Breanna Stewart will begin her ninth WNBA season in a number of days. The New York Liberty All-Star and WNBA champ has been across the league lengthy sufficient to observe her friends battle for visibility. She’s seen solely a small uptick in participant salaries over time amid the WNBA’s meteoric rise in reputation.
Stewart has been part of negotiations for 2 collective bargaining agreements as a member of the WNBA’s gamers union. A 3rd spherical of negotiations is ongoing, maybe an important of Stewart’s profession. By the top, she hopes to see participant salaries develop to unprecedented numbers.
“It’s been going up incrementally,” Stewart mentioned. “However hopefully with the brand new TV deal that’s coming, it’ll actually sort of enhance itself right into a class of its personal.”
That’s what WNBA gamers had been hoping for once they opted out of the present CBA two years earlier than its expiration. The WNBA is bringing in extra money than ever from sponsors and ticket gross sales, and can usher in way more from its 11-year media rights deal, value round $200 million per yr beginning in 2026.
With its increasing attain, the WNBA’s progress has are available in a number of areas: Extra groups are being added to the league, that means extra roster spots. Full-time constitution flights had been added final season after years of gamers lobbying for higher journey.
However because the league booms, gamers are on the lookout for a bigger share in that development. WNBA gamers at the moment earn solely a small fraction of the league’s income share.
Participant salaries have been a longstanding level of rivalry between the NBA — which owns about 60% of the WNBA and leads CBA negotiations — and girls’s basketball gamers. It’s one of many largest monetary hurdles the league nonetheless faces, and gamers have mentioned they’re keen to take a seat out video games if negotiations don’t result in a pay construction they really feel is honest.
“The expertise is there, the product is there,” Dallas Wings guard Arike Ogunbowale mentioned. “Now we should be compensated for it.”
The present WNBA CBA, which was signed earlier than the 2020 season, boosted the utmost salaries for star gamers from $117,500 in 2019 to $215,000 in 2020.
However that was lengthy earlier than the league’s latest reputation burst, earlier than star gamers like Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese introduced in file numbers of followers.
“The league has solely soared since” 2020, mentioned Risa Isard, an assistant sports activities administration professor at UConn. “And so that is the prospect for the gamers to sort of recoup all the worth that they’ve produced within the final 5 years that they hadn’t gotten to see themselves so straight.”
What WNBA gamers are paid in comparison with NBA gamers
Paige Bueckers, the No. 1 choose in final month’s WNBA draft, signed a rookie deal that can be value simply over $78,000 in base wage, which is round what Clark acquired because the No. 1 choose a yr in the past. They’ll make way more in advertising and marketing offers and efficiency bonuses.
Each are thought of generational abilities. Each are considered franchise-altering gamers. Each will make considerably much less in base wage than most gamers in different leagues who’ve been simply as hyped for his or her potential to alter the trajectory of their groups.
That’s true for established stars like Stewart and three-time MVP A’ja Wilson, too. Gamers of their caliber could make at most round $240,000.
The minimal wage for NBA gamers is $1,157,153. Victor Wembanyama, the celebrity San Antonio Spurs middle drafted No. 1 in 2023, earned $12.2 million as a part of his $55 million rookie contract.
The NBA’s numbers are a lot larger partially due to the large distinction in revenue margins of each leagues. The NBA generated round $11 billion in income final season. The WNBA doesn’t publicly launch its income numbers, although Bloomberg reported the league made round $200 million in 2023.
WNBA participant salaries are additionally considerably lower than what the NBA paid its gamers when it final generated round $30 million — $200 million at the moment, when adjusted for inflation — within the early Seventies, mentioned David Berri, an economics professor at Southern Utah College. It’s high gamers then had been making round $300,000, which at the moment could be roughly $2 million, he mentioned.
“They’re paying the ladies at the moment so very, little or no relative to what they had been paying the lads 50 years in the past,” Berri added, “and the reason of that to me, (is) you’re clearly simply treating the ladies in a different way than the lads.”
How a lot WNBA participant salaries may improve
How a lot of a wage improve gamers obtain stays to be seen. Berri mentioned a 50% share of $200 million income earnings would equal a median participant wage of not less than $1 million, with max salaries going anyplace from $3 million to $5 million.
That’s simpler mentioned than performed, he added.
“Is the NBA going to acknowledge how little they had been paying them?” Berri mentioned, “and instantly simply come out with an settlement and say, ‘Oh, we’re going to pay you $5 million now?”
No WNBA participant has ever earned near $1 million in wage, however Stewart mentioned reaching that quantity may set an vital precedent.
“There are gamers on this league which can be valued at greater than $1 million,” Stewart mentioned. “That’s simply the fact of what it’s. However for everybody else, seeing that quantity and realizing that, OK — now by that time, the league can be in all probability 30 years into it — and look what we’ve performed.”
Professionals and cons of WNBA gamers sitting out video games
CBA negotiations have by no means led to WNBA gamers sitting out video games, and lots of are hoping that it doesn’t come to that time.
Although the WNBA, which is barely 29 years outdated, has skilled a monetary increase, it’s nonetheless very small when it comes to income in comparison with the NBA, which has been round for 80 years. Which means WNBA gamers’ leverage is restricted in the event that they resolve to take a seat out video games, Berri mentioned.
“As a result of for those who stroll off the job and don’t present up, the homeowners, the NBA homeowners are like, you’re truly not costing me a lot cash,” he added.
Berri pointed to the U.S. girls’s nationwide soccer group’s battle for equal pay as a blueprint for potential success. A lot of these gamers continuously introduced consideration to the gender pay hole in soccer by way of the media and their very own on-line accounts. It ended within the U.S. Home passing an equal pay invoice in 2022, and Berri expects WNBA gamers may use related strategies.
If gamers do resolve to take a seat out video games, Isard, the UConn professor, mentioned it wouldn’t be stunning given their historical past of standing up for causes they consider in.
“Typically, they’re actually selfless in what these causes are,” Isard mentioned, “and so they’re looking for everybody and anybody else and the group, and what’s taking place within the Senate race, and what’s taking place in reproductive justice and what’s taking place in gun laws — so many ways in which they rise up for thus many populations throughout this nation.
“And I suppose once I hear them say, ‘We’d contemplate that,’ What I hear them say is, ‘Why wouldn’t we rise up for ourselves? We rise up for everybody. So us, too.’”
