WNBA

[dk423]

WNBA reaches 'monumental' 11-year media deal

The WNBA announced an 11-year media rights deal with Disney, Amazon Prime Video and NBCUniversal, with a source saying the deal is valued at about $2.2 billion.

www.espn.com

The WNBA got their TV rights deal last year. 11 years, 2.2 billion — about 200mill per year. That’s guaranteed, but sounds like it can end up being closer to 3 billion.

They absolutely should be paid more in light of this. The max salary is 242,000.

A quick ChatGPT math equation showed that only 8% of the revenue goes to players. In pro leagues, that number is 50%. I’m not saying that they should necessarily make that much, given its history of profits, but it showed the much closer to that number than it is now.

 

[mjmaherjr]

WNBA reaches 'monumental' 11-year media deal

The WNBA announced an 11-year media rights deal with Disney, Amazon Prime Video and NBCUniversal, with a source saying the deal is valued at about $2.2 billion.

www.espn.com

The WNBA got their TV rights deal last year. 11 years, 2.2 billion — about 200mill per year. That’s guaranteed, but sounds like it can end up being closer to 3 billion.

They absolutely should be paid more in light of this. The max salary is 242,000.

A quick ChatGPT math equation showed that only 8% of the revenue goes to players. In pro leagues, that number is 50%. I’m not saying that they should necessarily make that much, given its history of profits, but it showed the much closer to that number than it is now.

they play like half the amount of games as nba teams. What is the yearly total revenue of the nba vs wnba ? Then you are working on lower numbers expenses eat up a bigger % of the revenue.

Meta can afford to pay key employees and general employees a lot more money than a start up or existing company that doesn't have a lot of revenue because their scale of revenue is so big

 

[dk423]

they play like half the amount of games as nba teams. What is the yearly total revenue of the nba vs wnba ? Then you are working on lower numbers expenses eat up a bigger % of the revenue.

Meta can afford to pay key employees and general employees a lot more money than a start up or existing company that doesn't have a lot of revenue because their scale of revenue is so big

The WNBA isn't a publicly traded company, as you know, so some of this is impossible to answer. But, according to Deloitte, the WNBA's revenues this year are projected to surpass $1 billion, up from $710 million in 2024. There's only 13 teams to split that revenue from, which is less than half of the NBA teams.

I'm not really sure how its a plausible argument that the WNBA, with revenues surpassing one billion dollars in 2025, should be paying max salaries of 225k. It is not consistent with male professional sports leagues in how revenue is split (I am not talking about the gross number), and, even if profitability is the issue people like to talk about, it is still not consistent with how high-valuation and high-revenue companies work anyway. Uber wasn't making a profit in 2022, but their CEO still made over a million dollars + top engineers were making 500k+. There was nothing wrong with that. They did eventually did make a profit.

WNBA is different in financial scale than Uber, but they're clearly still seen as a worthwhile investment. Individual teams' valuations are soaring and expansion is rapidly happening. The NBA owns 42% of the league. If it was in such a terrible financial situation as others make it out to be, and they can barely afford the league, how could that really be happening?

Again, I'm not arguing for similar NBA salaries. But to get 30-40% of the revenue split, up from 8%!!!, would at least be a solid ground for players to stop playing in other leagues year round + make the WNBA a more solidified sport.

 

[MainMan]

WNBA reaches 'monumental' 11-year media deal

The WNBA announced an 11-year media rights deal with Disney, Amazon Prime Video and NBCUniversal, with a source saying the deal is valued at about $2.2 billion.

www.espn.com

The WNBA got their TV rights deal last year. 11 years, 2.2 billion — about 200mill per year. That’s guaranteed, but sounds like it can end up being closer to 3 billion.

They absolutely should be paid more in light of this. The max salary is 242,000.

A quick ChatGPT math equation showed that only 8% of the revenue goes to players. In pro leagues, that number is 50%. I’m not saying that they should necessarily make that much, given its history of profits, but it showed the much closer to that number than it is now.

Seems right.

CC should be calling it a career in just about 11 years.

 

[mjmaherjr]

The WNBA isn't a publicly traded company, as you know, so some of this is impossible to answer. But, according to Deloitte, the WNBA's revenues this year are projected to surpass $1 billion, up from $710 million in 2024. There's only 13 teams to split that revenue from, which is less than half of the NBA teams.

I'm not really sure how its a plausible argument that the WNBA, with revenues surpassing one billion dollars in 2025, should be paying max salaries of 225k. It is not consistent with male professional sports leagues in how revenue is split (I am not talking about the gross number), and, even if profitability is the issue people like to talk about, it is still not consistent with how high-valuation and high-revenue companies work anyway. Uber wasn't making a profit in 2022, but their CEO still made over a million dollars + top engineers were making 500k+. There was nothing wrong with that. They did eventually did make a profit.

