I am a lifelong sports fan, and it doesn’t matter the sport. I will watch badminton reruns at 3:00 am. So when there is a truly spectacular sporting event, I’m not embarrassed to say I’ll stay on the edge of my seat, whether couch or courtside. During the recent NCAA basketball tournament, University of Iowa phenom Caitlin Clark was a wonder to watch. She may be the most well-rounded offensive player I have ever seen. She shoots and scores from anywhere, she assists, she steals.
To no one’s surprise, Clark was the first pick in the WNBA draft on Tuesday. The all-time leading scorer in NCAA history (man or woman) signed a four-year deal with the Indiana Fever worth $338,000. Now, that’s nothing to sneeze at for a 22-year-old just out of college. But when you compare that to the salary of the NBA’s number one draft pick, it is considerably less than a rounding error. Victor Wembanyama will make $55 million playing for the San Antonio Spurs over four years. Clark’s pay is a paltry 0.614% of Wembanyama’s haul. That’s not even one percent. Now, their salaries are dictated by collective bargaining. So don’t direct your ire at the Fever’s front office.
Instead, we should celebrate what Clark will mean to the WNBA and women’s sports everywhere. One or two superstars can change a league. Just look at what Larry Bird and Magic Johnson did for the NBA back in the ’70s. They turned the league around, and now the NBA has enormous television contracts and endorsements.
With Clark, we have a generational talent who could do the same for women’s professional basketball. The tired old argument that women’s sports in general and basketball, in particular, don’t generate the same viewership or excitement as men’s, has finally been busted wide open. The final of the women’s NCAA tournament, which saw Clark and her Hawkeyes lose to South Carolina, had 4 million more viewers than the men’s final. And the WNBA draft was watched by 2.5 million people, a massive increase from a previous high of 600,000.
Appetites are changing, and the WNBA is planning to capitalize on what many are calling the Caitlin Clark Effect. They certainly felt it in Iowa, where sold-out arenas were the norm. Fox Sports dedicated a camera to follow Clark live on TikTok during her games, with 800,000 people watching the “Caitlin Clark Cam.”
The current TV contract for the WNBA generates an anemic $60 million a year for the league. Divide that among the 12-team league, and you can see why the women’s salaries are a fraction of the men’s. But with viewership and interest swelling, the WNBA is hoping to double its television deal, expand the league, and sign bigger endorsement deals.
Women’s basketball is certainly not alone in its struggle for pay equity. Take tennis, where the delta between men’s and women’s paydays is the smallest in professional sports. Although the four major championships pay women and men equally, many of the other tournaments do not, even though viewership and attendance for women’s matches are as good or better.
Then there’s soccer, where the U.S. women’s soccer team, the winningest soccer team ever on the world stage, had to sue U.S. Soccer to achieve the same pay as the men who have never made it past the semifinals at a World Cup.
The past 12 months have shown us that women in sports and entertainment have huge financial firepower. The highest-grossing film of 2023 was “Barbie,” a movie made by a woman about female empowerment. Taylor Swift’s Eras tour, which hasn’t even finished yet, is the highest-grossing concert tour ever, at more than $1 billion in ticket sales.
Call it a turning point, a watershed moment, a game-changer for women in our culture, where whether we like it or not, money is the final arbiter. Speaking of which, you need not worry about Clark’s bank account. She is reportedly about to sign a $20 million deal with Nike that includes a signature Caitlin Clark shoe. But what about the other WNBA rookies, who don’t have eight-figure endorsement deals? The league’s commissioner believes this is the moment, riding Clark’s star power, to improve conditions for all of her players. What can we do? Buy tickets and jerseys if you can afford it. But most importantly, watch. These are incredible athletes who deserve our support.
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Dan
