It’s not a matter of “deserve”. That kind of disconnected-from-reality thinking will lead you to misunderstand why they don’t get paid the same.
Bottom-line: Professional athletes are performance entertainers.
Like any other performer, you get what your potential employer (and there usually aren’t a lot of them) will pay and what you can negotiate. And the people who earn the big dollars are the stars who sell tickets, get advertisers to make a buy, and move the merch. That’s what brings in the revenue. The paychecks are cut from that.
Because of this bargaining disparity and disproportionate rewards, many professional athletes have unionized. This includes the NBA. And it includes the WNBA. So, why can’t the WNB Player’s Association get the same kind of pay?
Well.
The problem is… there’s just no mathematical way for the WNB Player’s Association to negotiate comparable salaries. Not because the WNBA players aren’t amazing, talented, and devoted to their craft.
But because consumers aren’t demanding WNBA games as an “entertainment product”. Without enough viewers and fans, you don’t the have the revenue to write those paychecks.
The issue has nothing to do with the NBA—which has a decades-long head-start building a fan-base and infrastructure that spans generations. Regardless, it’s very hard to claim you “deserve” the pay, if you don’t generate the revenue which would allows you to be paid. The most important reason that athletes get paid is that supporters pay and watch the games.
If you ask me, for which popular sport I’d choose the female version over the male version, that’s definitely volleyball. The female games are 10X more exciting to watch because there are back and forth, whereas in the male version there aren’t. You’d have to play the tactics perfectly so you can smash the defense into pieces in a female game, but 90% of the smashes in males’ games are defenseless regardless of how well the tactics are played. Does anyone think it is more fun to watch if all the serves in a tennis match are Aces???
However, almost all other popular sports see their male version so much more exciting to watch. These include Federation Football, Basketball, Tennis, and undoubtedly, American Football, and so many more.
Then, how can someone suggest the pay should be equaled when the demands of these products are vastly different??? I’ll rest my case here
Unfortunately, this isn’t much within the players’ control. If consumers start watching the WNBA and the dollars start coming in, their pay will rise.
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