $1 million per season. All rights reserved. BroBible is the #1 place on the internet for the very best content from the worlds of sports, culture, gear, high tech, and more. 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IN THE UNITED STATES, we have now spent two generations since Title IX raising women athletes to compete on the same footing as men. Last year, total attendance for the WNBAs 12 teams reached 1,574,078, with an average attendance of 7,716 fans a new high for the 21-year-old league. And no one wants to see the WNBA die, least of all the players. The NBA commissioner complained publicly that the WNBA was losing more than $10 million a year, but that number said more about how the women's game was still small scale than about any significant damage to the bottom line of NBA teams. If the NBA wanted to pay WNBA players more, they could. In the WNBA the range of salaries is $117K to $215K for the highest-paid players. Charles Barkley appeared on The Bird and Taurasi Show during the 2023 womens national title game on Sunday and didnt hold back his thoughts on what WNBA players go through in comparison to other sports leagues. He also found that the WNT made more money than the men's team from 2015 to 2019. And theyre not done. Silver was ready to hear about investment and commitment and even empowerment. "We're just like 'Could I get the same media coverage, and the corporate sponsor looks, and things like that?'" The average WNBA player earns an average salary of around $75,000 per year. Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items. So it doesn't seem the WNBA players are unreasonable to expect to be paid at least 50% of the league's revenue. According to Summit Hoops, Fowles was paid $109,000 for all she did in 2017. Sign up for notifications from Insider! They deserve to be able to play the game they love without needing to get a second job to pay the bills. 2023 BuzzFeed, Inc. All rights reserved. The league average in 2022 is just $102,751 for WNBA players. For example, according to World Bank data, in 2012, the value added per agricultural worker was $61,634 in the United States. To grow the WNBA, he and the owners were prepared to, as he put it, "double down." Most Bangladeshis earn a living through agriculture, primarily cultivating rice and jute but also maize and vegetables. Pow!) You can make a case that WNBA players could be paid more, but some people are making an argument that they should be paid the same, or at least similarly. This is about more than pay; it's about recognition for their hard work as athletes. Think of cellphones: If you were the only person to have one, your phone would be useless. 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. 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. 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. Why WNBA players are not paid as much as NBA players? Sydney Miller is a senior psychology major. But they were just as concerned about the relentless everyday signals that ownership -- which is split 50-50 between team owners and the NBA -- was running the league on a shoestring. In 2017, the WNBA posted its highest attendance in six years, more than 10,000 fans below the per game mark seen in the NBA in 2016-17, NBA broadcasts averaged around five times that. Last week, this exciting season of the WNBA ended after the Seattle Storm swept the Washington Mystics to win their third championship. It took the NBA 72 years to get to where the league is today, while the WNBA is only in its 21st season.