Earlier this week, Caitlin Clark — arguably the best pure basketball player ever in the NCAA (men’s or women’s basketball) — was selected by the Indiana Fever as the first pick in the WNBA Draft. She is, as many have said, a generational talent, and the attendance numbers for her games demonstrate her draw.
According to a February article put out by the NCAA:
- Iowa broke the women’s basketball all-time attendance record for a single game, with 55,646 on hand for its exhibition game against DePaul in Kinnick Stadium, home to the Iowa football team
- Seventeen of Iowa women’s basketball’s 19 all-time sellout crowds inside Carver-Hawkeye Arena have occurred during the past three seasons
- Away from Iowa City, the Hawkeyes have helped sell out or break an attendance record in 30 of 32 games this season.
- On average, schools that have hosted Iowa have seen an attendance increase of over 150% compared with their other home games
- The top five most in-demand NCAA women’s games this year have featured Iowa
- The average price of tickets for the Hawkeyes since Clark joined the team in 2020 is up 224%
- The average distance traveled by a fan to watch Iowa play is up 34% from last season
The Indiana Fever, and the WNBA by extension, hope to capitalize on the excitement Clark generates. Within an hour of her draft pick, Fanatics had sold out of all of Clark’s Fever jerseys.
According to ESPN, the Fever’s regular season opener saw “a price increase of 91% since Clark declared for the draft,” and the Fever had to take “the unprecedented step of pre-selling single-game tickets to two games per day over a 15-day stretch” (i.e., you couldn’t buy a ticket to every game in a single transaction, but had to come back each day for 15 days). Further, “the average Fever resale price for home games is [as of April 11, 2024,] $182 — a 136% increase from 2023.”
The WNBA has also selected the Fever to have 36 of its 40 games broadcast on national television or by its streaming partners. Last season, they only had 22 games on national television.
Road teams are seeing an equal interest in games against the Fever. The Las Vegas team had to switch its venue for their July 2 game against the Fever to the larger T-Mobile Arena to account for all the excitement around seeing Clark.
Paying A Generational Talent
What does Caitlin Clark receive from all of this? Well, she gets sponsorship money, of course. According to one analysis, Caitlin Clark’s “name, image, and likeness (NIL)” is worth just under $1 million (for comparison’s sake, Lebron James’s son, Bronny, has a ridiculous NIL value of $7.4 million, despite not even being in the top five best players on his team!).
Before signing her contract with the WNBA, Clark had already made deals with NIKE, Gatorade, State Farm Insurance, Buick, Topps, and Panini America trading cards. More deals will obviously follow.
But from a pure salary level for playing basketball, what does this generational talent get?
Look at that again, especially on a yearly level.
For the 2024 WNBA basketball season, Caitlin Clark—one of the best college players to ever play the game—will be paid about the same as a mid-level corporate employee.
Comparing The Rookie Salaries of Generational Talents In the NBA & WNBA
This disparity between talent and pay is causing a lot of discussion about the finances of the WNBA.
For comparison’s sake, last year’s #1 draft pick in the NBA was Victor Wembanyama.
Wemby is a 7’4″ basketball god who is, without a doubt, the future face of the league. Like Clark, he is also a generational talent capable of single-handedly driving ticket sales for his team’s away games.
While Clark received a four-year contract worth $338,056, Wemby received a four-year contract worth $54.4 million.
The reason behind this is obvious. The NBA generates about $10 billion in revenue, while the WNBA generates about $60 million. The average attendance for an NBA game is about 17,000 people; for the WNBA, it’s about 5,500 people.
To continue the comparison, the NBA’s current highest-paid player, Jaylen Brown, will earn more in salary during the 2026-2027 season than the WNBA’s combined yearly revenue.
There are deeper, systemic reasons as well. Though women’s sports are healthier than ever, investments in them are still a drop in the bucket compared to those in men’s sports. While Deloitte predicts that 2024 will be the first time ever that the revenue generated by elite women’s sports will surpass $1 billion for the first time, the NFL alone generates roughly $22 billion in revenue per season. That difference in wholesale investment is going to reduce the earning potential of a woman’ athelete.
My Argument Isn’t What You Think It Is
I think Caitlin Clark’s salary is relatively appropriate.
I think Victor Wembanyama’s salary is wildly inappropriate.
It’s Not About Differences in Revenue
The NBA Player’s Association negotiated a collective bargaining agreement that ensures the players receive about half of all of the league’s “basketball-related income.” WNBA players receive about the same (provided certain revenue markers are hit). With the huge disparity in revenue (remember, $10 billion against $60 million), salary differences between the leagues will reflect that disparity.
It’s Not About Differences In Fan Interest
The WNBA had its most-watched season last year. “The league’s combined viewership across CBS, ESPN, ESPN2, and ABC was up 21% over the previous season.” Regular season attendance for WNBA games increased 16%, and its social media views increased 96% over the previous season. The total views for its League Pass package increased 257%.
Adding Caitlin Clark and the other phenomenal players in this year’s draft will undoubtedly continue the growth trend in fan interest.
But the total numbers for the WNBA pale in comparison with the NBA.
The viewership for last year’s WNBA finals peaked at 885,000 people, while the 2023 NBA Finals averaged 11.65 million viewers. For regular season games on ABC in 2023, the WNBA drew an average of 627,000 viewers; while the NBA saw about 1.59 million viewers
(It should be noted that last month’s NCAA Women’s Basketball Championship game starring Clark and others reached a peak of 24.1 million viewers, bettering the NBA Finals and becoming the most-watched college basketball game ever.)
