Sadly, this is all true. I wonder, however, about the team Clark is on - will her team mates do better due to sellout crowds? I suspect the Indiana Fever had a couple hundred fans attend games last year, but now the team is selling out their games in advance of the season, so presumably there is more money coming in. And when the team visits other cities they will likely sell-out, too, so presumably the other teams will be making more money. Will any of that, ticket sales, translate into more for other players? If the WNBA gets a better broadcasting contract, will that improve player pay? I guess if the size of the “pie” increases, maybe that could help?
Well there is still a revenue split, so higher crowds help everyone equally.
Actually, they averaged just over 4,000 fans per game, though that was next-to-last in the league, and less than half of what Las Vegas, Phoenix, or Seattle drew. That said, they were also not a good team.
Well, your industry likely makes more money than the WNBA, which is a money pit.
No one is paying to see beach volleyball, either.
The thing is, women don’t pay to see the WNBA, either. Well, some people pay to see it, but they don’t pay much, and they don’t watch very much on TV. According to most sources, men slightly outnumber women among WNBA viewers. They don’t outnumber them by a huge, huge margin like they do with other pro sports, but they’re still most of the fan-derived revenue.
If the WNBA was as popular as women’s tennis is, comparatively speaking, they’d be hauling duffel bags full of money out to pay them.
Why?
The WNBA doesn’t make any money. The NBA does. Athletes are generally paid according to what the market deems they’re worth.
Do you know what NBA players made back in 1949, when the league didn’t make any money? Jack shit.
Even with the massive effect Caitlin Clark has had it is still not even close to enough.
They probably need to renegotiate any TV contracts. Or get new ones.
$25 million per team for charter flights? For 20-30 games? It was $20 million for everyone a couple years ago.
Though charter flights at the time were also “unfair competitive advantage” and resulted in a $500k fine for the Liberty at the time, but two WNBA teams are currently getting charters while the rest are not. WNBA leadership needs to figure their shit out.
That’s the thing I think someone said they had just one game on TV last season and most of them play in jc/college gyms …reminds me of the late 70s and early NBA when you’d see condensed finals games 0n 10 pm on CBS and maybe a game on a slow sunday after football was over …
Yeah, but by the mid 80s the NBA was already popular. The WNBA has been around almost 30 years now and this is the closest they’ve gotten to mass appeal.
How long will the NBA continue to subsidize the WNBA? It’s been nearly thirty years, is there a point where they just throw in the towel?
No. It’s at the least good marketing for the NBA. They know exactly what they are doing.
Yes, and it’s a joke. The NBA made 13 BILLION dollars and is projected to increase that by a whopping 11% next year.
- WNBA has lost an average of more than US$10m per year, according to NBA commissioner Adam Silver
- League could triple its annual rights revenue to between US$180m and US$200m from 2025
- NBA negotiating broadcast deals for both properties
The Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) is reportedly set to see losses rise to around US$50 million this year despite a record-breaking start to its 2024 season.The North American league ended May with its highest-attended opening month in 26 years and record viewership across ABC, ESPN and CBS.
However, the WNBA remains unprofitable in its 28th year. National Basketball Association (NBA) commissioner Adam Silver said in 2018 that the WNBA had lost an average of more than US$10 million annually since its founding and The Washington Post has now reported that the league and its teams are expected to lose around US$50 million in 2024 – a five-fold increase on the current average.
I certainly wouldn’t be one to assume I know better than the NBA how they should spend their money. I’m curious to know what the NBA gets out of propping the WNBA. My assumption is there is hope the WNBA becomes a profitable enterprise. Good marketing? In what way? Does the WNBA drive more viewers to the NBA? Is there some sort of long term plan for the WNBA? Is there a point where the NBA decides they’ve spent enough on the WNBA and decide to cut bait?
A question for all of those here expressing concern about the pay scale of the WNBA - how many of you have ever bought a ticket to a WNBA game, or any WNBA branded apparel? If you want to see their pay go up, you need to talk with your wallets.
I"m sure the profitability has much more to do with TV revenue than ticket sales. I’ve watched a few games on TV, so I’m doing my part.
I think this is the answer. Like shelf space for the various kinds of toothpaste from the same company - anyone who is attracted to the WNBA will likely also be attracted to the NBA, and they are not focusing their eyes on other products (or, other sports). I am sure they have done the math and decided the investment is worth it.
I’m not sure that the ratings increase means anything if the league is still operating under a broadcast rights agreement from before the season began. Whoever is showing the games probably appreciates the increase in viewership. They can charge advertisers more, but only have to pay the league what was already agreed to.
This does give the league some leverage to get a better deal the next time the broadcast rights are up for negotiation, but the increase in popularity won’t show up in the league’s finances until then.
Some of the uber-cynical in women’s basketball believe the WNBA was created with one goal in mind - to strangle the American Basketball League in it’s crib. When the ABL folded the founders had some thought of filing an anti-trust suit against the NBA, but decided there was no clear smoking gun. Just a lot of quiet mutterings of slipped comments that suggested that the NBA had used their financial clout to quietly muscle the ABL out of the TV and merchandising deals they would have needed to survive.
In this line of thinking the WNBA continues to exist for one reason and one reason only - to preempt any uppity successor league of trying to muscle into North American basketball in any guise. That, plus if it ever does become profitable they want their share - the NBA wasn’t profitable in the first 20 years of it’s existence and the popularity of women’s basketball has seen a slow but steady rise. But fundamentally it is also minor cost associated with the maintenance of extreme territoriality.
There is also the simple fact that low revenue doesn’t necessarily translate to losses for owners. Billionaire sports owners can use “losses” to creatively save on taxes. To some extent this “WNBA is losing money” thing might also be a bit of smoke and mirror trickery - hard to say if owners are actually losing much if any money when that is accounted for.
“The Version I Heard Was,” while the ABL was created primarily to capitalize on the success of the 1996 USA Olympic team, the WNBA was created so that NBA team owners who also owned all or part of the arenas their teams played in had something else to fill the arenas during the summer. The Harlem Globetrotters and the circus can only go so far. This is why only NBA cities had them to begin with, and might explain how San Jose never got one after its ABL team folded with the rest of that league.
This is in the news again and what the players are asking for is a similar pay structure the men have in the NBA. They don’t expect the pay to be as high, they just want the same percentage of revenue allocated towards player pay. I’m inclined to agree with them. While it doesn’t seem as though the WNBA is itself a business, whether it exists as a prophylactic against litigation for unfair business practices or it’s a marketing ploy of some kind doesn’t matter, it’s obviously not meant to be a for profit entity, so the argument that it doesn’t generate a profit isn’t really relevant to me. They’re not asking to make as much as NBA players, and I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask for the same percentage of what little revenue they receive to go to the players.