Editorial

There’s A Simple Fix For All The Whining About The Fake WNBA ‘Pay Gap’

Sarah Stier/Getty Images

Font Size:

Insincere morons the world over feigned faux hysteria at Caitlin Clark’s new WNBA salary after it was revealed she would make roughly $76,000 a year in her first four years with the Indiana Fever.

Clark’s star has been shining so brightly that she’s renewed an age-old argument about the gender pay gap. Her celebrity status even prompted President Biden to weigh in.

“Women in sports continue to push new boundaries and inspire us all. But right now we’re seeing that even if you’re the best, women are not paid their fair share. It’s time that we give our daughters the same opportunities as our sons and ensure women are paid what they deserve,” Biden tweeted Wednesday.


Other disingenuous dingbats joined in with a chorus of melodrama, fomenting phony outrage over the star’s WNBA salary. (RELATED: ‘Be Funnier Dumb*ss’: Caitlin Clark Dunks On ‘SNL’ Castmember)

“For Caitlin Clark to make only a FRACTION of what her male counterparts make is beyond outrageous.  It’s 2024. The time to dismantle the gender pay gap and give women equal opportunity was years ago. Let’s get it done NOW,” Democratic Massachusetts Rep. Lori Trahan tweeted Thursday.

Well, I have a simple solution for Biden, Trahan and everybody else clutching their pearls: get season tickets. I’m not sure if Biden has ever attended a WNBA game in his life. He certainly hasn’t done so as President. The Daily Caller reached out to Trahan to ask if she had ever attended a game or supported the WNBA financially in any way, but did not hear back by time of publication.

Biden and Trahan are hardly outliers. Of the scores of people complaining about the alleged pay gap, almost none of them actually attend WNBA games. The math simply does not add up. The best WNBA team in terms of average attendance, the Las Vegas Aces, still averaged less than 10,000 fans per game last season, according to Statista.

While the league is growing in popularity, the whiners’ complaints far outpace their willingness to actually support the league financially. That lack of support leads to far lesser premiums in value on in-game advertisements for the league’s partners, in turn leading to a significantly lower revenue stream than their male counterpart, the NBA.

As a matter of fact, compared to their NBA colleagues, the women are actually overpaid.

WNBA players make a higher proportion of their league’s revenue than the NBA players do, according to data on team salary numbers collected by the Daily Caller from Spotrac. The NBA brought in over $10 billion in revenue last season. The WNBA, meanwhile, was expected to bring in just two percent of that at $200 million, Bloomberg previously reported.

Now, the WNBA is certainly on the rise. Their $200 million 2023 revenue is up over 200 percent from their 2022 number of $60 million, according to data from the World Sports Network and Bloomberg. That’s great and it’s a sign of the growing appetite for women’s athletics. But it’s still small fry compared to the NBA.

Trahan calls for “equal opportunity” for women in sports. I would argue they have exactly that. Clark is a perfect example. She just signed an eight-figure deal with Nike rumored to be in the $10 to $20 million range. Where’s the outrage for all the girls who don’t get shoe deals? What about the endorsement gap?

There’s no such thing. Clark earned every penny she got from Nike by being the most electric, exciting women’s basketball player the world has ever seen. And Nike will capitalize on that, make her the face of a number of campaigns and sell the bejeezus out of some sneakers because of it. As they should. (RELATED: America Is Finally Talking About Womens’ Basketball But Some Scolds Still Aren’t Happy)

If folks want WNBA players to make as much as NBA players do, they need to put their money where their mouth is. Patronize the games. Buy every jersey. Drain your wallet at the concession stands. I have never, in my life, seen a kid — boy or girl — walking around the city with their favorite WNBA player’s jersey on. Have any of these scolds bought their kids a Elena Delle Donne or Skylar Diggins jersey for Christmas? Instead of blaming some nameless, faceless invisible force of inequity for your gripes, how about you take some responsibility, JOE, and say “hell, you know what, I’m doing all this complaining, but I’ve never even been to a game. Maybe it’s high time I actually did something about the thing I’ve been complaining about.”

That would for sure be a good start. But, as I expect the vast majority of these people are more interested in competing in a dedicated whine-off than actually fixing any problems, I won’t be holding my breath.

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel