Many popular sports leagues around the world now have a women’s version. A recurring theme in many of these leagues, such as the WNBA and the AFLW is that the women get paid much less than their male counterparts. Although this has often been labelled as a form of sexism, there is an economical reason behind it.
The pay gap between the women’s league and their male equivalent is quite substantial. In the NBA, the average salary is more than 59 times greater than the average salary in the WNBA. To put this in perspective, in the NBA, the average player earns $7.7 million, while the average WNBA player earns just $130,000.
There is a simple economic reason for this astronomical pay gap. The WNBA brings in just $25 million dollars in revenue annually, which pales in the light of the $7.4 billion generated by the NBA. However, it has been argued that although this revenue gap exists, NBA players receive about 50% of the leagues basketball-related revenue in the form of salaries, while the WNBA receives just under 25%. This is because the WNBA does not generate enough money to run by itself, and therefore cannot pay the players the desired margins.
The reason for this difference in revenue generated is due to the disparities in demand between men’s basketball and women’s basketball. The NBA has been around since 1946, while the WNBA was established in 1996 – 50 years later. It can be expected that if the WNBA was to increase it’s viewership (which should naturally occur in the future) player salaries would increase accordingly. But while the huge gap in demand exists, WNBA players should and will continue to get payed less than players in the NBA.
https://www.abc.net.au/btn/classroom/sports-pay-gap/10834120
https://infogram.com/nba-vs-wnba-wage-gap-nate-roys-1ho16v3dvpo74nq
Year 11 MHS Economics 2020 
Fantastic article, do you watch WNBA?
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no sorry petro personally i do not.
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