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. The more exposure they receive, the more theyll dole out the cash for sponsorships, endorsements and advertisements. That same year, however, only 2 percent of airtime on the stations flagship show, SportsCenter, was allocated to womens sports. Beyond money, a sport needs time to grow into its potential audience. Consider a comparison: Anthony Davis was the No. It took the NBA 72 years to get to where the league is today, while the WNBA is only in its 21st season. And the highest paid players in the WNBA this season will earn an annual salary of $234,936, according to HerHoopStats. Nows a good time for players to advocate for themselves because the product in the WNBA has never been better. And make no mistake, fans today have more access than ever to the games played by female athletes, because a burgeoning number of networks and apps, hungry to acquire and offer new content, are programming all kinds of formerly "niche" sports. In the WNBA the range of salaries is $117K to $215K for the highest-paid players. They could advertise the womens league better. 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. "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. But a generation is still a generation. If the NBA wanted to pay WNBA players more, they could. The number of major league pitches clocked at 100 mph and faster more than tripled over three years, from 1,056 in 2019 to 3,348 last year. Dallas Wings point guard Skylar Diggins-Smith recently told Wealthsimple that she wanted to be paid like a man. Essentially, the women want to partner in growing their game. The WNBA generates roughly $25 million. Meanwhile, Leandro Barbosa is scheduled to earn $500,000 from the Phoenix Suns in 2017-18. In 2015, the WNBA averaged 202,000 viewers on ESPN and ESPN2. 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. Analysts have noted for years that when it comes to television rights, FIFA has treated the Women's World Cup as an afterthought -- at worst a loss leader, at best a chance for media companies to use women's games to prepare for the men's tournaments. And that's led to more viewers (Women's College World Series ratings have increased by nearly 40% since 2000), more revenues (up 360% from 2003 to 2016) and, in turn, more broadcasts (more than 1,600 games, including all of the playoffs, were scheduled for this season before the pandemic struck). Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. So not only are the players taking home 30% less than their NBA counterparts its 20% of a much smaller pie. And now central offices across the sports map are scrambling to catch up. This new reality will only be reflected in our future financial results.". And he'll get paid this massive sum to go championship-chasing with an in . For instance, 994 million people watched at least one minute of the 2019 Women's World Cup on linear television, a 30% increase from 2015, while 3.26 billion watched a minute or more of the men's World Cup in 2018, up just 2% from four years earlier. 'Thank you to Auntie Shania': Washington State team sees its idol, Fantasy women's basketball: Why to focus on guards early in your draft. 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. This was a stellar season, where the final eight teams that made the playoffs werent determined until the last few games. 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. And for the first time, gamers could play with WNBA players in NBA Live 18. Wake up to the day's most important news. FIFA commingles broadcasting rights and sponsorships for the men's and women's tournaments. We had incredibly thrilling semifinals series that went a full five games apiece. As a result of all this, merchandise sales grew by 18 percent in 2017, attendance has increased, more people are tuning in, and players are acquiring significant social media followings. For some players, the math just doesn't make sense when they're trying to . This past July, though, Barbosa was waived by the team. At least not yet. If the WNBA doesnt figure this out, players are going to opt out of the league. I dont understand why these companies havent been partnering with yall for years and years, Barkley said. That's the chain reaction of network externalities. Which is kind of unbelievable, as WNBA All-Star point guard for the Dallas Wings, Skylar Diggins-Smith, : 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., its not clear what the WNBAs exact revenue is, or individual teams, or their profits. One of the reasons we're even talking about equal pay in sports today is because of the courageous fight of. They shouldnt have to work so hard for so little. You ladies should be on commercials everywhere. "I think they're going to all drag the federation along, hopefully to a place where there's equal pay and beyond.". But once two sides establish good faith in a negotiation, both can see spending -- or sacrifice -- as an investment. For instance, NBA teams took in a total of $8.8 billion this year, according to Forbes. This per game mark is more than 10,000 fans below the per game mark seen in the NBA in 2016-17. wells city council election results 2022. ford city mall shooting today. Last year, the average WNBA salary was US$71,635, and this year appears to be closer to $75,000. And last May, 175 players left the National