WNBA is different in financial scale than Uber, but they're clearly still seen as a worthwhile investment. Individual teams' valuations are soaring and expansion is rapidly happening. The NBA owns 42% of the league. If it was in such a terrible financial situation as others make it out to be, and they can barely afford the league, how could that really be happening?

Again, I'm not arguing for similar NBA salaries. But to get 30-40% of the revenue split, up from 8%!!!, would at least be a solid ground for players to stop playing in other leagues year round + make the WNBA a more solidified sport.

My issue isn’t what they make in the future it’s the idea they were underpaid the last 20 years before last season

 

[lawmanfan]

Two observations to add to some of the excellent points on this thread (s/o DK, Austour, Spocky):

1. For those of you who do not watch the league - their growth is about more than Caitlin Clark and will continue regardless of her. She is definitely a major plus and has obviously juiced interest, but the interest level and revenue are much more widespread. Aside from the many tremendous players already in the league, the addition of Paige Bueckers this year and Juju Watkins coming are only going to continue to grow the league's profile.

2. It's tough to know what the P&L numbers really are. The NBA directly owns 40% of the WNBA and indirectly controls more than half. And it allocates profit/loss between the NBA and WNBA as it chooses. And that's without getting into accounting mechanisms that can show a loss in a profitable enterprise or the obvious skyrocketing team values. But as a practical matter the math just doesn't add up and there is no serious debate that the players are woefully underpaid. My guess is that they will go from a (ridiculous) 8% revenue share to something like 30%.

 

[Knight]

Does the WNBA make money?

 

[dk423]

My issue isn’t what they make in the future it’s the idea they were underpaid the last 20 years before last season

I'm pretty sure their "pay us what you owe us" is based off the WNBA's future earnings (since its baked in with the TV deal + expansion [each of the new owners are paying a 250m expansion fee]) and not previous ones though. I don't think anyone, including them, is really arguing about what Diana Taurasi was making in 2015.

 

[lawmanfan]

Does the WNBA make money?

As noted above (a) hard to know due to lack of transparency; and (b) are we only looking at revenue/ profitability or growth in franchise value?

Some franchises have long been profitable (e.g. the Liberty who have more or less sold out Barclay's every game for years) and others not. My guess is that as a whole the league probably started turning a real profit (not in accounting terms) last year and is going to further grow from here (which relates to DK's point that the players are looking for a fair share of future income on their CBA covering future years, this is not a debate about past pay).

2023 average attendance was 6,600
2024 average attendance was 9,800
2025 average attendance is over 11,00

Team attendance for 2025 breakdown here:

 

[johnsliva]

A very pretty chart LMF but what is the avg price of a ticket to a wnba game, Its less than 50 a ticket and how much of the attendance was comped. the NBA is over 220 a ticket with much greater attendance numbers. Saying that the NBA choses to [play with the p&L numbers to make the wnba look better or worse still does not make the wnba a stand alone profitable business. Hell the mets are not profitable as uncle steveie choses to dump his investment money to try to compete. (as a met fan I do appreciate this) So if an expansion team pays 250 mill what should they make as a profit to justify thier investment? What are people paying for current teams? Sorry profit sharing not revenue sharing should be the goal. Let the players have some skin in the game.

 

[lawmanfan]

A very pretty chart LMF but what is the avg price of a ticket to a wnba game, Its less than 50 a ticket and how much of the attendance was comped. the NBA is over 220 a ticket with much greater attendance numbers. Saying that the NBA choses to [play with the p&L numbers to make the wnba look better or worse still does not make the wnba a stand alone profitable business. Hell the mets are not profitable as uncle steveie choses to dump his investment money to try to compete. (as a met fan I do appreciate this) So if an expansion team pays 250 mill what should they make as a profit to justify thier investment? What are people paying for current teams? Sorry profit sharing not revenue sharing should be the goal. Let the players have some skin in the game.

John - we understand, you don't like women's basketball. Whether you've ever watched any of it, who knows. But the answer to your question is that W ticket prices generally range from $50 to $150. The Liberty, Fever, Golden State, LA, Seattle, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Minnesota are not giving any tickets away.

At the other end of the spectrum Connecticut gives away a ton of tickets because their home court is Mohegan which really limits their draw. They should move to Boston or Hartford, really. Atlanta's problem is that at the moment they're terrible.

Not sure why you would feel compelled to come to a thread to crap on a sport you don't watch and don't care about, but it isn't helpful to just make up "facts." For my part I don't understand why people want to watch soccer, or golf, or Nascar. But I'm sure they all make money and there is some intrinsic value in them - I just don't bother to go to the soccer or golf threads to say "this is BS, golfers and race car drivers aren't athletes, whatever they're getting they are overpaid." etc.

