There would be so many wonderful sports themes at the end of the WNBA season. For example, how A’ja Wilson from the Las Vegas Aces dominated, even more than Michael Jordan once did among men. She scored the most points per game and was also voted the best defender in the US Basketball League; She was the most valuable player of the regular season and the final series, which Vegas won 4-0 against the Phoenix Mercury. During the third game, German Mercury player Satou Sabally suffered a concussion and missed the last game.
The what-would-have-been debate shows what a fantastic season the Berliner had (over 16 points and almost six rebounds per game) with her new club. Or Aces coach Becky Hammon: In 2020, she was the first woman to have responsibility on the sidelines in the NBA with the San Antonio Spurs after a suspension for head coach Gregg Popovich. After her third WNBA title in four years, calls are getting louder for her to be given a men’s team.
:Someone who has something to say
First the Wagners, now Satou Sabally: Basketball documentaries are popular, now there is also one about the most important German woman – her impact goes far beyond sport because she embodies a Germany that is currently in danger.
That brings us to the topic: the value of this league and its players, who are currently negotiating a new collective agreement. The fact is: the WNBA is humming. On average, almost a million people watched regular season games on national TV, and the first game of the final series was watched by 1.9 million people. For men there were 8.91 million – and no, mentioning this number is in no way disrespectful to women, but rather an argument for them. Because: The league produces great figures like Wilson, Sabally, Breanna Stewart and Caitlin Clark. The Indiana Pacers men’s team may have caused enthusiasm by reaching the finals in the spring – what you noticed during your visit to Indianapolis: The hottest number in the city is Caitlin Clark. No wonder she earns $16 million a year from advertising.
Her salary with the Indiana Fever this season: $78,066.
That’s not a typo, and league commissioner Cathy Engelbert obviously thinks it’s okay. Minnesota Lynx leader Napheesa Collier recently called the league leaders that reason In a four-minute angry speech “the worst in the world”, she was particularly targeting Engelbert: “I asked her how it can be that players like Caitlin, Angel Reese or Paige Bueckers earn so little even though they are clear revenue generators,” Collier reported on a conversation with the league boss in the summer. Collier is vice president of the players’ union. “Answer: ‘Caitlin should be grateful that she’s getting 16 million off the floor because of the WNBA platform – otherwise she wouldn’t get anything.’ And she said, ‘Players should be on their knees grateful for the rights deals I got them.'”
Since this season, the league has been making a total of $220 million a year in TV and streaming money through agreements with Disney, Amazon and NBC Universal, among others. Six times as much as before, to be sure. But only 3.2 percent of men’s TV income ($6.2 billion) – and so back to these final ratings. The legitimate question from the WNBA professionals is: Why is the difference in sales still so huge, when at least more than a fifth of the men’s quotas are now achieved? And: Why doesn’t the WNBA pay out even ten percent of its income to the players as salaries? In the NBA and other men’s leagues it is about half. The popular Caitlin Clark will earn in her third professional season less than half a percent of what an NBA rookie like Cooper Flagg ($16.17 million) will earn in his first season.
The collective agreement expires at the end of October. The players want significantly more of the overall pie, and they want a change in the salary structure: So far, the maximum salary in the WNBA is less than $250,000 per season – that’s four percent of the maximum salary in the NBA currently. World-renowned throwing artist Steph Curry receives $69 million. What helps the players: The league is not only booming, it is also growing. Two new teams will be added next season (Toronto Tempo and Portland Fire), and by 2030 the league will grow to 18 teams via franchises in Cleveland, Detroit and Philadelphia.
The WNBA is growing, and yet young players receive meager salaries
So it’s about money – also as a sign of appreciation. That is the real core of the negotiations: the players want to be treated like professionals, not just in terms of salary. It’s about poorly paid referees whose decisions had a significant impact on the semi-finals, for example when a foul on Collier was not called and she was injured. “The league thinks it is successful despite us and not because of us,” she says.
Incidentally, Collier, 29, is not only a trade unionist, but two years ago she founded the League Unrivaled together with New York Liberty player Stewart. It plays games during the WNBA break and is intended to be a lucrative alternative for players to avoid having to earn additional salaries in other countries. As a reminder: On February 17, 2022, WNBA professional Brittney Griner was arrested at Moscow airport; she was only released ten months later in exchange for Russian arms dealer Wiktor But. Griner was in Russia because her basketball club, UMMC Yekaterinburg, paid five times her then-U.S. salary. Unrivaled’s message to the WNBA is right there in the name: Don’t think you don’t have competition!
League boss Engelbert is a master of the sports policy discipline of cleverly avoiding burning questions. When asked about specific collective bargaining issues and the obviously broken relationship with the professionals – the majority of WNBA professionals agreed with Collier’s statements on social media – she said: “It breaks my heart that some players think the league doesn’t care about them. If professionals don’t feel valued, we have to change, then I have to do better.” Sounds good, a sentence like this, but one that the professionals have heard too often. Satou Sabally’s reaction to this: “No comment – because that’s exactly what she said.”