Women's Hockey League to protest poor wages, and they have been barnstorming as their own group. These deals have been great for teams -- and for MLS; its expansion fee has rocketed to $325 million. But using league revenue, economics professor Dave Berri was recently able to calculate a significant gender wage gap in another respect. Any sport needs three kinds of support to grow into a large-scale, sustainable business. Now, Team USA is in Spain, about to play in the FIBA Womens Basketball World Cup which tips off later this week in Tenerife, with the final on Sept. 30. And it's in the runup to that deadline that the two sides will collide again over the even bigger issues at hand. The players wanted a viable league where they could build careers, not just part-time jobs. The biggest lesson: Today's athletes are asking for something even bigger than the strict definition of "pay equity." I know this is a controversial statement because women are never supposed to ask for more than they have, lest they be ungrateful for whatever theyve been given thus far. (In its most recent fiscal year, ending in March 2019, the USSF paid $304,113 to current men's coach Gregg Berhalter for four months of work, $241,869 to former coach David Sarachan, whom Berhalter replaced in December 2018, and $1.475 million to former coach Jurgen Klinsmann, who was fired in 2016. I know this is a controversial statement because women are never supposed to ask for more than they have, lest they be ungrateful for whatever theyve been given thus far. The most common explanation about why players go overseas in the first place is often distilled to three words: to get rich. As one writer explained. Demanding that female players be paid what they deserve is not about comparing the WNBA to the NBA as apples-to-apples salaries. . But that is still a pittance. NBAs teams generated $5.9 billion in revenue in 2015-16. Jackson posted the phrase "language of investment" on her office wall. FIFA's own audience reports, however, show the value of women's soccer already rising rapidly. In 2014, the WNBA launched the first marketing campaign in professional sports to directly appeal to the LGBTQ market. What if non-player. This was a stellar season, where the final eight teams that made the playoffs werent determined until the last few games. As important as all these changes are, their total cost is about $1 million per WNBA team per year, which means the proportion of league revenues paid to players will rise only from about 20% to approximately 30%. But the number was wrong. He also found that the WNT made more money than the men's team from 2015 to 2019. It would collapse without the support of the NBA, and it can't afford to pay the players more. Another argument is that women's national teams for sports like soccer have far more success than the men's national team. It felt like records were set on an almost weekly basis. Jessica Luther is a freelance journalist, an author and a co-host of the feminist sports podcast Burn It All Down.. 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. Successful sports build enough familiarity and loyalty that their followers spread, find one another and reach a critical mass that, like a chain reaction in a nuclear power plant, creates a new energy that feeds on itself over time. Of course, the NBA rakes in far more revenue. Most major sites have now joined ESPN, which launched espnW in 2010, in allocating space to women's sports across multiple dedicated pages, particularly for basketball and soccer. According to Forbes magazine, the NBA generated . The deal also pioneers a range of provisions important to players who are mothers or potential parents. Last season, Ogwumike earned $115,000. Many. And so these women are playing year-round, which is terrible for your body. All rights reserved. 63). The WNBA has reached an agreement with the players union to phase in pay rises, getting the average up to $130,000 and the top players over $500,000 by 2027. Basically, they want a fair share of the total revenue of the WNBA. By clicking Sign Up, you also agree to marketing emails from both Insider and Morning Brew; and you accept Insiders. 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. WNBA players have free agency, of course, so players can negotiate with more than one team. With this deadline looming, the players would be wise to take advantage of this opportunity and compel the league to come to the table with an offer commensurate to their worth. So what's really at stake? And shes not arguing they deserve NBA-sized salaries. Leading WNBA players were stunned, but they took note of the NBA's terminology, which was full of words like "development," "programmatic opportunities," "supporting infrastructure" and "tools for top young players to grow." And it can take decades for leagues and franchises to develop faith and establish their footing. The women of the WNBA are simply seeking the recognition they deserve for their performances. Meanwhile, over the same span, women's coach Jill Ellis, winner of back-to-back World Cups, earned $390,409.) They kept telling her, "This is the legacy we want to protect.". 