WNBA base salaries as a share of revenue have shrunk, despite the league’s rapid growth.
(Bloomberg) — The Women’s National Basketball Association is at the top of its game. The 2022 season was the most watched since 2006. The league also secured a record number of corporate sponsorships and raised $75 million, the largest amount in women’s sports history, last year.
As the league prepares to enter its 27th season in May, “we’re a growth story,” WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert said in an interview. “It’s such a multi-dimensional transformation of what was quite a small league.”
But key stakeholders haven’t been reaping the full fruits of their labor: the players.
The WNBA is projected to bring in between $180 million and $200 million in combined league and team revenue this year, up from about $102 million in 2019, according to people familiar with the matter. But players won’t see any of that extra bounty.
Base salaries as a share of total revenue actually shrank to around 9.3% in fiscal 2022, which ended on Sept. 30, from 11.1% in fiscal 2019, according to an analysis by Bloomberg News.
US professional basketball lays claim to one of the biggest gender pay gaps in sports. The situation is so untenable that most female players head overseas during the offseason, where they make the majority of their income.
The case of Brittney Griner put the WNBA’s anemic salaries under a harsh light: The Phoenix Mercury center returned to the US in December after being detained for 10 months on drug charges in Russia, where the six-time All Star had been playing in order to supplement her WNBA paycheck.
Much of the women players’ problem lies with a collective bargaining agreement struck in January 2020. The contract, which runs through 2027, has an option that allows either side — the league or the players’ union — to notify the other at the end of the 2024 season that it plans to abandon the agreement at the end of the 2025 season. The union is expected to exercise the option.
After the end of the current season, initial talks will begin on negotiations to uphold or abandon the contract, Engelbert said. “We’ll sit down with the players at some point and talk to them” about their goals for the next contract, Engelbert said. “I’m sure this time next year that’s exactly what we’ll be talking about.”
With so much momentum on the players’ side, the union is expected to drive a hard bargain in any contract negotiations. Terri Jackson, executive director of the players association, isn’t tipping her hand. “We represent the collective interests of The 144,” she said in a statement, referring to the total number of players on the WNBA’s 12 teams, “and we take our direction from them.”
The players opted out of a collective bargaining agreement in 2014, a step that resulted in an improved contract. “They did so after long discussions about the future of the league and thoughtful consideration of their legacy,” Jackson’s statement said. “They didn’t just believe in themselves; they were willing to bet on themselves.” Nneka Ogwumike, a forward for the Los Angeles Sparks and president of the union, declined to comment.
For now, base salaries are locked in at a set rate for the contract’s duration, with an annual increase of about 3% for inflation. For the 2023 season, the minimum is $62,285 and the maximum is $234,936. Players have only a few other opportunities to earn extra income through the league, such as highly coveted marketing and broadcasting deals, competition prize money and revenue sharing.
During the pandemic, the locked-in salaries meant players were largely shielded from empty stadiums. But now that the WNBA — and women’s sports in general — is seeing a surge in interest, players are getting none of the upside in their paychecks.
Women’s athletics have consistently gained traction over the years, with 2022 seen as a breakthrough year. Viewership for the first WNBA finals game last year was up 171% over 2021. In the National Women’s Soccer League, viewership for the 2022 championship game was 453% higher than the prior year’s, according to a report from Samba TV, an audience analytics company. The FIFA Women’s World Cup in 2019 reached over 1 billion fans, with at-home viewership up 30% from the prior tournament. Last year, the U.S. Soccer Federation penned a new contract that achieved equal pay for the men’s and women’s teams.
Unlike in the men’s league, the National Basketball Association, team revenue and league revenue are considered separate in the WNBA. Team revenue is largely made up of ticket sales, merchandise, food and beverage sales, local corporate sponsorships and local broadcasting rights. Teams use these funds for player salaries.
The bulk of league revenue comes from national media rights and corporate sponsorships. When it comes to revenue sharing, only league revenue is up for grabs.
Under the existing collective bargaining agreement, the league must meet tough goals that so far have put revenue sharing beyond reach. For example, the league must see 20% revenue growth every year, with the 2019 season serving as the baseline. During the height of the pandemic in 2020, the WNBA had only $56.2 million in sales, according to internal documents reviewed by Bloomberg News. That 8.5% growth was far below the 20% target.
Revenue sharing also requires so-called cumulative targets to be met, meaning that any shortfall in one year is added to the next year’s target, and so on. This snowballing effect has put revenue sharing further out of reach.
Engelbert, the league commissioner, said the WNBA was largely able to shore up its finances since the pandemic, especially after securing key corporate sponsorships from companies such as U.S. Bancorp and a media-rights deal with Amazon.com Inc.’s Prime Video.
Still, revenue sharing has never kicked in for the league, which will likely need at least another $30 million in sales beyond its estimates to trigger sharing, according to a Bloomberg News analysis.
If the path to unlocking revenue sharing isn’t hard enough, the division of funds from there gets even more complicated. After calculating how much league revenue exceeds a target versus the prior year, only 17.5% of that figure would go toward player compensation.
So if, for example, $2 million is available for revenue sharing, and the union opts to split the funds equally, each player would get only a $2,430 one-time bonus.
Players in the W on average take home about 1.4% of their male counterparts’ base pay. In the NBA, players get to keep about 50% of basketball-related income (includes ticket sales and broadcast revenue), or about 39% of all revenue, according to David Berri, a sports economist. The men’s league on Wednesday announced a new collective bargaining agreement that’s set to enhance player compensation even more by including licensing revenue in the shared pool.
Steph Curry, the Golden State Warriors point guard, is the NBA’s highest paid player with a base salary of just over $48 million a year. Dallas Wings point guard Arike Ogunbowale, the top-earning WNBA player, will hit the league’s $234,936 salary cap this season, according to Spotrac.com, a sports-data website. The league said a player received $457,067 in 2022, almost doubling the salary cap through bonuses.
NBA players have advocated for the women to get more benefits, such as a larger share of league revenue. Two weeks ago, the league agreed to come up with $4.5 million for charter flights during playoffs and back-to-back games.
Officials from both leagues have said it’s not fair to compare the WNBA with the NBA, since the men’s league is 50 years older. The NBA also brings in over $10 billion a year — dwarfing the WNBA’s expected $200 million in 2023 combined team and league revenue — for a season more than twice as long as the WNBA’s.
But data compiled by sports economist Rod Fort shows that some NBA players in 1972, the 27th season of the men’s league, made more than current WNBA players do. Back then, Kareem Abdul Jabbar was the highest paid player at $350,000. Accounting for inflation, that would be about $2.53 million today. Berri also estimated that NBA players were getting more than 50% of league revenue in 1972.
The existing collective bargaining agreement has some attractive features, such as guaranteeing season-long paid housing with additional bedrooms for players with children. If a player has to take a leave due to pregnancy, she still gets paid.
Mike Cound, president and owner of talent agency Cound Group Global, said contract negotiations in 2019 focused more on securing those concessions. Once they were confirmed, the players and the union had little leverage to ask for more, he said.
Engelbert said securing more lucrative media-rights deals in the coming years will be critical to the league’s ability to compensate athletes more. “When we get more eyes on the game, when we get more exposure, when we get better media deals, we’re gonna pay the players a lot more in the next cycle.”
(Updates paragraph eighth from bottom with new NBA contract details. A previous version corrected the date on when an opt-out clause in the WNBA contract can be exercised.)
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com
©2023 Bloomberg L.P.