Tim Benz: NBA-WNBA wage gap isn't about gender inequality
Last week, WNBA player A'ja Wilson got quite a conversation going. The Las Vegas Aces player sent out this tweet in the wake of LeBron James signing his $154 million contract with the Lakers.
154M ........... must. be. nice. We over here looking for a M but Lord, let me get back in my lane pic.twitter.com/IFDZLlI53z
— A'ja Wilson (@_ajawilson22) July 2, 2018
First of all, cry me a river.
I'm really sorry you aren't making millions of dollars to play a game. Male athletes get hammered on social media and sports talk radio all the time for whining about not making enough money to play a sport. See: Bell, Le'Veon.
I'm not sure why it would be OK for Wilson to do so just because she is female.
Secondly, what a false equivalence. James is going to make $154 million because the NBA has a ton of revenue. Wilson is only getting a fraction of that because the WNBA only brings in a fraction of the NBA's revenue. It's as simple as that.
This Las Vegas Review-Journal story highlights a few points. CNBC found that WNBA salaries are $110,000 whereas NBA players made a minimum of $815,000. The more corresponding numbers in that story, though, illustrate that the NBA raked in $7.4 billion in revenue. The WNBA gathered $25 million.
Those extra zeros are kind of germane to this discussion, are they not?
This isn't a gender pay-gap issue. This isn't tennis, or soccer, or skating, where the revenue and TV ratings and attendance between the men's and women's sports are closer. It's the WNBA versus the NBA. It's night and day.
If Wilson is upset WNBA players aren't getting paid enough money based on the cash coming in, that's a different argument. For instance, she later tweeted that the NBA players get 50 percent of revenue and the WNBA players get 30 percent.
We get less than 30% revenue vs the guys get 50%..... > > < > < > < https://t.co/ixes8kP3Ft
— A'ja Wilson (@_ajawilson22) July 2, 2018
OK. Fine. Different story. Now you are talking. If you think WNBA players should get a larger slice of the pie from their own game, great. Go for it. Get better union representation and a better collective bargaining agreement. Strike. Hold out. Go to Europe. Start a different league.
That effort has nothing to do with LeBron's gross income versus yours, though.
On some level or another, Wilson seems to be aware of that. So this seems to be nothing more than a preening attempt to pander to the politically correct climate of the day in her own social media echo chamber in an effort to get more attention for her "plight."
We've all become acutely aware of the "equal pay for equal play" issues that exist. Over the last few years, it's become a hot topic in Hollywood and the business world even more so than the sports world. But this isn't a matter of what Jennifer Lawrence got paid for the "Hunger Games" versus what Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson got paid for "Rampage."
This isn't a case of female president of business operations at Company X gets only $100,000 per year whereas male vice president of sticky notes at Company Z gets $250,000.
It's not remotely the same thing. There's simply not an equivalent amount of money to be paid out in the women's game as there is in the men's game. Nowhere close to as many people pay for tickets or TV advertising or merchandise for the WNBA.
Furthemore, it's no one's job to force America to like the women's game more than it does. Consumers are going to watch it, or not, on their own. No one's going to be guilt-tripped into watching a WNBA game if they don't want to out of a moral sense of gender progress.
As Wilson's second tweet infers, she knows that. However, instead of just battling for a better take of the pot within the WNBA's coffers, she initially presented the issues as some sort of gender inequality touchstone within the basketball world.
And it simply is not.
