Gap between Caitlin Clark's WNBA salary and her male counterparts draws outrage

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I think you need to look at viewership and game attendance and compare the two. Salaries for any players is dependent on income brought in, with a few standouts making (significantly) more.

Viewership and attendance to the WNBA is far less.

This.

When the WNBA is bringing in as many viewers and attendance is as good as the NBA and the merch is flying off the shelves, salaries will increase.

If anyone can help increase viewership in the the WNBA, it would be Caitlin Clark.

WNBA hasn't been promoted or invested in nearly as much as the men's side. So the "they don't bring in viewers" line becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Completely false. ESPN has tried to jam the WNBA down our throats for years. They air WNBA during fantastic hours on major networks and have so for years, yet hardly anyone watches.

The women's game just sucks. They chuck 3s and do layups. No dunking. Less physical. And their free throwing is often atrocious.

Women's tennis, in contrast, is good to watch because they can rally very well and don't see so hard like the men do that your just not watching ace after ace.

WNBA viewership is up 21%. The reason the WNBA is not making money is because they’re in a s****y contract with the media companies Who are making money off the WNBA. The contact ends in a year and they can renegotiate.

Percent changes are relative to baselines. If my baseline is low, a 21% change could be economically meaningless.

If I have 100 people watch wnba watch one year and 121 the next, wow big whoop 21% increase!!!

Meanwhile, if 1 million watch NBA one year and 1.05 million watch the next, it's only a 5% increase yet 50,000 more people watching NBA is much more important for a marketer than 21 people more watching the wnba. Percent changes need to be taken with a grain of salt.

One is growing exponentially and one is practically flatlining.

Men are so fragile when women are in their heals.

The WNBA used to have much higher viewership when it started before it tailed off. The uptick you are describing is a recent phenomenon.

Things that never happened for $500 Alex

Google is your friend, genius.

Googled it and you are wrong.

Here you go, Einstein.

https://www.sportsmediawatch.com/2023/10/wnba-finals-ratings-most-watched-20-years-aces-liberty-viewership/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Let’s be real: Caitlyn Clark would struggle even to get playing time on a decent boys high school team, and the WNBA is an entirely subsidized public relations exercise of the NBA. She’s fun to watch and I’m glad the WNBA exists, but the financial comparison posited by the OP is a absurd.

Ignorant, just ignorant.

Facts dear. Without the NBA supplement of the majority of financial obligations, the WNBA ceases to exist.

[Anonymous]

Unfortunately, the WNBA is heavily subsidized by the NBA because it operates at a loss. Until the WNBA can support itself the players will continue to be underpaid. Go to games, buy merch, watch the games on tv etc., this is how the league becomes profitable and the players start making a good base salary.

[Anonymous]

For those who are likening the NBA/WNBA with tennis, there's more to know about the gender equity in tennis.

In tennis, the gender equity is currently only imposed on events where the two genders both play at the same venue at the same time. So the four grand slams and the major 1000 (top level) tournaments where the men's tour and women's tour overlap.

On the general tour where the genders play separately (even ones where the women play one week and the men play another week) there is no gender equity for prize money enforced. Essentially where the audience attendance, televised matches and advertising are all overlapping, they have parity in prize money. When the events are separate, with women playing at a different time from the men, then the prize money is not synchronized and the payout for the men is generally higher. As with the NBA and WNBA, ATP (men only) tour events attract more attendance, higher television ratings and more time and cost advertising than WTA (women only) tour events.

[Anonymous]

well, still outraged after last night?

[Anonymous]

I want equal pay BUT I am not so concerned about millionaires.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:well, still outraged after last night?

what happened last night?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Let’s be real: Caitlyn Clark would struggle even to get playing time on a decent boys high school team, and the WNBA is an entirely subsidized public relations exercise of the NBA. She’s fun to watch and I’m glad the WNBA exists, but the financial comparison posited by the OP is a absurd.

Ignorant, just ignorant.

Facts dear. Without the NBA supplement of the majority of financial obligations, the WNBA ceases to exist.

Does not matter. It is the same job in the same company. Pay per game needs to be the same.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:well, still outraged after last night?

what happened last night?

Caitlin Clark lost in her first WNBA game. She didn't have a good game, scored 20 but on pretty bad shooting and had a lot of turnovers. I'm not putting too much stock in her first performance, though.

[Anonymous]

what should cause outrage is paying to watch people miss wide open lay-ups continually...

[Anonymous]

Women’s teams not adopting the names of the men’s pro teams was a major mistake. People would be way more invested to watch the LA Lakers than the LA sparks. European soccer managed to figure this out so it’s one name for both men’s and women’s team - Arsenal - and you can a built in fan base and the games seem to have more stakes

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Women’s teams not adopting the names of the men’s pro teams was a major mistake. People would be way more invested to watch the LA Lakers than the LA sparks. European soccer managed to figure this out so it’s one name for both men’s and women’s team - Arsenal - and you can a built in fan base and the games seem to have more stakes

Women’s premiere league teams are heavily subsidized by the men’s teams

[Anonymous]

Caitlin is struggling...

Hopefully she gets better.

[Anonymous]

Lost in all of this discussion is that the folks in charge of promoting the WNBA seem to go out of their way to do the opposite.

There was a story recently of players live-streaming a game on X that was not available on TV anywhere through any platform because the folks running WNBA TV assumed no one would watch (this in an era when I can livestream lower tier 14U AAU games played in rural PA). The players’ streams both got up to like 1M views. The next day, the league announced that preseason games would be on TV going forward.

The truth is that people will watch sports that are promoted and taken seriously by networks. See college softball - to me, not that compelling to watch, but it’s on TV constantly.

So far, with both NCAAW and WNBA, networks seem to go out of their way to devalue, hide, and denigrate the product. I’m a middle aged dude and hardly a crusader for equity, but the business stupidity here makes my head explode. WNBA salaries would be much higher if the league were marketed halfway intelligently.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:what should cause outrage is paying to watch people miss wide open lay-ups continually...

Let me know when your next game airs. I’ll be sure to check it out.