Caitlin Clark's reward for a record-smashing NCAA career: A $76,000 WNBA salary
Caitlin Clark's reward for a record-smashing NCAA career: A $76,000 WNBA salary
As women's pro basketball soars in popularity, player compensation lags.
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Hey that's about what most engineers graduating from college get. And they won't be able to do sponsorships and ad deals. I would say $76k is a much more appropriate salary to start with than what the men make in basketball. That is just crazy
She has north of 3m in sponsorship deals right now, and we can only assume that number will go up in the WNBA
It may go down in the WNBA. Caitlin Clark isn't the first player who was expected to make the WNBA popular (Maya Moore, Brittany Griner, etc). It's far too early to tell if she will have any impact on WNBA viewership.
The issue is that NIL money is also a way for boosters to pay players to stay instead of the shadowy back door deals that used to happen. Now NIL just allows boosters to pay players through a legitimate channel.
A lot of NIL money during the off-season is booster money, yes. That's money that basically will only go to athletes signed with a particular school.
But there's also a lot of NIL money for actual big budget TV/print advertising from national corporations for ads produced by major ad agencies. That's money that follows the athlete.
Not all of it will follow the athlete to the pros (and not every athlete goes pro), especially since the WNBA seems to have lower viewership than NCAA women's basketball. But if anyone is gonna be making good money on sponsorships in the WNBA, it'll be Caitlin Clark.
76k is barely enough to get by in a lot of urban areas ... this is a shameful compensation for one of the best players.
I barely make 20k and would do a lot of things to nearly 4x my yearly income
The problem is that the NBA pays way too fucking much
I always push back when I hear people say athletes get paid too much. The money's on the table. It either goes to the owners, who likely inherent the team or are independently billionaires, or the players. The players are lucky to get 5 years to make as much money as possible, they deserve it way more than the owners.
I'm not gay, but 20k is 20k. Agreed the extreme disparity between ownership and median player pay is out there, and the disparity against other leagues is off the wall.
Neither you nor the WNBA players are being compensated fairly. Solidarity, man, don't bring others down.