Sports superstardom has always been a ticket to big money. Look at the salaries that elite professional athletes make, for example. Contracts for hundreds of millions aren’t uncommon in the NFL, NBA, or MLB. I’m not even talking about the future Hall of Famers, necessarily, either.
Kirk Cousins, for example, is a very good football player, but there’s not a lot of talk of him being inducted into Canton. Despite that, he signed a $185 million contract with the Atlanta Falcons.
But Caitlyn Clark has the kind of hype surrounding her that few athletes ever enjoy. Sure, we’ve seen college phenoms burn out quickly, but they still tend to get paid.
Clark, however, is looking at a whopping $76,000 per year, and some people are big mad about it.
The Today show’s Hoda Kotb was in a fine froth on Tuesday when she found out how much WNBA rookie Caitlin Clark will be making. Clark on Monday became the WNBA’s #1 overall draft pick, and immediately signed with the Indiana Fever for $338,000, which would be a low salary in the NBA for one year. But Clark’s contract was for four years, meaning that she will likely be the WNBA’s standout player until Old Joe Biden is 86 years old for the decidedly workaday sum of $76,535.
An enraged Kotb sputtered: “For somebody who is now the face of women’s basketball, it seemed kind of ridiculous.” And in comparison to what NBA players make, it is. Victor Wembanyama, who was the #1 pick in 2023’s NBA draft, signed a slightly more lucrative deal than Clark’s; Wembanyama will be pulling down a cool $55 million.
Kotb continued: “There’s just something about this that’s so disturbing. I mean, I picture all the little girls with signs that say, ‘Caitlin!’ but this is what her contract is worth?” Her cohost, Savannah Guthrie, held out hope for better days, saying wistfully: “Hopefully the payday is coming, too.”
Kotb returned to the subject later, on “Today with Hoda & Jenna,” where she said: “I was like, ‘Ah! What’s she gonna get paid?’ Because finally, you can get a real paycheck, and then I saw it, and I was like, ‘This can’t be right.'” According to the New York Post, Kotb “read Clark’s starting salary of $76,535 and asked, ‘So this is what the No. 1 player, who’s now at the WNBA, [is earning]?’”
There’s a lot of concern with what Clark is starting with compared to the NBA’s number one pick, who got a $12.1 million payday.
However, there are some differences that can’t be ignored.
For one, the WNBA has never turned an actual profit. It’s subsidized by the NBA to a significant degree despite making revenue. In 2019, it made $60 million in revenue, dispersing $12.3 million to teams.
Now, that’s only $200,000 more than the NBA’s number one pick is getting paid.
While teams may have other revenue streams, I haven’t been able to find that information one way or another.
Yet unless they’re generating an insane amount of money on their own, there’s not much chance of coming close to being able to pay Clark anything close to what the NBA could pay.
Yet let’s go back to 2019 for a moment, the year the WNBA made $60 million. How much did the NBA make? It made $7.92 billion.
That’s 132 times what the WNBA made, plus the were subsidizing a whole other league.
This matters because while Clark may be a once-in-a-generation talent, she plays in a league that sees its most popular team get an average attendance in 2024 just over half of what the NBA’s least popular team gets.
And 2024 was reportedly a very, very good year for the WNBA.
See, the reason athletes make so much money is that there’s a combination of factors. One is that their talents are rare. Not everyone can play like the top professional athletes of any sport. If any schmuck can come off the streets and do it, there’s no need to pay a premium for it.
Yet there also needs to be enough money to pay for that rare talent. In sports, that means there needs to be an audience there willing to pay to see that talent.
So far, there’s no evidence there will be for Clark.
See, it’s not that Clark isn’t talented, it’s that women’s basketball isn’t as exciting as men’s basketball. It’s a slower game with more jump shots and less driving to the hoop. Dunks are rare and explosive plays are almost as rare.
In other words, a lot of people find it dull.
These women lamenting Clark’s lack of a payday need to ask themselves something: Are you watching the WNBA?
If you’re not, then shut up. You’re part of the reason Caitlyn Clark isn’t making millions. If you are, what about your friends? What about the public at large?
Until the game makes enough money to warrant those big paydays, it doesn’t matter how talented the player is, they’re just not going to see $12 million in a contract. Not for a veteran and damn sure not for a rookie.
Some people want to make this about sexism, but it’s not. It’s simple economics. If it were purely about sex, then why is it the higher-paid professional men’s lacrosse players are making around $35,000 a year in salary?
Could it be that there’s just not a huge audience for lacrosse? Or is it sexism there, too?
The answer is that no, there isn’t. Lacrosse is an interesting game and all, but most people don’t understand it and so they don’t follow it. As a result, the players aren’t making huge salaries. They get endorsement deals and at least one had a pretty good YouTube presence to bring in some additional money, but the issue here is salary, and the paychecks for lacrosse players show that economics reigns supreme.
Clark won’t get that big of a payday unless the WNBA becomes that big of a league. Frankly, I don’t see that happening anytime soon.
Especially since most of the people decrying the lack of a payday for WNBA players don’t watch the WNBA either.
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The truth is, if American women supported the WNBA at the same rate that American men support the NBA, Caitlyn Clark, Brittany Griner, etc. would be the same kind of paychecks. I have a couple of women in my life who are big sports fans and based on their veiwing habits, it woldn't surprise me if the NBA turns out to have more female fans than the WNBA has fans.
The same as women's soccer! Supply and demand.