Faculty basketball sensation Caitlin Clark will earn lower than six figures in her rookie season with the Indiana Fever, reigniting debate over whether or not skilled ladies athletes within the U.S. are pretty paid. 

Clark, this yr’s No. 1 draft decide within the WNBA, can have a beginning wage of $76,535 and earn roughly $338,000 over the four-year contract she signed with the Fever. The second, third and fourth picks on this yr’s draft may even earn $76,535 their first yr, in accordance with the league’s collective bargaining settlement. The bottom annual pay for all 4 athletes will see solely a modest rise over the following few years — $78,066 in 2025, $85,873 in 2026 and $97,582 in 2027. 

Decrease-ranked WNBA draft picks earn much less, in accordance with a wage scale outlined within the gamers’ settlement with the league. Gamers are additionally eligible for bonuses on the finish of the season, based mostly on efficiency. For instance, the “Rookie of the 12 months” award comes with a $5,150 bonus. 

The WNBA didn’t instantly reply to CBS MoneyWatch’s request for touch upon the way it units athlete salaries.

Clark’s earnings will not be restricted to her WNBA wage. She’s anticipated to signal sponsorship offers that can seemingly result in her incomes way over than the 5 figures she’ll get for taking part in basketball. Already, her title picture and likeness is valued at $3 million, a determine that is anticipated to develop, whereas she has already achieved TV commercials for advertisers together with Gatorade, State Farm and Nike. 

Nonetheless, Clark’s base pay pales compared to her counterparts within the NBA. Rookie Victor Wembanyama, the primary decide in final yr’s NBA draft, made greater than $12 million for the 2023-24 season, his first yr within the NBA, in accordance with Spotrac, a website monitoring sports activities statistics.Her wage is roughly equal to that of a first-year or junior New York-based lawyer at a nationwide legislation agency, in accordance with a posting on job website Certainly.

With some on-line commentators expressing shock at Clark’s pay, President Biden weighed in Tuesday on the problem of pay disparity in sports activities.

“Girls in sports activities proceed to push new boundaries and encourage us all. However proper now we’re seeing that even for those who’re one of the best, ladies will not be paid their fair proportion,” he mentioned in a post on X (previously often called Twitter). “It is time that we give our daughters the identical alternatives as our sons and guarantee ladies are paid what they deserve.”

To make certain, what feminine athletes “deserve” is up for debate. The NBA was based many years in the past and generates billions of {dollars} yearly. The WNBA, against this, was launched in 1996 and is way smaller, producing an estimated $200 million in income yearly, in accordance with a report from Simply Girls’s Sports activities. 

On the problem of compensation for particular person gamers, “There is not an infinite reservoir of cash they get to cope with,” Greg Bouris, a professor sports activities administration at Adelphi College, instructed CBS MoneyWatch, including that the WNBA must meaningfully develop its income to ensure that participant salaries to extend. “It comes right down to economics.”. 

And as huge of a star as Clark has been for school basketball, she stays untested within the skilled enviornment, he famous. That is a part of the explanation why each the NBA and WNBA difficulty caps on rookie salaries. 

“They’re coming in to play in opposition to one of the best basketball gamers on the planet they usually have but to show themselves,” Bouris mentioned. “Sucess at one degree would not assure success on the different.”

By the identical token, Clark is predicted so as to add appreciable sizzle to the league, as she did in serving to the ladies’s NCAA event draw a bigger TV viewers than the boys. 

“She’s going to boost all boats”

“She’s coming in with all of this momentum in earned media protection for the WNBA, so the league has a chance to capitalize on that. She’s having an incredible financial impression,” Bouris mentioned. “She’s going to boost all boats.”

The Girls’s Sports activities Basis, an advocacy group for girls in sports activities based by tennis legend Billie Jean King, has pointed to the comparatively low pay within the WNBA as a cause why high gamers typically compete abroad in the course of the U.S. league’s off season to complement their salaries. That features WNBA star Brittney Griner, who was jailed in Russia whereas taking part in there and who beforehand famous in an interview that “the entire cause plenty of us go over is the pay hole.”

The WNBA has made strides in selling pay fairness in recent times. Whereas NBA gamers collectively obtain roughly 50% of the league’s income, WNBA gamers beforehand took house lower than 23%. However that determine jumped to 50% below the newest labor cope with the league. 

But the pay hole in skilled basketball and most different sports activities stays, with solely feminine tennis gamers attaining a measure of fairness. Within the NBA, the minimal rookie wage for the 2022-23 season was $953,000, in accordance with Spotrac.

Ketra Armstrong, a professor of sports activities administration at Michigan College mentioned that whereas she views Clark as underpaid relative to their abilities, so are many WNBA athletes. 

“It is a structural difficulty, and you’ll’t have a look at salaries in isolation or examine them to how a lot the boys make as a result of there are stark variations there,” Armstrong instructed CBS MoneyWatch in noting the big revenues the NBA generates, in contrast with the WNBA.

The upshot: For WNBA gamers’ salaries to extend, the league should land greater broadcast offers, safe extra profitable company sponsorships, and promote extra tickets and merchandise. However Armstrong the present second as a possible turning level for the league.

“The Caitlin Clark impression is actual. There may be an vitality and vibrance touching the WNBA in methods it by no means has earlier than,” she mentioned. “If we are able to get a groundswell enhance in ticket gross sales for all WNBA groups, extra merchandise gross sales, extra media publicity, and extra folks investing, we’ll begin to see motion in income.”