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The Legendary Troll Kingdom
After all the hubbub of last week’s WNBA draft subsided, that’s when the online outrage started. Plenty of people were noting what the WNBA’s bright new stars were about to get paid. Take Caitlin Clark, the darling of March Madness. Her starting salary is about $76,000. “Teacher salary for a superstar is wild,” wrote one commenter. “She would be better off working a 9 to 5,” wrote another. Even President Joe Biden weighed in, taking to twitter to opine that “even if you’re the best, women are not paid their fair share.” All of this professed shock, it almost made sportswriter Lindsay Gibbs laugh.
“A lot of these [viewers] are coming to the WNBA for the first time. So it’s the first time they’re realizing how few roster spots there are, how the salary structure works,” she said. “It became a way to make a mockery out of this league that these players have been putting their blood, sweat, and tears into for 25 years. Even though these players are getting paid too little, this was still a dream come true moment for all of them. But even though I don’t like where the conversation is going, ultimately, it’s a good thing that more people are becoming aware of this and that more people are outraged by it and that there’s going to be more pressure on the league, on the owners, and on the partners of the WNBA to fix this, to get the salaries up.”
On Monday’s episode of What Next, we spoke about what’s been missing from the debate about salaries in the WNBA. And why it will take more than one superstar to fix the league. Our conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Mary Harris: Let’s lay out the dollars and cents of the WNBA draft. We can talk about Caitlin Clark just because she was the No. 1 pick. Her four-year contract is going to be worth $338,000. But you compare that to the guy who was the No. 1 draft pick for the NBA in 2023. His four-year contract is worth $55 million. It’s a breathtaking disparity. Is it fair of me to make that comparison though?
It’s a good starting point for the discussion, but there’s a lot more nuance to it than that. Of course, the NBA has been around for 50 years longer. The NBA has turned itself into a money-printing machine. But, it’s good because when you look at the ratings and team valuations, you see there’s not necessarily 150 times more interest in the NBA than the WNBA, right? Maybe it’s 10 or 12 times more. But the difference in salaries is so exaggerated that it points out that this isn’t just one form of sexism that’s playing into this. It’s compounded discrimination that’s happened over decades.