Pay disparities between men and women is totally unfair in most arenas, but NBA star Draymond Green argued a valid point as to why NBA player salaries outweigh their WNBA counterparts.
It all has to do with economics and selling out arenas and merchandise. The Golden State Warrior pointed out that the NBA wasn’t always America’s favorite sports pastime and a twenty-plus year marketing campaign was utilized over time to turn the league into a wholesome family entertainment event.
“There’s no argument for lack of revenue unless you make those that say they stand for women actually stand up. The NBA wasn’t always the global game that it is today. It wasn’t always driving as much revenue as it does today. But there were people behind it, building the platform, and more importantly telling individual stories and building up the interest in the players,” tweeted Green.
“That’s how the game took off. Who’s building up y’all platform? Who’s telling the individual stories of how great y’all are? [Who’s] building the interest and transforming women’s basketball into a global game?” he asked.
According to Jonathan Vanian of Fortune, the average salary for a WNBA player during the 2019-20 season was $75,000 while the average salary for an NBA player in the same season was approximately $7.7 million. Green says he is open to suggestions about other ways to bring more money and attention to the WNBA in his posts.
“I’ve been seeing a lot of talk about the pay gap between women and men. Especially in sports. It’s not even close,” Green wrote. “But let’s stop allowing y’all complaints to fall on deaf ears due to numbers. As long as y’all make the argument about pay, while the revenue stays the same they will continue to point at the revenue not being high enough to cover bigger salaries. While that is true in damn near every business, how do we take that card out of their pockets? That’s the key to changing the pay.”
Green also called for the WNBA to leverage with companies they partner with to fund their storytelling initiatives and to stop allowing businesses to exploit them just to look like they are making an effort because they have a women’s empowerment initiative.
