As Las Vegas Aces forward Kelsey Plum pointed out in 2018, 50% of the revenue in the NBA goes to players salaries, while only 20% of the WNBAs revenue goes to their players. In 2017, the league aired 20 games live on Twitter, while also offering a new fantasy game on the fantasy platform FanDuel. Last year, Delanie Gourley, a star pitcher in National Pro Fastpitch softball, disclosed that she makes less than a Yankees bat boy. So as FIFA president Gianni Infantino strode across the pitch at Stade Lyon to present the American women with their trophy, the crowd of 57,900 began to roar. In 2014, ESPN paid the WNBA $17 million for broadcast rights. Sue Bird is one of the greatest players in WNBA history, but that doesn't mean she thinks she and her colleagues in the W should be paid the same as their male counterparts. Salary issues in professional sports is not a new phenomenon. 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. So Barbosa will be paid nearly five times what the WNBA MVP earned, and Barbosa won't even play for the Suns. That same year, however, only 2 percent of airtime on the stations flagship show, SportsCenter, was allocated to womens sports. 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. Also a six-time All-Star, she had a nearly identical 0.248 win shares per 48 minutes in 2019. Meanwhile, over the same span, women's coach Jill Ellis, winner of back-to-back World Cups, earned $390,409.) Clearly, the WNBA still needs to work on establishing its long-term viability, and some might argue that the players shouldnt request raises until the league has become more financially stable. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Whichever it is, the answer is not for WNBA teams simply to start paying their players as much as the NBA does theirs. I personally love watching the WNBA because these women are extremely talented shooters, ball handlers and passers and I find the teamwork displayed by WNBA teams to be something that the NBA could take a lesson or two from. Essentially, the women and men all around the table decided to partner in growing their game. Fantasy women's basketball: Will the addition of Candace Parker shake up fantasy values on the Aces? 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. Most Bangladeshis earn a living through agriculture, primarily cultivating rice and jute but also maize and vegetables. Sometimes, it is pretty easy to see why vast amounts of effort generate little output and, hence, low incomes. 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. Ninety-five percent or higher of sports media content is focused on men, even though women make up 40 percent of all sports participants. 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. Consider a comparison: Anthony Davis was the No. This per game mark is more than 10,000 fans below the per game mark seen in the NBA in 2016-17. Meanwhile, listening to announcers talk about women's sports "was usually like hearing someone deliver a boring afterthought, with an obvious lack of enthusiasm.". By entering your email and clicking Sign Up, you're agreeing to let us send you customized marketing messages about us and our advertising partners. So not only are the players taking home 30% less than their NBA counterparts its 20% of a much smaller pie. In the 2018 All-Star Game, for example, 32 percent of the roster identified as gay. what happened to oleg penkovsky family. But should they be seeing an increase in their earnings? Or for the USSF to follow FIFA's lead in allocating prize money. Instead, she has a very reasonable argument for why the players deserve more: Kelsey Plum was a guest on The Residency Pod where she laid out an obvious and easily fixable discrepancy between the NBA and WNBA. And it is also contending with at least four other lawsuits, so its legal bills will total about $9 million this year. "Have investments been equal? She told the reporter that she wants there to be something for future generations to aspire to. It is true that on average, female athletes are paid far less than male athletes. FIFA did list $131 million under "total revenue" in its financials, but for some reason, that was merely an investment figure -- how much the organization initially budgeted to spend on the 2019 World Cup, as Rachel Bachman of The Wall Street Journal reported last September. The reasons people give for not watching the WNBA are plentiful and familiar. 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. So female basketball players work just as hard as male basketball players, yet even the best WNBA players are paid much less than the mediocre and below average NBA ones. Many. But even with all this growth, theres one enduring challenge: media exposure. Last year, Minnesota Lynxs Seimone Augustus told The Undefeated that the reasons players continue in the league is for history and for the future. And these provisions have tilted strongly, almost exclusively, toward men's sports for decades. What part of fining the New York Liberty $500,000 for taking charter flights to games is politically correct? The league minimum for a player with two or fewer years of service is $41,202; for three or more years of . In short, NBA players made 100x more than their WNBA counterparts in 2019. The reason Griner is in Russia in the first place was because she plays for UMMC Ekaterinburg in the Russian Womens Basketball Premier League. 