“Pay Us What You Owe Us!”
So, What Will the WNBA Owe the Players? Let's Make Average Pay $1.5 million!
“Pay Them! Pay Them! Pay Them!”
As ESPN reported, this is what the fans of at the WNBA All-Star game were chanting as Napheesa Collier was given her All-Star MVP trophy by WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert.
And both before and after the game, the WNBA All-Stars were wearing shirts with a simple message:
“Pay Us What You Owe Us”
https://www.si.com/onsi/womens-fastbreak/news/napheesa-collier-explains-pay-us-what-you-owe-us-message-amid-wnba-cba-negotiations-01k0n2xc979t
For those who know that…
NBA owns more than 60% of the WNBA
and there is a huge gender wage gap in the NBA/WNBA
this was amazing to see. As Collier said "The fans making that chant, that gave me chills."
Of course, knowing there is a problem is only half the battle. Exactly how much does the NBA/WNBA have to pay their players to “pay them what they owe”?
We tried to answer this question for the 2023 season in Slaying the Trolls.
And a few weeks ago, I detailed what WNBA players are likely worth this season. The analysis for this season relied on reports from Forbes and Sportico that indicated WNBA revenue in 2025 is at least $300 million. And if the WNBA players received 50% of that estimated revenue (similar to the percentage of basketball-related income that NBA players receive), then average pay in the WNBA would be around $1 million. Average pay is only around $120,000, so — once again — there is a huge gender-wage gap in the NBA. The men get 50% of Basketball Related Income and the women of the WNBA get less than 7% of WNBA revenue today.
The WNBA players, though, are not negotiating for what they are going to be paid in 2025. They are negotiating for what they are owed in the future. For us to know what the players are owed in 2026 and beyond we first have to know WNBA revenues exactly.
Last month, Nneka Ogwumike – the president of the WNBPA – told Forbes what she knows about WNBA revenues.
“I feel like we’re going based off educated estimations. We still have a lack of transparency that [doesn’t] allows us to really know. There is nothing that we know when it comes to how much money the league is making.”
This statement very much complicates the negotiations. Once again, the NBA owns more than 60% of the WNBA. But the NBA/WNBA has not communicated to the players exactly how much revenue the WNBA earns.
This has been a problem for years in the WNBA. When I wrote at Forbes in 2018, I did offer an “educated guess” that league revenue was about $60 million. Later, Bloomberg reported that a league source said the revenue in 2019 was $100 million (suggesting my estimate was too low!). That same Bloomberg report said that league revenue had doubled to $200 million in 2023.
Now, though, we have reports from Forbes that places 2024 revenue at $226 million and another report from Sportico that indicates the Golden State Valkyries are bringing in $75 million in their expansion season. Those two data points tell us – as noted earlier – that 2025 revenue is at least $300 million.
This educated estimate, though, is too low. According to Across the Timeline, average attendance in the WNBA is up 14% in 2025 (relative to 2024). Even if you ignore the Valkyries amazing attendance, the other teams in the league have seen average attendance increase nearly 6%. That increase has been achieved with Caitlin Clark missing more than 40% of the Indiana Fever games (yes, there is more to the league than Caitlin Clark!).
In addition to rising attendance, the WNBA’s media deal has been renegotiated. Yes, the NBA – as Cheryl Miller and I both argued – likely lowballed the WNBA. Nevertheless, it looks like the WNBA will now be getting at least $200 million in revenue each year just from the national media deal with Disney. The league also will likely receive an additional $60 million per year from CBS and ION.
Given all this, we can conservatively estimate the league revenue will be at least $500 million in 2026. And that estimate is quite conservative and completely ignores the nearly $1 billion the WNBA has just received in expansion fees! So, what the WNBA “owes” its players is likely more than what I am about to say!
If the WNBA has $500 million in revenue next season (again, they likely have more!) and the players are given 50%, then the WNBA players are splitting $250 million. By the time we reached the All-Star game this season, 168 different players had logged minutes in the WNBA. If these players were splitting $250 million, average salaries would be $1,488,095; or just about $1.5 million! The WNBA tends to set the minimum wage at around 50% of this average, so minimum wages would be $744,048. Yes, this is about ten times what Caitlin Clark is getting right now!
As for veteran stars – like Napheesa Collier, Alyssa Thomas, A’Ja Wilson, and Breanna Stewart – the average pay of the top 10 star players in the league (following the methodology I detailed in the discussion of Alyssa Thomas last month) would be about $4 million!
That number is so far beyond what the NBA/WNBA is currently paying their players it seems hard to believe that when these negotiations are concluded that the NBA/WNBA will definitely close its obvious gender-wage gap (as I have noted in the past!). So, I repeated this same analysis with revenue splits below 50%. In the following table you can see what “stars”, “average players”, and “minimum wage” players get at each of these splits.
Remember, today WNBA players get less than 7% of WNBA revenues. Given the increase in revenue, at 40% split gets the average wage above $1 million and a 20% split indicates star players should be well beyond the $1 million mark. In fact, even a 10% split would result in a substantial raise for everyone. But obviously, these lower splits are nowhere near what the WNBA owes its players if the women of the WNBA are going to be treated like the men of the NBA.
Will the NBA/WNBA ever pay the women what they owe? We can now see what that outcome looks like. And we can also see that if a settlement doesn’t come close to an average wage of $1.5 million.... well, players better not let those t-shirts go!