tbf, Caitlin Clark is the only WNBA player that’s profitable, and she’s kinda limited salary wise by the fact that the women’s league in general is not profitable and heavily subsidised by the NBA.
People will bitch about how the men’s league gets paid so much in comparison, then proceed to not watch the women’s league…
If you want it to make money YOU need to support it 🫵
This has always been my stance, Women make up approximately 50% of the population and the WNBA generates 2% of the revenue that the NBA does…
My wife and her friends go to some restaraunt once a month and they buy brand name workout clothes. Go to a game, buy a jersey, take your daughter and make it a thing.
So basically, “gender pay-gaps are fine, because the value of a woman is decided by the free market.”? Fuck that capitalist drivel…
Tear down the entire sexist gender-segregated professional sports industry for illegal/unconstitutional gender discrimination and require professional for-profit sports be co-ed like every other industry in this country is mandated to be.
The fact that the NBA doesn’t admit women should be grounds for dissolving the NBA as an illegal organization. The fact that the NBA and WNBA operate in-tandem while maintaining such an egregious gender pay-gap is proof of a conspiracy to discriminate against women.
Fuck the centuries of sexist tradition around sports. Just because it’s the way things have been, doesn’t mean it’s the way it ought to be. I’m sick and tired of the sexism and sexist apologia. If you think women deserve less, I don’t care what your excuse is, especially if your excuse is “the free market”. smh…
The NBA allows women to try out though? It doesn’t ban women from competing at all.
So basically, “gender pay-gaps are fine, because the value of a woman is decided by the free market.”? Fuck that capitalist drivel…
Pay differences between different groups of performers are fine, because you can’t pay more than you bring in in revenue and be sustainable. The WNBA makes 2% as much as the NBA and also gets subsidized by the NBA (as in the NBA pays the WNBA to be a thing).
Tear down the entire sexist gender-segregated professional sports industry for illegal/unconstitutional gender discrimination and require professional for-profit sports be co-ed like every other industry in this country is mandated to be.
Every “men’s” sports league in the US allows women to compete, presuming they can compete at the same level. This is rare because of the general differences in height, weight and upper body strength between men and women, which are exacerbated when you start talking about professional athletes as they tend to be on the tail of the curve for those things.
Only women’s sports leagues discriminate with respect to sex. Same as competitive chess, amusingly. This extends down to the school levels too, where a girl that wants to play a sport with only a boys team must be allowed to try out and make the team if she can perform at the requisite level but a boy wanting to play a sport with only a girls team is simply SOL as according to Title IX policy the former is sex discrimination but the latter is not.
The existence of women’s sports is a form of protectionism.
Fuck the centuries of sexist tradition around sports. Just because it’s the way things have been, doesn’t mean it’s the way it ought to be. I’m sick and tired of the sexism and sexist apologia. If you think women deserve less, I don’t care what your excuse is, especially if your excuse is “the free market”. smh…
Professional sports is only sustainable if the athletes are paid less than the total amount of revenue less the costs of equipment, facilities, etc. In the case of the WNBA, their regular revenue is something like 1/50th of the NBA, and the NBA additionally pays about $15 million per year as a subsidy to help keep them afloat.
If people don’t watch, then there’s fundamentally no money to be given to the players. If you want money to be given to the player, you need to watch.
That’s how it works for women’s sports, and that’s how it works for men’s sports as well.
Pay for all athletes is dictated by the viewership they bring in, not their performance. WNBA players actually make disproportionately more relative to viewership.
You honestly talk like someone who’s never watched a sport in their life.
Men’s minor leagues all pay shit salary too and for the same reasons. Teams and leagues fold all the time.
Hockey, football, baseball, soccer- unless you’re at the top you make about as much as you would at Costco.
This is a great response. If you want to support them, great! Donate, volunteer, watch their games, whatever. For the rest of us, it’s an entertainment product. I don’t watch WNBA because I don’t watch NBA, or any sports. But if you like basketball, yet draw the line at the players’ genitals, that’s weird.
I don’t know how so many people are so devoid of understanding of something that is such an integral part of human civilisation the world over.
People find something they like. Let’s say is basketball. They like playing the game and want to be better so like watching people better than them so they tend to watch the best. Then they also find out they like watching it for entertainment sake. But anyone that has ever watched kids play sport know watching lower quality sport rapidly decrease in entertainment value.
Why would you go actively out of your way to watch an inferior product?
There are so many amateur male athletes that are better than female athletes. But no one goes down to their local game and watch a load of randomers play sport.
People watch the top league usually the club and the international if that sport is international. Then they will watch not their favourite team but other teams to get a better idea of the league. Then they will watch the feeder youth league if they want to. Then other countries leagues or lower leagues. All of these link together and all of them will be a better level than top women’s league.
Usually at the point you run out of time to watch any more or you just like sport in general and go watch the top tier of another sport.
There needs to be a reason to watch and the only reason I have found to watch women’s sport was to watch the UFC because that’s a player on player sport not achieving something. But the women have a lot less power and a lot more flexibility so the strategy is entirely different and sport looks different. In that sense in that entertainment value men can’t achieve that, in all other sports men seem to do what women do but better.
So to your first point, what are NBA fans watching when it’s off season?
