In recent years, the WNBA has increasingly become more popular among sports fans. Players like Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese, and A’ja Wilson have become household names and favorites, generating more revenue than ever before.
Since the WNBA’s establishment in 1996, the agency has lost funding. But, in 2024, when Caitlin Clark was drafted to the Indiana Fever, tens of thousands more fans attended the Fever’s games. In 2023, the average attendance for an Indiana Fever game was around 4,000. In 2024, it was 16,000 to 17,000 people, a 300% increase!
With this growth of new fans and attendance, WNBA funds also increased. “With the WNBA seeing tremendous growth in recent years– including a new $2.2 billion media deal and skyrocketing expansion fees of $250 million” (ESPN). This new and outstanding revenue is significant for the WNBA, but the players have raised an important issue: they believe they are not being paid what they deserve.
During the warm-ups for the highly anticipated 2025 WNBA All-Star Game, 40 players, including Napheesa Collier and Sabrina Ionescu, wore shirts saying “pay us what you owe us”, demanding to be paid a fair amount of money from the WNBA. Some questions may be: How much are they asking for, and how much is the WNBA keeping? According to CNN 10, “Inside the WNBA’s push for fair pay”, the players only receive 9.3% of the league’s total revenue, which is much less than other pro sports leagues like the NBA, NFL, MLB, and NHL, where players receive about 50% of the league’s total revenue.
When people debate women’s professional sports salaries, most people believe that they are asking to be paid equal to men, which isn’t the case. If WNBA players asked to be paid the same as NBA players, it would be an unfair request, as the NBA generates far more revenue than the WNBA. So the question is: Should WNBA players be paid what they believe they’re owed from the WNBA? The answer: Of course! It is a wholly fair and necessary proposal.
Then, another serious and important issue arises: Why are people so offended when women participating in professional sports ask for better pay? The general answer is that people genuinely don’t believe that women play well enough to be paid more. On many occasions when WNBA pay is questioned, people (typically men) bring up specific clips of famous WNBA players who did not perform exceptionally well.
These clips are repeatedly shown all over social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok to prove one point: women in basketball will never be men; therefore, they don’t deserve better pay. The truth is: women’s basketball will never be men’s basketball.
Now, that doesn’t mean they aren’t as competitive or demanding. That doesn’t mean women’s basketball is less inspiring or less fun to watch. It just means attendance and funds will not be on par with those of men’s basketball. But that should never mean that the WNBA shouldn’t pay its fair share of salaries. These women deserve to be paid what they’re owed, despite the opinions of those who oppose them. They have made names for themselves in a world that wasn’t made for them to succeed.
If the WNBA wants to build a sustainable future, it should invest in its players who can drive that expansion. Paying these athletes what they deserve shouldn’t be an act of charity but an act of justice.
