Caitlin Clark, the first pick in the WNBA draft this week, will make a $76,535 salary this year.
The top NBA pick, meanwhile, will make 137 times more — about $10.5 million.
That side-by-side comparison of women's and men's pro basketball salaries is getting a lot of attention this week, and rightly stirring up some anger over the huge gap, my colleague Nathaniel Meyersohn reports.
And before you get all "but the WNBA doesn't draw the same crowds" on me, let's just get this out of the way: No one is asking for WNBA players to make the same as NBA players. At least, not right now.
The NBA is 50 years older than the WNBA, has more than double the number of teams and games in a season, and brings in $10 billion a year in revenue, compared with a reported $200 million for the WNBA.
The inequity lies in the way the two leagues structure their revenue shares.
See here: Players receive around 10% of the WNBA's overall revenue, while the NBA's collective bargaining agreement gives players 50% of revenue, according to David Berri, a professor of economics at Southern Utah University.
The WNBA must hit a certain revenue threshold annually before any revenue-sharing agreements kick in.
"That's a league choice," Berri said. "They don't have to do it that way."
If the WNBA were to pay 50% of its revenue to players, top players would earn more than $3 million in salary, he said.
Instead, the WNBA's biggest stars top out at $235,000 under their current contract.
What's next?
The Caitlin Clark phenomenon is just one factor boosting women's basketball right now.
The WNBA is coming off its most-watched regular season in 21 years, and attendance at games last season hit its highest level in 13 years. The league is negotiating new media rights that are expected to bring in millions of dollars of additional revenue.
With so much public enthusiasm for the league's rising stars, the women's union is expected to drive a hard bargain when it begins negotiating for a new agreement after the 2025 season.
"If we have games that are doing 18 million viewers, all right, let's lift things up a little bit more," Breanna Stewart, the New York Liberty power forward and vice president of the players' union, recently told GQ. "Salaries will go up, benefits will go up."
