Why do WNBA players earn 7 times less than their counterparts in the NBA? (2024)

Over the past 200 years, women’s rights have been a prevalent issue in American society. The Women’s Rights movement has recently gained attention with the debate over the wage gap. The discrepancies between the National Basketball Association (NBA) and the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) salaries stand out as one of the most prominent examples of this controversial issue. By observation, both these organizations have the same arenas, represent the same cities, and are marketed to the same regional fan bases but on discussing the differences we can note the cultural devaluation and limited opportunities for women.

What are the definitions of wage gap?

There exists different definitions of the gender wage gap. Some people define the gender wage gap as “the average difference between the wages for men and women who are working”(Runcie, 2019). Under this definition, the wage gap between the NBA and WNBA reached $7.32 million. The WNBA players get paid less than $80,000 averagely in 2019–20, while NBA players earned $7.4 million averagely in the same period (Berri, 2020).

On the other hand, some others pay attention to how much percentage of the league revenue has been paid to the athletes, rather than the actual salary number. Considering this perspective, WNBA players were paid about 20% of WNBA league revenues in the past game seasons, while NBA players were paid more than 50% of NBA league revenues. Sports economist Berri mentioned (2020), “the WNBA and its players have now signed a new collective bargaining agreement”. He also made an optimistic prediction that, with the new agreement, the percentage of WNBA league revenue that the players get paid could probably reach 34%. This percentage is still lower than the percentage in the NBA.

What is the difference between a season in the WNBA vs NBA?

In total, there are 1230 NBA Games during the regular season. There are at maximum, 105 playoff games — if each series were to max out at seven games. In a WNBA season, there are 204 matchups between teams. As each team plays 34 games — four against in-conference competition and three against out of conference competition. There is the possibility of 35 post-season games if each series maxed out at five games.

Analysis

• The NBA’s total revenue in 2017 was about $8.76 billion and $4.3 billion of it went to its players
• The WNBA’s total revenue in 2017 was about $60 million and $20 million of it went to its players.

Hence, NBA players receive 50 percent of the money the association generates, while WNBA players receive less than half of that amount from their association, at 24 percent.

From the above graph we derive these facts:

• The average NBA player earns approx 3% of their team revenue in 2017
• The average WNBA player earns approx 1.5% of the team revenue in 2017
• The highest-paid NBA player earns approx 19% of the team revenue in 2017
• The highest-paid WNBA player earns approx 2% of the team revenue in 2017

To put this into perspective, Steph Curry’s 40 million $ is almost 20% of the Warriors annual revenue. And, DeWanna Bonner’s 127.5k $ is only 2% which is a whopping 900% less than Steph’s salary.

Performing statistical inference on the 2017–2018 season considering points per season, minutes played per season, games played per season, rebounds per season, steals per season, assists per season, and blocks per season and plotted a linear model with the salary as the outcome variable. With a p-value less than 0.0001, points, games and minutes played were our most significant variables. Out of these, points showed the most positive linear correlation. Above, you can see a scatterplot with salary on the y-axis and points on the x-axis with a linear trend line.

After conducting this analysis, my team at the University of Washington including:

1. Oindrilla Choudhary
2. Ganapathy Subramanian Lakshminarayanan
3. Lizzy Chen

And yours truly came to following recommendations for our stakeholders

Improve management and marketing for the WNBA

Researcher Panorov mentioned that the storytelling about NBA players’ achievement can influence fan perception and attract more people to watch the games of the players (2015). Based on this finding, one possible solution can be promoting the achievements of the players; this might help to enlarge the fanbase of WNBA and to increase the viewership of the games.

Extend the WNBA season

The above analysis indicates that increasing the games played and the number of points scored might help to the increasing of the salaries of WNBA players. Currently, the length of the WNBA season is 34 games from May to October; to compare, the length of NBA season is 82 games in 6 months for the regular season beginning in the last week of October to April of the following year. We recommend extending the season beyond the summer to attempt positively influencing the salaries of WNBA players.

Revamping the revenue-share model

WNBA gets only 20% in the past, and possibly 34% in the following years until 2027(Berri, 2020). Raising the percentage that WNBA players get paid from the WNBA league revenue can increase the salary of WNBA players. Therefore, we suggest restructuring the current revenue-sharing model of WNBA to help narrow the wage gap between the NBA and WNBA.

Getting the WNBA players more involved

WNBA players are not “in the United States promoting the WNBA the entire year” (Berri, 2020).If the WNBA players could increase their time playing in WNBA and make more contribution to the promotion of WNBA, their chance of raising the revenue sharing percentage can be increased.

If you reached this line, I thank you for reading my article, I am an aspiring sports blogger.

I highly appreciate you and your feedback.

Coolkingsingh