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. And theyre not done. The financial disparities between the leagues are undeniable, and these women arent asking for the same multimillion-dollar salaries their male counterparts make (though that would be nice). The raw numbers make it easy to assume that women make less money simply because fans prefer men's games -- that pay follows revenues, and revenues follow popularity. They're looking for better training and travel budgets. The maximum veteran salary is $113,500. 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. ", "There is indeed a significant difference in World Cup prize money awarded by FIFA to the men's and women's championship teams," the federation said in a March 7 letter to its members, a copy of which it provided to ESPN. It also includes corporate sponsorship. 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. Carter, 22, was a key player on Georgia's back-to-back national championship team, earning 2022 first-team All-American honors while being named a Lombardi Award finalist after posting three sacks . But the truth is more complicated, because a league's financial data also embeds its history, opportunities and labor relations. The first two categories were exactly the same for each, but the final two were markedly different. High. To secure international friendlies, the men's team pays and sometimes earns appearance fees, which don't exist for women. Why WNBA players are not paid as much as NBA players? Meanwhile, the Women's Super League in England has gone fully professional. Its true that the WNBA generates about $60 million in revenue per year, while the NBA generates $7.92 billion. But the NBAs politically correct heart has room to grow a few sizes. 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. Union president Ogwumike announced the move in an essay for The Players' Tribune titled "Bet on Women.". Bird said. Even the WNBA's highest-paid players aren't making particularly lofty sums. Thats what makes me mad. The ability to turn inputs into outputs is what economists call productivity. Please do not edit the piece, ensure that you attribute the author and mention that this article was originally published on FEE.org. "No one should expect any women's sports league to have the following we see in men's professional sports today," Berri says. These women should be paid more. 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. Meanwhile, the organization's financial reports projected just $131 million in total revenue from the 2019 Women's World Cup, a number that spread like wildfire among outlets last summer. The NBA's collective bargaining agreement indicates the players must receive about 50% of the league's basketball-related income. And it is also contending with at least four other lawsuits, so its legal bills will total about $9 million this year. 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. 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. This has been a common complaint from some of the best. So Barbosa will be paid nearly five times what the WNBA MVP earned, and Barbosa wont even play for the Suns. 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. There are different ways to weight these audience eyeballs and viewing times, and to project future statistics. It was an unprecedented moment for a commissioner of a professional sports league and a head of a union: The labor deal they were about to negotiate could become a major platform for women's empowerment. About 70 WNBA players went to compete overseas this offseason, the WNBA said Monday. "The NWSL has the opportunity to be the best league in the world," says Becca Roux, executive director of the U.S. Women's National Team Players Association. They may exert the same physical effort, but far more money is handed over by consumers to the NBA than the WNBA in return for all this. Investment includes public money too, usually in the form of taxpayer-financed stadiums. BroBible is the #1 place on the internet for the very best content from the worlds of sports, culture, gear, high tech, and more. 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. But WNBA players only take less than 25 percent of the total earnings of their league. From the highest-paid athletes to the newest rookies, professional male athletes are still making significantly more money than women. In 2017, the league aired 20 games live on Twitter, while also offering a new fantasy game on the fantasy platform FanDuel. ", FIFA has a notoriously checkered past with women athletes. 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. And I dont want to lose the WNBA or miss out on seeing the best female basketball players playing in the league. "If players are talking ridiculous salaries ," Silver began. A small number of women players are truly dominant at the college level, which makes the first few picks in the WNBA draft extremely valuable. In 1881, Freidrich Engels wrote an article for the Labour Standard titled A Fair Day's Wages for a Fair Day's Work. You still hear the phrase today. Low investment and media coverage have led to limited viewership, rights deals and sponsorships, which leads to low pay, which hampers the development of new talent and initiatives, which leads to low investment and media coverage. Obviously, if a player can only negotiate with one team, their salary will be depressed. Copyright 20102023, The Conversation Media Group Ltd. Doppler, the mascot of the Seattle Storm, waves a rainbow gay pride flag before the start of a game. Not to discredit any work that they've put in, but you have women playing year-round basketball going overseas to have more opportunities for higher wages. 