Pay Them What They’re Worth

Before the WNBA All-Star Game on Saturday, Napheesa Collier and others wore warmups reading “Pay Us What You Own Us” in preparation for the upcoming CBA negations this offseason.

On Saturday in Indianapolis, the WNBA concluded its All-Star Weekend with an All-Star Game, in which Team Collier defeated Team Clark, 151-131. Not surprisingly for Minnesota Lynx fans, Napheesa Collier put up an All-Star game record 36 points, leading her team to victory and winning All-Star Game MVP along the way.

What happened before the game, though, drew much of the attention as the players came out in warm-up shirts reading “Pay Us What You Owe Us,” a statement that shows exactly how the players and their union feel about upcoming negotiations as the league’s collective bargaining agreement is set to expire this upcoming offseason.

Photo by Steph Chambers/Getty Images

The WNBA has grown in both size and popularity since its debut in 1997. That has been accelerated over the past couple of seasons as the popularity of collegiate stars like Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese, and others made their debut seasons in the league.

This has caused strife between the WNBA’s Players Union and the league, as the current CBA does not properly reflect the present-day financial state of the league. Andrew Dukowitz of Zone Coverage laid out many of the key points that await the league and its players this offseason.

It doesn’t take much digging to find a slew of bad-faith arguments about why the WNBA’s players don’t deserve the rightful pay raise they have earned. The primary argument you can find online and elsewhere is that the WNBA has been losing money for years, suggesting that players should not be entitled to higher salaries until the league becomes profitable.

Setting aside that the financial numbers shouldn’t always be taken at face value as the owners have an incentive to overestimate any losses, this argument does not hold water.

In the past couple of years, the WNBA has exploded in popularity. Ticket sales are way up, merch sales are way up, and possibly most importantly, TV viewership is way up. This has led to a new media rights deal with Disney, Amazon, and NBC, increasing the league’s annual TV revenue from $45 million to $200 million.

This increase in revenue is reflected in the franchise valuation of each team and the league as a whole. According to Sportico, the average value of a WNBA franchise has risen from $96 million to $296 million in just the last year. The Lynx, for example, have gone from $85 million to $240 million during that time.

The largest jumps in value have been the newer franchises. The Las Vegas Aces sold for a measly $2 million in 2021 and are currently worth around $290 million. The Golden State Valkyries, who are in their inaugural season. They were purchased for $50 million as an expansion franchise in 2023, and are already worth ten times that.

The WNBA is also set to add the Toronto Tempo and Portland Fire next season, along with three new expansion franchises in Cleveland, Detroit, and Philadelphia in 2028, 2029, and 2030 for $250 million each. That large sum of money will be split among the current WNBA owners.

If WNBA teams were the money pits that many want you to believe, why has the value of each team grown by such a dramatic degree, and why are cities and potential buyers clamoring to purchase a new team? The answer is obvious, especially when you consider that billionaires aren’t in the business of lighting their own money on fire.

Some sports fans have this weird habit of siding with billionaires when it comes to labor negotiations. They are often more concerned about protecting the wallets of the uber-wealthy than the betterment of the league they enjoy or its players, who should be far more relatable to them than the ruling class.

Add in the rampant sexism and racism that is unfortunately all too common with almost any discussion of the WNBA, and this situation is an unhealthy cocktail of bad takes and worse arguments from people who likely aren’t fans of the league in the first place.

The WNBA has grown in almost every conceivable way; believing that the WNBA players do not deserve a large cut of that growth and value is honestly nonsensical.

In the four major men’s sports, players receive around 48 to 52 percent of the league’s revenue. In the NBA, it’s exactly a fifty percent split between players and owners. WNBA players currently receive just over nine percent of the league’s revenue.

The exact percentage the players deserve is up for debate, but no matter where the final negotiations end up, WNBA players should be in line for a large salary increase.

Many will overfixate on the word “owe” on the players’ shirts, but the message has already had its intended outcome. The message has been sent to the league and its owners while putting their side of the story into the mainstream.

It may have taken a few decades for the WNBA to become profitable, but that is common with new sports leagues and businesses in general. The NBA didn’t become consistently profitable until the 1980s, when its league boomed in popularity with Magic Johnson and Larry Bird joining the league in an extraordinarily similar way to Clark and Reese.

The WNBA owners who made the initial investment in the league and lost money in the short term are now set to be rewarded as the profits start to roll in and the value of their teams soar.

It’s now time for the players to get the same and be paid what they’re worth.