Addressing WNBA Player Pay Disparity: Breanna Stewart Calls for Change

TFD – Explore the conversation surrounding WNBA player pay disparity and gender pay inequality in professional sports, as highlighted by Breanna Stewart’s recent remarks. Delve into the challenges faced by women athletes in achieving fair compensation and the ongoing efforts to address these issues. Gain insights into the significance of equitable pay in promoting diversity and equality in sports.

This week, Caitlin Clark emerged as the all-time best scorer in NCAA basketball history and was selected first overall in the WNBA draft. Her pay for the upcoming season is $76,535. The top NBA draft choice will bring in $10.5 million.

The disparity between Clark’s wage and that of elite National Basketball Association players is bringing attention to the pay disparity between male and female athletes in professional sports. The NBA’s league minimum pay is more than a million dollars in 2023, while the highest-paid WNBA player took home a salary of $242,000.

Women’s collegiate basketball reached previously unheard-of heights thanks to players like Angel Reese of Louisiana State University and Clark, who excelled at the University of Iowa. During her last collegiate season, Clark helped draw sellout crowds in venues around the nation and TV audiences that broke records.

However, Clark is not just the draft’s first pick. This year’s NCAA tournament ticket for her Final Four match cost more than the ticket for the men’s Final Four due to her immense popularity. The 22-year-old leads both the women’s and men’s NCAA Division I scoring records all-time.

But the stars of the WNBA aren’t want the same salary as NBA players. Not as of yet, anyhow. They accept the fact that they play in a league that is much younger and has a lower income pool overall. They also do not have the benefit of 50 years of prior contract discussions or the hard-won benefits of longevity, like as salary and labor rights.

They claim that fairness is more of a concern for them.

The WNBA Players’ Association, the union that represents the players, is led by Terri Jackson, who told CNN that “W players want to be invested in, properly valued, and fairly paid like other professionals.”

According to David Berri, a professor of economics at Southern Utah University and the author of a forthcoming book on women in sports, women make up roughly 10% of the WNBA’s total revenue, whereas players in the NBA are entitled to 50% under the collective bargaining agreement.

We’re not requesting to be paid what the males do. In a 2022 interview, Las Vegas Aces star Kelsey Plum stated, “We’re asking to get paid the same percentage of revenue shared.

Even the best players in the WNBA occasionally take a chance to play in other leagues during the off-season to augment their income. In these leagues, there is no wage cap and players can earn up to double or treble their US salary.

Brittney Griner, the star center for the Phoenix Mercury, was unjustly jailed in Russia for ten months in 2022 as she was traveling there to participate in the WNBA’s offseason. Eventually, Griner was freed as a result of a prisoner swap. (The WNBA claims to have made investments to guarantee that players spend the off-season in the United States.)

How agreements are made

The collective bargaining agreements between the NBA and WNBA and their respective players’ union determine rookie pay and player contracts. A yearly salary ceiling of $136 million for NBA teams and $1.5 million for WNBA teams is part of the accords. However, the NBA maintains a “soft salary cap,” meaning that players can earn more money with a few exclusions. In comparison, there are extremely few exceptions to the WNBA’s rigid salary cap.

Clark could receive more than $500,000 in total compensation, including money from team arrangements and player marketing agreements with the league, according to a WNBA representative.

However, Jackson claimed that because few athletes are qualified for those deals, incorporating pay “blurred the lines.”

Since 2020, when they and the league negotiated their most recent collective bargaining agreement, WNBA players have seen increases in their pay. However, the large disparity is a product of the two organizations’ disparate economies, the WNBA’s years-long underfunding, and women’s lack of traditional bargaining leverage when it comes to compensation, benefits, and other matters like travel arrangements.

“Regarding pay equity, one must consider resources, the extent of investment, the strategic plan, and the deliberate efforts to expand the Women’s National Basketball Association in a sustainable manner,” Jackson stated. “For a very long time, this model has not received enough resources.”

Compared to the WNBA, which is said to make $200 million a year, the NBA is 50 years older, has more than twice as many teams and games in a season, and makes $10 billion annually in revenue.

In compared to the NBA, the WNBA has also received lower compensation from broadcasters and sponsors. The WNBA receives roughly $65 million this year for its broadcast rights, whereas the NBA receives $2.8 billion from its national TV deals.

“The comparison is not apples to apples. It all depends on where this league is in its financial cycle, according to Pepperdine University associate professor of sport administration Alicia Jessop.

Dividing the earnings pie

Women’s players have had less negotiating power with team owners over their salary than males because the league is smaller and more recent.

NBA players are paid 50% of the league’s total revenue; however, revenue sharing agreements do not begin to apply until the WNBA reaches a specific annual revenue threshold. Women’s pay has been hampered by this.

“It’s a league decision. David Berri stated, “They don’t have to do it that way.” The gamers, though, have been stranded.

“They can’t just start a new league with brand-new teams.” The process of becoming attached to a professional sports team is slow.

According to him, elite players would receive salaries of more than $3 million if the WNBA gave them 50% of its earnings.

A turning point for the WNBA

Longtime NBA commissioner David Stern led the charge to create the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) in 1997, believing that a women’s league would advance the sport as a whole.

Critics, however, contend that the NBA might have done more to help the WNBA.

It’s not good for the NBA to bargain for women. According to Berri, the women wind up being thrown into their bargains.

The players in the WNBA want to see increased funding for the league from the NBA, broadcasters, and corporate sponsors. Jackson continued, “The WNBA shouldn’t be considered an afterthought to the men’s league.”

In the upcoming years, as interest from fans and marketers develops, WNBA player pay may increase. The WNBA recently concluded its most watched regular season in twenty-one years, and game attendance reached a record high for the first time in thirteen years.

According to Cathy Engelbert, the commissioner of the WNBA, the league will be set up for the next 30 to 40 years throughout the next few years.

By 2028, the league intends to have 16 clubs. It involves negotiating new media rights that should result in millions of dollars in extra income and greater exposure for elite athletes and teams. Furthermore, according to reports, the WNBA expects its new partnerships with media partners to bring in as much as $100 million a season.

By the end of the 2025 season, the players’ union is anticipated to choose to withdraw from the agreement. Salary increases and benefit expansions are possible with a new collective bargaining agreement and media rights agreement, as they were following the players’ 2018 opt-out of the previous one.

“All right, let’s step it up a notch if our games are drawing in 18 million viewers. Salaries will go up, benefits will go up,” Breanna Stewart of the New York Liberty and vice president of the players’ union said in a recent interview.