It's time to pay WNBA players higher salaries
Caitlin Clark of the Indiana Fever wears a shirt saying "Pay us what you owe us" prior to the WNBA All-Star Game at Gainbridge Fieldhouse on July 19, 2025, in Indianapolis. Credit: Getty Images/Steph Chambers
Complaining about the amount of money professional athletes make is a time-honored pastime for sports fans.
Rarely, however, does the complaining go the direction that it went Saturday night at the WNBA All-Star Game in Indianapolis. While fans of other major sports have trouble relating to the multimillion-dollar salaries their heroes make, fans of the most successful women’s professional league can’t believe that their players don’t get paid more. The fans made it clear Saturday night when WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert took the court after the game.
The crowd at Gainsbridge Fieldhouse booed Engelbert and chanted "Pay Them! Pay Them!" as she presented the All-Star MVP trophy to Napheesa Collier, whose All-Star team beat Team Clark, 151-131.
The fans are clearly in the players’ corner in the ongoing negotiations with the league for a new collective bargaining agreement. And there’s a good reason for that.
Engelbert likes to talk about how the league is in a period of hypergrowth, how new money is pouring into the WNBA. Viewership is up by 23% over last year, attendance by 26% and merchandise sales by 40%. The league’s new $2.2 billion media rights deal starts next season and the WNBA will grow to 18 teams by 2030 with each of the three new clubs paying a $250 million expansion fee.
Contrast that with the fact that the super-maximum salary for the league is just under $250,000 and rookie contracts start at about $72,000.
Caitlin Clark, whose Taylor Swift-like popularity has played a major role in the league’s expanding popularity, is paid $78,066 from the Fever despite selling out arenas everywhere she goes. Ryan Brewer, a professor of finance at Indiana University Columbus who is an expert in valuations, told the Indianapolis Star that Clark’s value to the league this season should be north of $875 million.
Clark isn’t hurting for cash, given that Sportico estimates that she will make at least $11 million in endorsements this season. Some other players, however, are hurting, which is why Clark is one of many speaking up about the league needing to step up and give them their fair share.
“We should be paid more and hopefully that's the case moving forward as we continue to grow,” said Clark, who couldn’t play in Saturday’s game because of a groin injury but served as captain of the losing team. "That's probably the most important thing that we're advocating for.”
Clark and all of the other All-Star participants took the court for warmups Saturday wearing black T-shirts with the words “Pay Us What You Owe Us” emblazoned across the front.
The players’ collective bargaining agreement expires Oct. 31. The league and the Women’s National Basketball Players Association met Thursday in Indianapolis, and comments from the two sides afterward made it sound like they had attended two different meetings.
“To be frank, it was a wasted opportunity,” said Liberty forward and union vice president Breanna Stewart of the meeting that was attended by a record 40 players. “We could have really kind of gotten into a deeper dive of everything but it was a lot of fluff that we couldn’t get past.”
Engelbert seemed confident about the direction the talks were going when asked about the meeting in her pregame news conference on Saturday.
"I want to call it constructive. We had a candid dialogue and this is part of the process,” Engelbert said.
Revenue sharing and the resulting increased salaries remain the most significant issues for the union. As first vice president Kelsey Plum said a while back, the players “aren’t asking to get paid what the men get paid. We’re asking to get paid the same percentage of revenue shared."
Currently, WNBA players receive just 9.3% of the league’s revenue, which results in a team’s salary cap being set at $1.507 million for this year. NBA players, by contrast, receive 50% of the league’s revenue.
Also up for negotiation is whether the new WNBA expansion fee of $250 million per team be included in the revenue sharing. With the league having recently announced the addition of three new teams in Detroit, Philadelphia and Cleveland, it’s understandable that players would want to try to get a piece of this.
The fact that Golden State paid just $50 million for an expansion fee in October 2023 points to just how much has changed in less than two years. This is a transformative time for both the WNBA and women’s professional sports, and it would be a travesty if there is a work stoppage and the momentum stalls.
The players built this league, flying coach when traveling, staying in second-rate hotels and playing overseas in order to supplement their income. Now, interest in the league is on steroids. It’s well past time that the players’ salaries catch up.
Barbara Barker is an award-winning columnist and features writer in the sports department at Newsday. She has covered sports in New York for more than 20 years.
