It is Time to Kill the NBA's Assertion about the WNBA's Profitability!
Here is a story we devote an entire chapter to in Slaying the Trolls (yes, I like the cover of our book!):
The NBA has asserted for years that the WNBA is not profitable. We need to emphasize the word “asserts”. The NBA provides no evidence this is true. The NBA also had provided no evidence for fifty years that the NBA isn’t profitable (yes, the NBA has a long history of this assertion). Unfortunately, members of the media have historically reported both assertions as facts.
Today, I want to explain that now it has to be clear this story needs to be killed!
We begin with what new media rights deal recently announced in the media. As Lyndsey D’Arcangelo reported at Awful Announcing a few days ago:
The Athletic recently reported that the (WNBA) is set to receive around $2.2 billion over the course of the next 11 years. That’s an average of $200 million dollars per year with room for additional revenue growth by adding additional media partners.
The deal was secured during the NBA’s negotiations with Disney, NBA and Amazon Prime, totaling $75 billion in contracts. All three media companies/networks will have their own WNBA package. According to The Athletic, the league plans to secure two more rights packages as well, adding another $60 million annually.
It is important to emphasize that the NBA and WNBA did not negotiate these numbers separately. The NBA is very much a co-owner of the WNBA, and it was the NBA that did all the negotiating. As Kurt Badenhausen noted at Sportico a few days ago… “last month, the Washington Post reported that the new media deals would not assign a specific figure to the WNBA rights but would be determined by the NBA instead.”
This point is immensely important. Before we get to that, let’s talk about what the media says the NBA has decided. To put it simply, the NBA gets 97% of the money. The WNBA gets 3%.
Does this make sense?
Well, a few days after this deal was announced the WNBA had an All-Star game and 3.44 million people tuned in to watch Team WNBA defeat Team USA. This was the most watched WNBA broadcast since the first week of the WNBA’s existence in 1997.
Of course, the NBA also had an All-Star game this year. The league that gave itself 97% of the new media deal managed to get 5.5 million people to tune in to the 2024 All-Star game. And this was an improvement on the 4.6 million people who watched the 2023 All-Star game.
One doesn’t have to be a math expert to see that the difference in the ratings between the NBA and WNBA All-Star game don’t seem to match the difference in share each league is receiving from the new media deal.
Once again – and this really needs to be emphasized – what the WNBA is getting wasn’t determined by the market. The NBA has decided on its own what the WNBA is getting.
A few people have questioned – before we saw those ratings numbers -- if the number the NBA chose is exactly right:
Here is Terry Jackson (Executive Director of the WNBPA) as noted by D’Arcangelo:
“We have wondered for months how the NBA would value the WNBA in its media rights deal,” said WNBPA Executive Director Terri Jackson in a statement posted on X. “We look forward to learning how the NBA arrived at a $200 million valuation — if initial reports are accurate or even close. Neither the NBA nor the WNBA can’t deny that in the last few years, we have seen unprecedented growth across all metrics, the players continue to demonstrate their commitment to building the brand, and the fans keep showing up. There is no excuse to undervalue the WNBA again.”
"I'm not great with numbers. Lowball. That's a lowball." Miller said to a reporter who asked her thoughts on the deal with ESPN, Amazon, and NBC.
"Not enough. Not even close," Miller said. "Now I'm not trying to inflate it a whole lot, but a two's nice. An eight would be better. That's what I'm talking about because they know. They know, and we certainly have come a long way. And I'm not about gouging, but it's a long time overdue and we're gonna continue getting better and better. All you have to do is look at college basketball and what's coming next — the next wave, the next wave of excitement. We have this now and pretty soon we're gonna add another gold medal, so women's basketball is in a great place right now."
And here I am again (from the aforementioned article by D’Arcangelo):
“We should also emphasize that what the WNBA is getting is not the product of a market-driven process,” Berri continued. “It does not appear the NBA shopped the WNBA deal to multiple partners to see what they could get. The NBA appears to have packaged the WNBA with their deal and then the NBA appears to have decided the WNBA was worth a tiny fraction of their $75 billion deal.”
The ratings we see for the WNBA (and this goes beyond the All-Star game!) clearly suggest — as Cheryl Miller says - the NBA – is “lowballing” the WNBA. Yes, the NBA has a longer season. Yes – because the NBA got a 50-year head start – the NBA’s TV ratings and attendance are higher. But the numbers the NBA gets are not 33 times higher now. And it seems likely that going forward this disparity is just going to look worse and worse.
Once again, the WNBA did not shop their rights like the NBA did. Again, from the D’Arcangelo article:
“The WNBA is getting a 267 percent increase. That sounds impressive,” said David Berri, professor of economics at Southern Utah University and co-author of Slaying the Trolls! “But it doesn’t seem quite consistent with the market. Apple TV signed Major League Soccer to a rights deal that gives MLS $250 million per year in 2023. As we noted in Slaying the Trolls!, the ratings don’t seems to suggest MLS should get more than the WNBA.”
The trolls often tell us that women’s sports do worse because of “the market”. We note in Slaying the Trolls that because of a history of gender discrimination that market is often biased against women. So, even if the WNBA was allowed to use “the market” we might suspect the resulting deal wouldn’t quite be right.
But this deal didn’t even rely on magical markets. Once again – and I keep repeating this point -- the WNBA’s rights deal appears to be something the NBA arbitrarily is deciding on its own.
Now let’s bring this back to the profitability story. The same NBA that appears to arbitrarily determining the WNBA’s revenue is also the same NBA that asserts the WNBA is unprofitable.
This should lead everyone to ask: If you are arbitrarily choosing the revenues, what do your profit assertions even mean?
Obviously, these assertions clearly mean nothing now. Of course, we argued in Slaying the Trolls (and again, it is an entire chapter!) these assertions never meant anything.
Hopefully, everyone now sees this has to be true. The NBA can’t tell us there are no profits when they are simply deciding on your own the size of the WNBA’s revenues. Assertions have never been facts. And this assertion is mostly definitely not a fact now!