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Caitlin Clark's reward for a record-smashing NCAA career: A $76,000 WNBA salary
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this post was submitted on 07 Apr 2024
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One argument that I have heard is that most women don't have the height to make dunks, so they have to focus on shooting. That's arguably a more pure form of the sport.
Something similar happens in pinball leagues. Tilting is generally an accepted practice, though this is often to the surprise of people who don't know a lot about pinball. If the table is setup to let you do it, you can do it in a tournament. However, most women don't have the upper body strength to shove a pinball table around, and many women's leagues do ban tilting. Bumps are allowed, but not moving the table. Again, arguably, this is a more pure form.
It doesn’t though. That’s the problem. As a % of league profit, the pays don’t match. Women don’t get much on sales of apparel either.
Profit or revenue? Idk latest numbers but iirc the wnba lost 12 million in 2019 alone. The total value of the wnba is 1 billion dollars. For context, Steve Ballmer bought the clippers for 2 billion.
The entire wnba has a value that is half the value of the number 2 team in the LA market. Baller bought the team in 2014 btw, so it's half the value from 10 years ago. I think the most recent sale was when an investment group paid 3 billion for majority share of the hornets about a year ago. By that measure the wnba is worth, maybe a quarter, of one of the least valuable franchises in the nba.
Plus these are rookie scale contracts. That's pretty standard part of union collective bargaining. The union wants available funds to go to veteran players. You can't really make a strong argument for those funds being too low when the league has never turned a profit in 25 years.
The Sun's sold for $4 billion last year. That roughly a mid league team.
They need a union, if they don't already have one.
They do have a union. They just have zero leverage because the wnba isn't profitable. They go on strike, lose an entire year and the owners save money. I'm not going to call the wnba a charity case for the NBA because it does have value in promoting the sport itself. That value is too abstract to put into a cba negotiation though.
@FenrirIII @jeffw
We all need a union. Maybe we should set up a union that we can be born into. That way we get a better start than the non-union babies.
Lol. I can just imagine all of the owners only hiring women who aren't a part of a union after that.
Not saying it shouldn't happen, but there will be no shortage of women willing to sell out their fellow women for a chance to make money playing basketball.
Capitalism, ho!
The WNBA does have a union. They WNBA also have strong ties to the NBA itself. If the WNBA tries to run with replacement players they would face backlash from the NBA players union. Because it's essentially the same owners/management group.
Why is NBA "traditional" and WNBA isn't? Name the differences.
The nba has been around for 50 years longer. The WNBA is a subsidiary of the NBA. There was never really a market for women's basketball. There barely is now, after 25 years of the WNBA existing. The NBA runs at a 1.6 billion dollar profit while the WNBA runs at a 22 million dollar loss.
Making a profit is, traditionally, a part of a professional sports league.