 

[dk423]

A very pretty chart LMF but what is the avg price of a ticket to a wnba game, Its less than 50 a ticket and how much of the attendance was comped. the NBA is over 220 a ticket with much greater attendance numbers. Saying that the NBA choses to [play with the p&L numbers to make the wnba look better or worse still does not make the wnba a stand alone profitable business. Hell the mets are not profitable as uncle steveie choses to dump his investment money to try to compete. (as a met fan I do appreciate this) So if an expansion team pays 250 mill what should they make as a profit to justify thier investment? What are people paying for current teams? Sorry profit sharing not revenue sharing should be the goal. Let the players have some skin in the game.

Please tell me one pro sports league that does profit sharing instead of revenue sharing. By your logic, the Mets players should also not earn money because the Mets aren't profitable.

 

[austour]

Please tell me one pro sports league that does profit sharing instead of revenue sharing. By your logic, the Mets players should also not earn money because the Mets aren't profitable.

As the Talking Heads said . . .

 

[austour]

Valuation cslculation factors are different in every sector, and at best are subjective even when they have an objective basis to calculate them.

So in some industries, it's based on a range of X-Y x EBIDTA. EBIDTA is the most reliable because at least it's on profitability. If the sector is believed to have high growth potential the factor could be higher. So value could be set at 6 times EBIDTA, but if it's a red hot sector could even be 6-10 times revenue.

Valuation puts nothing on your bottom line. It's not realized until a sales transaction. So, using increased valuation as a rationale to increase salaries when franchises are losing money, is not prudent.

Much easier to calculate team valuations in sports based on expansion fees and recent sales.

Re p/l for teams, I take the position that they are just long term investments in toys the 1% want to play with knowing that long term they won't lose money. How many teams in US professional sports are the primary income for their owners or ownership groups? Any? Using my beloved Angel City Football Club as an example we have a long list of celebs and billionaires who just want to have something fun to attach their name to. The Igers decided it was worth $250 mill when they bought controlling ownership last year. Do you think they're hoping to recoup their investment through annual profits?

A bit different than a real business.

 

[dk423]

Much easier to calculate team valuations in sports based on expansion fees and recent sales.

Re p/l for teams, I take the position that they are just long term investments in toys the 1% want to play with knowing that long term they won't lose money. How many teams in US professional sports are the primary income for their owners or ownership groups? Any? Using my beloved Angel City Football Club as an example we have a long list of celebs and billionaires who just want to have something fun to attach their name to. The Igers decided it was worth $250 mill when they bought controlling ownership last year. Do you think they're hoping to recoup their investment through annual profits?

A bit different than a real business.

Not to mention that losing money is a useful tax vehicle: https://www.propublica.org/article/...rs-use-their-teams-to-avoid-millions-in-taxes

 

[mjmaherjr]

Agree which is why increasing value isn’t making money or should be a metric on paying players

Thank God the Mets have Uncle Steve

 

[austour]

Agree which is why increasing value isn’t making money or should be a metric on paying players

Thank God the Mets have Uncle Steve

So is it your opinion that the players should be paying the teams then?

 

[johnsliva]

Please tell me one pro sports league that does profit sharing instead of revenue sharing. By your logic, the Mets players should also not earn money because the Mets aren't profitable.

The NFL

 

[dk423]

The NFL

Nope.

 

[johnsliva]

John - we understand, you don't like women's basketball. Whether you've ever watched any of it, who knows. But the answer to your question is that W ticket prices generally range from $50 to $150. The Liberty, Fever, Golden State, LA, Seattle, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Minnesota are not giving any tickets away.

At the other end of the spectrum Connecticut gives away a ton of tickets because their home court is Mohegan which really limits their draw. They should move to Boston or Hartford, really. Atlanta's problem is that at the moment they're terrible.

Not sure why you would feel compelled to come to a thread to crap on a sport you don't watch and don't care about, but it isn't helpful to just make up "facts." For my part I don't understand why people want to watch soccer, or golf, or Nascar. But I'm sure they all make money and there is some intrinsic value in them - I just don't bother to go to the soccer or golf threads to say "this is BS, golfers and race car drivcome up and compete fot the crowners aren't athletes, whatever they're getting they are overpaid." etc.

You make an assumption I do not watch, I watch more than I care to admit. i have been a fan of women's bb since the inception of the ct dynasty. I always enjoyed their skill and passion. It has been interesting to see other teams come up and compete for the crown. I am not crapping on the wnba I am crapping on their players association in not realizing the stage the league is in. It would make me happy to see excellent play and sterling citizens that go out of their way for the fans and grow their base. At the same time the league needs to step in and fix their officiating to stop games being taken away from teams. The pay us what you owe us shirts were an abomination. and did not sit well with a fanbase whose support you need. Not a good look.

Ps please tell me what facts I made up.