For most sports, women get paid less than men, and this remains true when it comes to basketball and the NBA. All-time NCAA women’s scoring leader Kelsey Plum said in July that she was upset that WNBA players earned 20 percent of their league’s revenue, in comparison to 50 percent of the NBA’s revenue for NBA players. She wanted WNBA owners to be more transparent with how much money they were making, especially in light of NBA players signing deals that were in the range of 150 million dollars.
The question that Plum raised was that if the WNBA wasn’t making significant revenue, it wouldn’t continue to exist. And in lieu of that, Plum questioned why WNBA players experienced a wage gap in comparison to NBA players. According to Seattle Times columnist Matt Calkins, the issue with the wage gap isn’t gender, it’s simple economics. The NBA brought in 7.4 billion dollars of revenue last year, more than 100 times the revenue of the WNBA. The New York Times reported in 2016 that half of the league’s teams were losing money, especially because of overhead costs, relating to hotel costs and maintaining arenas.
Furthermore, the league doesn’t allow teams to charter flights because they don’t have the expenses to. Just two charter flights would equal the cost of a season’s worth of commercial flights. Calkins believes that it is only fair to compare the leagues in terms of profit and revenue, and that means that WNBA players are entitled to less. But he also argues that the dissent is good. Many leagues, including the NBA and the NHL, have used player strikes in the past to get greater wages.
But other authors believe that the WNBA wage gap is about more than simple economics. While the numbers aren’t released formally by the WNBA, the league is estimated to have brought in at least 50 million dollars last year. Plus, the WNBA makes money in other sponsorship deals that they don’t disclose to the public.
The key is that WNBA players don’t necessarily want to be paid the same as their NBA counterparts, they want to be paid the same proportion of the league’s revenue, writes David Berri for Forbes. Equalizing the proportion would increase the average WNBA salary by about $20,000. And economically, Berri argues, not paying WNBA players more hurts the league in the long run.
Many players play in other countries during the offseason, as these leagues pay them significantly more, preventing the players from effectively marketing the league for the rest of the year. Rather than being able to focus on growing the game, most WNBA players are more concerned with caring for themselves, and this will only change with equality in the proportion of league revenue they receive.
Sources:
https://www.seattletimes.com/sports/storm/more-money-would-be-good-but-wnba-nba-wage-gap-is-about-economics-not-gender/
This is a great post about connecting a topic like cost and revenue to what we have been talking about in class, the NBA. I agree with what Matt Calkins is saying, because it doesn't make sense for WNBA players to make as much as NBA players because of the large gap in revenue that both leagues are bringing in. However, that doesn't mean that the WNBA shouldn't be paying its players more, because as stated above, WBNA players earn only 20% of total revenue while NBA players make 50%. While literal wages shouldn't have to be equal between the two leagues, the proportion of league revenue being allotted to the players should be the same and that is where the real gap comes from and where the problem needs to be fixed.
ReplyDeleteA find this post really interesting personally being a fan of basketball. Although I cannot say I have watched much WNBA, I do think this is a very important topic. I find the statistic that NBA players make 50% of the leagues revenue and the WNBA players make only 20% fascinating. Although there is no doubt the women's league makes less money, it is not fair to have a different percentage in wages. When breaking it down, $20,000 is a big chunk of money to be taken away from a player a year. This is definitely an important issue.
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