With a difference of almost a million people watching your average regular-season NBA game vs the peak viewership of the WNBA Finals, your #1 rookie NBA player is, of course, going to make way more than your #1 rookie WNBA player.
It’s About Maximum Salaries FOR EVERYONE
Caitlin Clark is 22 years old. Her annual base salary coming out of college for the Indiana Fever is comparable to an account manager’s average base salary in Indianapolis, a position that often requires about three years’ experience in customer service.
She’ll earn this salary by playing the game of basketball for forty minutes a game at a maximum of 53 games a year (if her team makes the finals and every round of the playoffs goes the distance).
Her job isn’t just to play in those games, however; she needs to practice and condition, perform public relations for the team and league, and be available basically 24 hours a day, seven days a week for whatever the team or the league needs from her.
A survey of the Internet suggests that professional basketball players work over sixty hours per week and receive about two to four vacation weeks per year.
In return for that, Caitlin Clark will receive a guaranteed income of $76,000 as a 22-year-old college graduate.
I’d suggest that’s a fair income (give or take $10,000) for a sixty-hour-a-week passion-based job that includes plenty of perks and a union-negotiated benefits package.
And it’s about what Victor Wembanyama should receive as well.
Where Does the Money Go?
According to Forbes, the Golden State Warriors were the most valuable NBA team in 2023, with a valuation of $7.7 billion. Before debt payments and revenue sharing, the league was “set to rake in $13 billion” for the 2023-2024 season.
Wemby and the other players split roughly 50% of that revenue. Where would the rest of those billions go if we dropped NBA contracts so they were comparable to the WNBA?
Because we definitely don’t want that money going to the owners.
What if the money went to the states/regions/cities where the teams were located?
Imagine If You Will…
The Boston Celtics, who are above the NBA’s salary cap, still made roughly $88 million in profit last year. Their team payroll (players only) is about $183.6 million. If we reduce that to the WNBA’s team salary cap of $1.5 million and add the difference to the team’s profit, we get about $182.1 million in profit.
Let’s do the same for the team’s owners, executives, coaches, trainers, etc, all the way down to janitors, reducing each salary as we go and making the highest paid salary (assuming it’s the owners’) to $1 million a year.
According to RealGM.com, the Celtics have 157 staff and executives. Let’s wipe away some of the difficulties between roles, be generous, and give all 153 non-owner members of the organization the same as the players ($125,000 a year) and the four owners $1 million a year, bringing us to about $24 million a year, plus the $1.5 million in total player salaries.
I don’t know what the Celtics pay in salaries now for their staff and executives, but I have to imagine we just took a couple of million out of their total payroll and turned it into profit.
So now the Celtics have, maybe, $185 million in profit each year.
Imagine if that money, instead of going to the players or the owners, went to the city, region, and/or state.
The Boston Public School system just announced that it has to cut staffing at 70% of its schools next year. Some schools will lose up to 18% of their staff.
Now, the total budget for BPS is over $1.5 billion. Adding the Celtics’ profit would increase it by about 12%. That amount of money wouldn’t “save the day,” but it would make a significant difference.
Unfortunately, instead of doing good in the community, it’ll go into the pockets of single individuals.
Yes, some of those individuals do plenty of charity work. The NBA’s highest-paid player, Jaylen Brown, is incredibly socially conscious, and he’s announced that he wants to use some of his $304 million contract to decrease the racial wealth gap in Boston by creating a “Black Wall Street” in the city.
But we shouldn’t have to depend on the kindness of strangers. It’s obscene for all of this money to wind up in the hands of the few.
More than Basketball
This type of profit capture should exist across the board and not just for sports.
Just look at some of the profit pulled in by companies headquartered in Massachusetts:
- Biogen: $5.888 billion
- Raytheon: $5.537 billion
- Boston Scientific: $4.700 billion
- Mutual Life Insurance: $3.700 billion
- Thermo Fisher Scientific: $3.696 billion
- TJX (TJ Maxx): $3.272 billion
- State Street: $2.422 billion
- American Tower: $1.877 billion
- Analog Devices: $1.363 billion
- Keurig Dr. Pepper: $1.254 billion
That’s roughly $33.7 billion in profit from just 10 companies in Massachusetts. The total budget for my entire home state of Vermont is $8.5 billion.
Remember, the profits we’re talking about are obscene. None of it should belong in private hands, and all of it should be captured by the people.
Back to Caitlin
So, what are we really talking about when we discuss Caitlin Clark’s $76,000 salary? Sure, it’s a decent wage for a rookie in the WNBA. But this isn’t just about basketball or even sports—it’s about fairness, equity, and the absurd distribution of wealth in our society.
The enormous financial gap between the NBA and WNBA is just a part of the story. The deeper plot is how we, as a society, deal with the obscene amounts of money funneling into the pockets of a select few.
Instead of padding the bank accounts of the uber-rich, that money should be funneled into our schools, hospitals, and crumbling infrastructure.
We need to ask harder questions about why we’re okay with the stark inequities highlighted by Ms. Clark’s contract—not just in sports, but across all industries.
Let’s stop being spectators and start changing the game.