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. "We're just like 'Could I get the same media coverage, and the corporate sponsor looks, and things like that?'" In an interview with comedian Adam Ray on his "About Last Night Podcast," the legendary Seattle Storm point guard and four-time WNBA champion explained her stance on equality in basketball. John Phelan is an economist at the Center of the American Experiment and fellow of The Cobden Centre. 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. 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. 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. 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 WNBA's current collective bargaining agreement won't 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. Low pay has also warped the women's game itself. She believes the athletes deserve more money. But in stark contrast the highest-paid WNBA players in 2022Diana Taurasi, Jewell Loyd, and Breanna Stewarteach earned . For example, according to World Bank data, in 2012, the value added per agricultural worker was $61,634 in the United States. That's the other kind of equity: ownership. But the league has agreed to prepare and promote players for coaching and other jobs in the offseason. With Jones paid to be the franchise quarterback, there should be stability at the position to build around. And these provisions have tilted strongly, almost exclusively, toward men's sports for decades. The athletes are planning to appeal, but at least for the moment, crucial parts of the suit have been dismissed. Ertz in, Swanson out: Who will make USWNT's World Cup team after big shake-ups? It felt like, According to the WNBA . Id love to have Sue Bird and Diana Taurasi on commercials. "I'm like, 'Oh, where's our world going?'". I just got the same amount of rings, maybe more. The move was controversial at the time given all major sport leagues in the U.S. had previously opted to keep jerseys free of advertisements but the NBA followed their lead in 2017. What many of the women are asking for is equity in revenue sharing, as economist David Berri has written about repeatedly at Forbes. 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. The U.S.-Netherlands final reached an average live audience of 82.2 million, up 56%. CBS Sports Network struck a deal in 2019 to show 40 WNBA games a year, increasing the number of regular-season contests on national television by more than 60%. As someone who has studied the WNBA for years, only about half of WNBA franchises finish the season in the black, a market segment worth around $830 million, have argued that interest drives coverage, Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA), Lecturer in Environmental Art - School of Art and Design. Ninety-five percent or higher of sports media content is focused on men, even though women make up 40 percent of all sports participants. In 2017, for example, a majority of the most popular sports sites on the Internet didn't dedicate even one page to a women's sport or league, according to research by Berri. Thats their prerogative. This season, the maximum veteran salary is $115,500, not including potential bonuses. It could have been the moment for USSF officials to declare victory and get out of that war, to find some way to share with the athletes the public triumphs and financial gains of American soccer. They could make the WNBA season longer than 36 games, which might allow for more time for fans to become invested in teams. The WNBA has made strides to increase player salaries and find other ways to compensate players in the last CBA, which was ratified in 2020. is not about comparing the WNBA to the NBA as apples-to-apples salaries. 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. Currently, the NBA pays its players 50 percent of its total revenue. In the 2018 All-Star Game, for example, 32 percent of the roster identified as gay. Playing overseas in Europe, Asia, or Australia can often. On the other hand, some others pay. "Female players are pretty, if you excuse me saying so," former FIFA president Sepp Blatter opined in 2004. 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). All Rights Reserved. "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. The WNBA will suffer if they dont figure out some way to pay players more. The league average in 2022 is just $102,751 for WNBA players. According to the WNBA, this was most-watched regular season since 2014, with viewership across ESPN networks and NBA TV up by 31 percent. "When I think of pay equity, I think of the opportunity that the NBA and other male sports leagues have to be successful.". Just one woman was ranked among the 100 highest-paid athletes in the world in 2019, according to Forbes (Serena Williams, at No. "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. For decades, sports media figures have argued that interest drives coverage. SPORTS ILLUSTRATED is a registered trademark of ABG-SI LLC. 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. While the men are getting about half of the total money they help the NBA earn, the women are getting less than a fourth.
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