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. Yet as WNBA players came to a crossroads in 2018, nobody told their union leaders to demand million-dollar salaries. The league has more gay players and fans, percentage-wise, than any other major professional sport. For some players, the math just doesn't make sense when they're trying to . 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. The U.S. womens national soccer team has been fighting for equal pay since 2016, and spring training for Major League Baseball is delayed due to issues surrounding the collective bargaining agreement between players and owners. Id love to have Sue Bird and Diana Taurasi on commercials. 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. 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. UNLPD charges 6 for alcohol, 3 for stadium break-in, window smashing, theft, Five players who stood out at Nebraska footballs spring game, UNL student arrested on sexual assault charges, BREAKING: Nebraska Union, nearby buildings experience power outage, SHARACK: Stop treating UNL students with underrated majors as less than, Proposed new state prison sparks student opinions, Retiring custodians reflect on distinct experience of working at Massengale, Five Nebraska football players given professional opportunities after NFL Draft, St. Ritas Amazing Traveling Bookstore: bookstore on wheels stops at UNL. 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. Cindy Parlow Cone, then U.S. Soccer's vice president, condemned the USSF's legal arguments. Demanding that female players be paid what they deserve is not about comparing the WNBA to the NBA as apples-to-apples salaries. This season, Davis made $27.1 million. For all this, Fowles was named league MVP. Meanwhile, Leandro Barbosa is scheduled to earn $500,000 from the Phoenix Suns in 2017-18. 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.. Finally, sports need media to reach their full potential. Thats their prerogative. 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. It's when the number of people with them grows that the devices become valuable. For instance, FIFA says the 2018 men's World Cup generated $5.4 billion in revenue. The Russian media isnt being particularly forthcoming with information about her detainment, but as of March 8, shes still in Russia. . Shes played in Russia for the past seven years, and she makes over $1 million per season. Until recently, it seemed that, at least from a business perspective, FIFA pursued that strategy because the money it brought in from the men's tournament dwarfed that from the women's game. Of course, compensation has always been a serious issue in the WNBA, which paid its players one-ninety-sixth the NBA's average salary at the time Jackson and Silver chatted. On average, WNBA players make $75,000 a year in the league, with only a few players earning as much as $113,000. Jackson met with Engelbert even before her hiring was official and told her the players were concerned about salary and compensation, player experience, and health and wellness. Low pay has also warped the women's game itself. Last week, this exciting season of the WNBA ended after the Seattle Storm swept the Washington Mystics to win their third championship. She previously covered the WNBA and NBA for SB Nation. We put bad NBA players in commercials before some of yall superstars. 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. She believes the athletes deserve more money. When Carlos Cordeiro, then president of the U.S. Soccer Federation, began speaking in front of City Hall, shouts drowned him out: At that time, U.S. Soccer was already battling the women's national team in court, after all 28 members sued their national federation in March 2019 for "purposeful gender discrimination." The more exposure they receive, the more theyll dole out the cash for sponsorships, endorsements and advertisements. 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. 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). Im the highest paid player on the Dallas Wings, and my salary is in the low six figures. For years, the MNT had posted significantly more from events than the WNT -- more than three times as much from 2009 to 2015, according to data from U.S. Soccer. Whether youre toiling in a field in Bangladesh or shooting hoops in the USA, it is outputs, not inputs, that matter. These deals have been great for teams -- and for MLS; its expansion fee has rocketed to $325 million. Diggins-Smith also spoke about the sheer physical efforts of female basketball players. "Female players are pretty, if you excuse me saying so," former FIFA president Sepp Blatter opined in 2004. 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. They're not just bringing their skills to market, they're trying to make sure the market supports their skills. The success of this campaign resulted in the WNBA being the first pro league to take part in the NYC Pride Parade in 2016. "None of which is laudable," the GSSS report says, "but it makes 1% of professional footballers look more pitiful still. And I dont want to lose the WNBA or miss out on seeing the best female basketball players playing in the league. They will also be eligible to get reimbursed for the costs of adoption, surrogacy, fertility treatments and preservation of eggs. The maximum veteran salary is $113,500. The squads face different adversaries, at different levels of competition, on different schedules, including World Cup cycles in different years. Even the WNBA's highest-paid players aren't making particularly lofty sums. They want more open accounting and less obeisance to FIFA. It also includes corporate sponsorship. While the NBA is quite profitable with a blockbuster $24 billion TV deal, billions of dollars in advertising and a robust revenue sharing system only about half of WNBA franchises finish the season in the black. 