On Monday, nearly 2.5 million people watched the 2024 WNBA Draft. This completely shattered the previous viewership record of 600,000 set decades ago in 2004. This wasn’t a huge surprise, given that the night’s biggest star, Iowa’s Caitlin Clark, had just starred on Saturday Night Live two nights before.
This night should have led to conversations about the outstanding growth of women’s basketball and how to maintain and continue that growth. Instead, in the past few days, news outlets and social media have been flooded with stories about how Clark’s $17,000 Prada outfit cost 22% of her first-year WNBA salary. In addition, it seems nearly everyone, including President Biden, has used this as an opportunity to highlight the disparity in pay between men’s and women’s sports.
While the disparity in and of itself is an issue worth noting, I cringe at how the narrative seems to play out at the start of every season, like Groundhog Day, only to fizzle out as the season progresses. I have written about this issue as well in the past, highlighting the necessity for WNBA players to play overseas, which ultimately provided the conditions for the imprisonment of Brittney Griner in Russia. This time, however, it seems more appropriate to celebrate what the WNBA is getting right compared to its counterpart and how this, in fact, could help reduce the income disparity between the two leagues.
Start at the Top
In sports leagues, where the owners essentially control everything that occurs, change will only occur as much as the owners allow. This is especially true in the WNBA because about half of WNBA teams share an ownership group with their NBA counterparts. This means that some WNBA teams have to fight for relevance not only in their league but also in their own building, from their own ownership group.
Conducting an analysis of the 2022 Racial and Gender Report Card for both the NBA and WNBA shows that for Ownership, President/CEO, and Vice-President positions, the WNBA is leading its counterpart in terms of diversity (see chart 1).
Chart 1: Percentage of Positions Held by Women and People of Color
Source: The Institute of Diversity and Ethics in Sport
From these data we can see a fairly large difference in the racial and gender diversity at top levels between the NBA and WNBA.
The Solution
Even as women college basketball’s stars continue to gain in reputation nationally, compared to their male counterparts, this is not leading to similar levels of growth in rookie pay scales. Over the last two decades, first year contracts for NBA players have grown by over 200 percent while they have only grown around 91 percent in the WNBA (See Table 1).
Table 1: Percent Change in Rookie Salary in NBA vs WNBA 2004 to 2023
Source: NBA and WNBA.com Archives
Altering the landscape of who the decision makers are and how they structure the growth paths of each league will determine if the disparity in pay continues to grow or is set on a path that begins to close the gap.
Let’s continue to look for solutions and not just make headlines.
