Caitlin Clark's reward for a record-smashing NCAA career: A $76,000 WNBA salary

Bill Burr had a good take on this one. Basically, how many of the people complaining about the pay disparity in women’s basketball actually watch women’s basketball? If you want them to get paid more, you need to watch their sport so they will bring in higher ticket sales and ad revenues. His take is a lot women are complaining about this pay disparity and few of them actually even watch the WNBA, so it’s kind of hypocritical since they’re not doing the very thing that would help increase their salaries.

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

Women’s basketball has soared in popularity in recent years, with this year’s March Madness tournament dwarfing its men’s counterpart. There are plenty of reasons for this, but one of them is that the game is just fun to watch.

This should result in more media money, which should result in higher salaries. We'll see. Football really does suck a lot of the oxygen out of the room, financially speaking.

Another part of the discussion is that popularity is sort of meeting in the middle, since as women's basketball rises, men's college basketball has been gutted by (among other things) stars leaving after one year, as well as court-forced rule changes (completely reasonable, IMHO, because players should get agency) that have everyone else playing musical chairs as they switch schools to pursue their financial and athletic dreams rather than buckle down to get a degree, which is often nerfed anyway.

College athletics in general, and "revenue sports" in particular, try to meet the letter of the "Student Athlete" rules without giving a single shit about graduating players who have the same level of mastery and accountability as even a garden variety liberal arts major. It's not really a new thing, either. I muddled my way through an English degree, learning study skills as I went, and while I'm under no delusions that meeting the minimum standards was as hard as it would have been in an engineering program, there weren't exactly any athletes in my classes on Elizabethan Drama or the History of the English Language, either.

.....and millions in sponsorship deals

probably scales with viewership. I dont know anyone who follows the WBNA like traditional sports (soccer, NFL, NBA, baseball, golf, hockey). of all of the various sports, most people dont really consider it. shit, I've had actual conversations about curling (weird Canadian sport sort of like ice bowling) - but the WNBA? never had a conversation about it.

Damn. You can’t force higher wages if the revenue isn’t coming in though. Maybe make a mixed gender league with co-ed teams.

It's up to us to keep watching the WNBA to keep their salaries raising

The world will be just fine when we stop worshiping athletes. Hopefully this news turns more people off to it.

She already got a 5 million a year offer from big 3. Ice cube did an interview about it.

hey I caught this on ABC the same parent company of ESPN

I didn't say that anyone else didn't deserve more money.

Cue useful idiots saying she doesn't make enough money for... checks notes playing sports.

You know there are doctors who make less than her?

In fact, there are countless people who work harder than her for less while actually doing something useful to society.

How many women sit down every weekend together to watch WNBA games the way the guys do though? How many fans do they have? How much merch do they sell? Seems like they want equal pay to the men but there's no equal demand

That's a good paying job straight out of college. Man, I wish I had a job like that first thing. She worked hard and I wish her well. Dang......76K.....just dang.

I always find the forced interest in women sport weird.

There are men that train and work just as hard as professional women and don't get paid for it. We don't owe them anything just because they play a game and you can't even say it's because amateur men aren't as good because amateur men are better than professional women.

The fact there is money there at all is because of entertainment and entertainment alone and I don't like being told I need to enjoy any type of entertainment.

If I do watch a sport I'm going to want to watch the most entertaining version of that sport which will be the top mens league. If I want to watch more sport I'll watch other mens leagues around the world. If i want to wathc more then the youth teams are good because you ca follow people up through the ranks. If I really want to watch more sport I'll go support my local club which is probably still higher quality than the women's game.

The way I see it is you can either watch a oscar winning movie or you can watch some b rated poor quality movie. Watching either is fine, enjoying either is fine. But don't act like a b movie needs to make the same at box office just because a women made it.

That seems like a perfectly reasonable salary to.play a child's game for a living