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 Daily Nebraskan (@dailynebraskan) Instagram photos and videos. 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. Diana . 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. 1 draft choice, and in which they won the WNBA championship with Brittney Griner, whom they selected with that pick? 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(Blatter is currently in the midst of a six-year ban from FIFA for ethics violations.) "Let me stop you," Jackson said. NOW WATCH: 11 barbers who do more than just a standard cut, Visit Insider's homepage for more stories, Sue Bird said her legacy is 'already written' and described her last 2 WNBA championships as bonuses because she's playing 'on borrowed time', How the masterminds behind the WNBA's bubble successfully avoided an outbreak in the heart of a COVID-19 hotspot, Russell Wilson said he felt 'like Sue Bird in the clutch' after a brilliant performance, and the WNBA legend explained why that's important, WNBA Finals MVP Breanna Stewart crashed Sue Bird's press conference in a hilarious, booze-filled, post-championship exchange, Sue Bird clarified that she doesn't think WNBA players "should get the same money as NBA players" in an interview with Adam Ray on his "About Last Night Podcast. "I believed," he said, "the WNT was much more likely to qualify for and succeed in their tournament than the MNT was.". For instance, NBC Sports had pages for horse racing and the National Dog Show, but not for the WNBA or NWSL. Silver was ready to hear about investment and commitment and even empowerment. Marketing researchers have discovered that consumers respond more favorably to marketing initiatives that cater to their identities. FIFA's own audience reports, however, show the value of women's soccer already rising rapidly. The WNBA generates roughly $25 million. These women should be paid more. Just one woman was ranked among the 100 highest-paid athletes in the world in 2019, according to Forbes (Serena Williams, at No. Because these women deserve more money. The biggest lesson: Today's athletes are asking for something even bigger than the strict definition of "pay equity." Three teams experienced double-digit growth: Attendance was up 17.8 percent for the Los Angeles Sparks, 15.3 percent for the Connecticut Sun and 12.3 percent for the Minnesota Lynx. 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." Last week, this exciting season of the WNBA ended after the Seattle Storm swept the Washington Mystics to win their third championship. And while thats not a dollar amount to sniff at, these women only have so long to earn money off their athletic ability. But in a sense, it doesnt matter. First, we should put the gaps into perspective. The NFL was the same age in 1943, a year when it fielded only eight teams, including the Brooklyn Dodgers, and averaged a third of its 2019 per-game attendance. Instead, they have capital inputs and institutions to leverage their labor inputs into far greater levels of output: they can produce far more while working much less. The highest-paid players in the WNBA make less than 14 percent of that. "Right now, WNBA fans are just beginning to pass their fan preferences down to their children.". For picks No. That's the other kind of equity: ownership. Griners current yearly salary in the WNBA is $227,900, which is just about a fourth of what she made in Russia this winter, and there are only three players in the WNBA who make more than Griner by $194. top 7th grade basketball players in illinois. To assess the new landscape and figure out just how it's changing, we talked with athletes and their advocates and opponents, and scoured academic research, court papers and financial documents across women's sports. 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.. "If that's the case, then we should talk," Silver agreed. "If players are talking ridiculous salaries ," Silver began. Jessica Luther is a freelance journalist, an author and a co-host of the feminist sports podcast Burn It All Down.. 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. They cant. 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. Just five WNBA teams were playing in NBA arenas, with two others at college campuses, two at casinos, two in G League gyms and the New York Liberty shunted to a 5,000-seat facility in Westchester County, 30 miles from Manhattan. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except for material where copyright is reserved by a party other than FEE. From 1990 to 2012, for instance, MLB, NBA, NFL and NHL teams got a mammoth $17 billion in public funds for new homes, according to research by economists Robert Baade and Victor Matheson. "But we need investors with the mindset that there's tons of value here that hasn't been shown before who will go unlock it. According to a 2012 report in The Lancet, Bangladesh has the most physically active population in the world. 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.
