The WNBA pay crisis is more than a sports issue—it’s a case study in systemic undervaluing of women’s work.
Scorecard:
- Not a single woman made it into Forbes’ 2025 list of 50 top paid athletes.
- Startup league Project B recently announced it would offer $2 million salaries, and has signed Nneka Ogwumike as its first player.
- The salary-capped amount a woman can earn in the WNBA is only 35 percent of what a male player gets as his standard first year annual raise in the NBA.
- When the league was only two seasons in, the average NBA salary was 58 times higher than the average WNBA salary. Twenty-six years later, the gap has jumped to 116 times higher.
- Viewership of WNBA games is up by 23 percent, and in-person ticket sales have increased by 26 percent, compared to the prior season.
- WNBA players take home 9 percent of league income, while NBA players pocket up to 51 percent.
- Of the 31 voting seats on the Board of Governors, which controls WNBA pay, only three are women, and none are Black.
- The WNBA had a $75 billion media deal in the works, which could have enabled the league and the players with more economic agency, but the NBA sliced it to $2.2 billion over 11 years.
- The WNBA has a collective bargaining agreement in place, but the NBA still holds the purse strings.
The WNBA has been all over the news recently, with players wearing “Pay Us What You Owe Us” shirts, and threatening a league-initiated lockout and/or a player-initiated strike over compensation.
There’s a long history of women in sport fighting for equal pay—and what’s happening with the WNBA today is less of a mirror of the current gender pay gap and more of a throwback to a time when women’s efforts were even more deeply devalued. The WNBA is a visible legacy of Title IX, and an indication of how far there is left to go.
The NBA minimum salary—that is, an entry level player with zero years of experience in the league—is $1,157,153, according to Ryan Phillips at Sports Illustrated. The minimum salary for WNBA players is $66,079.
A male player—independent of performance, team record or any additional effort on his part—will contractually receive a pay increase of $705,112 after his first year.
The hard cap on WNBA player pay—called a super maximum—is $249,244.
Another way to say it: The top salary for women represents just 35 percent of what a male player gets as his mandatory post-rookie raise.
Yet, bring up WNBA pay, and the immediate responses are often that the league doesn’t earn as much—true! That there are not as many viewers and fans—true! That the NBA already subsidizes the WNBA—true! That it’s just not comparable—untrue. These players are not doing different jobs.
Brittney Griner’s 2022 incarceration in Russia shone a light on WNBA players traveling abroad to get paid—a situation that could have been wholly avoided by adequate compensation. The fact that there is a formalized international exchange for female players looks more like evidence of knowledge of the problem rather than any kind of goodwill.
In November of this year, Project B, a basketball startup, reopened the conversation around the pay crises, by offering WNBA stars multi-million dollar salaries to play in Asia, Latin America and Europe.
The WNBA is nothing if not emblematic of the structural barriers women face for fair pay. Across all industries, that’s 75 cents for every dollar that men earn. In professional basketball, it’s 6 cents on the dollar.
The league began inequitably, and it’s getting worse, not better.
Built That Way
A quick primer: The WNBA was created in 1996 by David Stern, then commissioner of the NBA, was approved by the board of governors, and was fully consolidated under the NBA until 2022.
There had long been a clamoring for a female professional league among fans. For anyone who grew up watching exciting ladies college hoops, like the late Pat Summit’s electrifying Lady Vols or University of Connecticut’s 90s-era rise that led to the Huskies dominating across decades, or individual players like University of Southern California’s Cheryl Miller, (a generational talent who many speculated could hold her own with the men), it was a bummer to know this was usually then end of these athletes’ playing careers—especially at such a young age.
The NBA put up the original funding for the WNBA, and as the nascent league found its footing, just two years in, during the 1999-2000 season, the average NBA salary was already 58 times higher than the average WNBA salary.
However, as the model matured and popularity increased, and as contemporary WNBA players like Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese proved the draw of star power, the gap hasn’t shrunk. In the 2024-2025 season, the average NBA salary, not inclusive of endorsements or other compensation, was $11,910,649, compared to the average WNBA salary of $102,244—or 116 times higher.
Though all pro basketball players have a collective bargaining agreement, the pay structure of the WNBA (and NBA) is ultimately in the hands of the NBA commissioner and the board of governors, which has only three women in governor positions—and one, Jody Allen, is selling. There are no Black governors, though both the NBA and the WNBA are comprised of about 70 percent Black players.
What began as a wholly owned division in 1996 eventually transitioned to a 42 percent split between NBA and WNBA, with private investors holding the remaining interest. Thus, the WNBA has no financial majority over their own teams.
Where Does the Money Come From?
In American hoops, valuation of franchises are determined by a complicated mix of factors, but where the salary money pool comes from is basketball-related income, or BRI. This includes revenue generated by stadiums, like through concessions; and revenue from the league, like ticket sales, broadcast fees and merchandising rights.
Both the NBA and the WNBA have a salary cap; however, the NBA uses a soft cap, meaning that there are work-arounds if $195,900,000 isn’t enough to sign a star. The WNBA has a hard cap: It’s the backboard-glass ceiling on pay, period, at $249,244.
Arguments abound that the WNBA is not as large or popular as the NBA—which, again is true. There are fewer games, fewer teams, fewer players per team, lower viewership and less revenue. At the same time, television viewership is up by 23 percent, and in-person ticket sales up 26 percent.
Women’s sports globally are projected to surge to $2.35 billion in revenue by the end of fiscal 2025—and even still, that’s a small share of what the NBA on its own brings in: between $10 and 11 billion, compared to the WNBA’s $200 million.
Yet, WNBA players are not asking for full pay equality, but rather pay equity.
The Difference Between Equality and Equity
NBA players enjoy up to 51 percent of BRI, while WNBA players receive just 9 percent. A new collective bargaining agreement could change that, but nothing has been signed as of yet. The current agreement expired Oct. 31.
While economies of scale do matter in running any organization, it’s hard to see the delta of operational and administrative costs between running the men’s league and the women’s league being so divergent. If we believe this expense differential, it would indicate that in the NBA, 49 percent of BRI goes to non-salary related costs, and for the WNBA, 91 percent of BRI goes to non-salary related costs.
The math is not mathing.
Considering that the NBA was established in 1949, it seems reasonable to expect they would have established some back-office efficiencies that would translate to the sister league.
It’s also important to remember that in the ownership structure—both historic and current—that the language of “subsidy” in terms of the financial support the NBA offers does not exactly track; the NBA has an ownership stake in the WNBA. They do not have to “subsidize.” They could cut the WNBA loose, or they could appropriately value the WNBA’s media rights, which would offer the league and players economic agency.
The men and women of pro basketball work just as hard to get to where they are, though female athletes have often taken on more social and progressive work.
The question remains: Does it really take such a larger percentage of BRI to run 13 teams in the WNBA against the lower percentage of the 30 in the NBA?
And, with a $75 billion media package on the table for the WNBA, then why did the NBA cut a deal for just $2.2 billion over 11 years?
These are women at a pinnacle of professional achievement, who are still beholden to structural barriers. This is not a sports issue. It is a feminist issue.
As Terri Jackson, a Black woman and the current executive director for the Women’s National Basketball Players Association put it: “The NBA controls the destiny of the WNBA.”
That destiny, at least for now, seems to be a deep commitment to unequitable pay. That’s not just a foul. It’s a T—a technical foul called for unsportsmanlike conduct.
Great Job Wendy J. Fox & the Team @ Ms. Magazine Source link for sharing this story.
