NBA is considered to be the premier men’s professional basketball league in the world. It is a platform that has produced many great players and contributed to various social justice conversations (NBA teams chose to sit out the playoff games to protest against the police shooting of Jacob Blake). WNBA and MLS combined, cannot match the power and fandom that the NBA beholds.
In picture: The Lakers pose with their NBA 2020 trophy
Their grandeur and elegance were pretty evident when the Lakers defeated the Miami Heat, 106-93 to win the 2020 NBA championship; every other Indian newspaper had this news on the headlines, with many Indian celebrities putting up congratulatory posts on social media handles as well.
In picture: Seattle storm players pose with their WNBA 2020 trophy
But when Seattle Storm trashed Las Vegas Aces, 92-59 in the finals to become the 2020 WNBA champions; there was barely any Indian newspaper coverage.
Why did that happen? Let’s start from the beginning!
National Basketball Association (NBA) was founded 74 years ago in New York City on June 6, 1946. Whereas the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) was founded 24 years ago on April 22, 1996. This head start of 50 years gave an ample amount of time to the men to develop the infrastructure and quality of the game for the NBA. Few changes were made to the format of WNBA games to help bridge this year gap. But did it really help?
Presently, the WNBA and the NBA differ in certain aspects:
· The WNBA basketball is two ounces lighter and an inch smaller than an NBA basketball.
· There are four quarters of 10 minutes each in WNBA game and four quarters of 12 minutes each in NBA game.
· WNBA roster has a maximum roster size of 12 players where the NBA roster consists of a maximum of 15 players and a minimum of 12 players.
· A player in the WNBA draft must be 22 years old whereas the player in NBA draft must be at least 19 years old. The NBA players are even allowed to have “Two-Way Contracts”.
These modifications were made to make the product out of WNBA more attractive to the audience but did it really justify the other factors such as revenue shares among the league and the owners, salaries of players, sponsorship and viewership of matches?
More money is made by whom: the NBA or the WNBA?
In 2018, the NBA’s 30 teams generated 7.4 billion US dollars in revenue; 53% of this league revenue (3.92 billion US dollars) was distributed to the players. Whereas, the WNBA’s 12 teams generated 60 million US dollars in revenue out of which only 12.3 million US dollars were distributed to the players which accounts to a mere 20% of league revenue.
The average salary of an NBA player is $6.4 million (highest-paid player during the 2019-2020 season was Stephen Curry who earned $40 million USD.) whereas an average WMBA player earns around $75,000 in one season!
Why such a huge difference in the revenue generated?
There are a lot of factors that determine the amount of money a particular championship would generate. Few important factors are mentioned below:
· The average NBA ticket costs approximately $89USD. Whereas, the average WNBA ticket costs $17.42. Moreover, there are 1230 NBA games during the regular season as compared to 204 WNBA games during the same season.
· The average attendance of WNBA regular-season game was 6,768 as compared to 18,000 average attendance for regular NBA matches.
· NBA is telecasted in 96 countries whereas WNBA is telecasted in 24 different countries. Undoubtedly, the broadcast market for WNBA is significantly smaller than the NBA.
It is pretty evident that the NBA is thus able to generate so much more revenue as compared to WNBA.
Sue Bird, the most outspoken Seattle Storm star said the following when she was asked about the idea athletes should “stick to sports”:
“All politicians are trying to say to us is ‘keep politics out of sports. Ugh, this is where I want to go to just watch a game.’ And I’m like, I’m not the one that brought it in here.’ You know? Because as female athletes all we are judged based on everything except the game we’re playing. We’re being judged because we’re women. We’re being judged because we’re gay. We’re being judged because we’re black. All of these political things are being brought to us and that’s how we’ve had to find our way in this life, in this WNBA-trying-to-be-a-business life. We’ve had to battle that. It’s never just been about basketball for us. Then to kind of flip, it now and tell us not to be political, quote-unquote?
“By the way, obviously we all know this is a moral issue. These are people’s lives, the women in our league, this is directly impacting them. This isn’t some trying to get a policy that’s going to help someone’s pocket or something like that. This is direct, their lives are affected.”
In picture: Sue Bird holds the WNBA2020 trophy
There are a lot more political and social issues that contribute to this disparity issue. Considering the fact the NBA practically owns the WNBA, there would a long road ahead of WNBA players to receive acknowledgement and payroll at par with the NBA players. NBA reigns supreme at the moment, but the ladies have already started their raising their voice against such discrimination and supporting each other in this game of survival.
A whole new era in basketball awaits for us!
Picture courtesy: Kiro7 and Hindustan Times
The revenue data was collected from WSN.
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