Do WNBA Players Really Want to Be Paid What They Are Owed?
By William L. Anderson, Mises Institute
More than 16,000 people showed up at the WNBA All-Star game July 19, but the big news wasn’t that Team Collier pummeled Team Clark by the grotesque score of 151-131, or even that this was the highest-attended WNBA All-Star game in the league’s history. Instead, the big news was that the players pre-game wore T-shirts with a demand to the league: “Pay Us What You Owe Us.”
Last month, I took issue with claims that WNBA players were underpaid, as I pointed out—using the economic analysis of the Austrian School of economics—that, given the lack of profitability by the league, the notion that the players are experiencing an “economic injustice” is ludicrous. Others, such as sports columnist Skip Bayless have pointed out that the only reason that the WNBA has seen the growth that has brought on the demand for higher pay has been the arrival of Caitlin Clark, something that the rest of the league has been unwilling to admit.
While people speak of the WNBA’s growth in fans and merchandise sales with the arrival of Clark last year, the numbers must be put into perspective. For example, the WNBA recently signed a 11-year, $2.2 billion media rights deal with Disney, Amazon Prime Video, and new rights-holder NBCUniversal. That number could grow to about $3 billion with other media partnerships, such as current deals with ION and CBS.
However, that number must be put into perspective. The NBA recently signed an 11-year, $76 billion deal which means that Disney (ABC and ESPN), Comcast (NBA and Peacock) and Amazon will broadcast NBA games through the 2035-36 season. As one can see, while the WNBA’s deal is impressive from where the league had been, it is less than three percent of the NBA agreement.
At the present time, the average WNBA base salary is $102,249, while the average NBA salary is $11,910,649. In the NBA, the players’ share of the league revenues is between 49 and 51 percent while in the WNBA, the players’ share of the league revenues is 9.3 percent. So, doing some simple math, the WNBA players are demanding the same percentage of revenues as their male counterparts, thus what they are “owed.”
There is a problem with those calculations, however. The most recent count for WNBA revenues is...(READ THIS FULL PIECE HERE FREE).