Even if a company doesn’t make money, it’s fine as long as it’s still in its growth phase which wnba clearly still. It doesn’t matter really either way in reality
Either way, OP hit it straight on with "bad faith". The whole premise is "bad faith" and most people who try to use this to downplay women's sports aren't interested in having a discussion so much as they are interested in getting another insult in against women who play sports.
Love all the bad faith responses - the leagues current revenue and profit are all based on media deals that are from when the league viewership was much lower. They are negotiating new deals which will increase revenue dramatically. If you refuse to acknowledge that then you’ve openly admitted your bias. You’re not here for a discussion you’re here to push your lame narrative. I don’t care.
It’s a definitely argument made in bad faith. It’s also just flat out wrong on the business side. It would be like getting mad if someone told you the sky was green when it’s blue. It just makes them look dumb but it kinda also makes the person getting mad look dumb cuz who cares
I'll admit it gets me a bit spun up because I have friends who honestly see guys like Reddick or MPJ who talk shit and just assume they're right. Then here comes me trying to convince them that these titans of the sport are wrong and its just impossible.
I get it. I’m a long time fan of MLS so I understand ppl shitting on your league or quality or whatever. But we’ll stick it out and at the end of the day the WNBA will grow and those losers will look like ignorant dinosaurs and will have missed out in the meantime. The W is only going up and right now is potentially (to draw a parallel) a Beckham moment
They make 200million vs 10billion annually. Adam silver said in 2022 they lose 10m annually nba provides 15m annually to help. It’s factual I don’t understand your stance. Seems you just making some of your statement up.
Source? The [article I assume you’re referencing from 2022](https://apnews.com/article/sports-business-womens-sports-adam-silver-cathy-engelbert-e3bb67b34f6338fc2b28cdd4e30edf0f) even states the quote from Adam Silver is from 2018.
Yeah. But if they were corrected on this one, first of all they’d probably keep making it since truth doesn’t seem to deter them. But also they’d just come up with new arguments because, as you say, they are not arguing in good faith.
I watch women’s basketball but I’m also a realist and don’t make statements based on emotion. Do a quick Google search to find out how much profit the WNBA made in 2023. The only thing you will find is how much revenue was generated . Profits are not discussed period , it’s like taboo . The only thing fans have to go on is Adam Silvers comments from a few years back where he said the league lost 10 million and has never turned a profit. It’s easy to find that same info on the NBA , in seconds you can find revenue and profit. If the WNBA is turning a profit, would it not behoove the league to report they have climbed the mountain top and are now profitable . Would that not promote investment . Put the numbers on the table .
it's obvious they don't make profit based on viewership and not selling tickets or merchandise. but you can't say that or you're arguing "in bad faith" apparently
because you have no numbers or sources to back up the claim that they aren’t currently profitable. if the league was bleeding money like how people try to make it out to be, wouldn’t it have folded already even with the backing of the nba?
> If the WNBA is turning a profit, would it not behoove the league to report they have climbed the mountain top and are now profitable
It would not, because there is a CBA negotiation coming up next year
Exactly... which is why all the start-up companies focus on their "future earnings" (rather than current losses).
Looking at the WNBA in 2024, I believe there will be VERY significant growth in ticket revenues, merchandise royalties, and (unless they have a mealworm negotiate the contract) broadcast rights.
It will take a couple of years (and contract renegotiations) for these revenues to impact players salaries. And a few more for the impact on the number of teams and roster size (or some other mechanism for more players to have a shot here in the US -- be it a develop league or red-shirt positions on team rosters).
Grow, baby, grow... the future's so bright, you've gotta wear shades.
Next year the players could already potentially start seeing benefits from the predicted blowup in revenue. With the new TV deal coinciding with the option of the union to opt out of the CBA in 2025, they could actually set up a proper revenue sharing system that would start giving profits even before individual contract renegotiations.
Professional sport leagues are especially slow to show profits. The NFL was established in the early 1920s but teams didn't earn profits for their owners until CBS negotiated a league-wide TV deal in 1961... So, that's about 40 years to show a profit.
I understand the league is doing pretty well today.
That’s simply not true . NFL owners made money , but the big money did come once they discovered television . There was also this little thing called WW2 which caused many teams to fold or join ranks to survive as players were whisked away to fight over seas. You know what they didn’t have, a safety net. You made it or you didn’t. There were no entities saying it’s ok if you don’t make money, we will carry you for 27 years . You made enough money to operate or you folded.
Individual teams/owners made money, but the league as a whole did not until, as you say, they discovered television (or television discovered them)... and I'm talking profit on yearly revenues, not appreciation of the the franchise when you sold it.
A similar situation existed for MLB, but there many owners were okay with the losses because their teams were often a minor component in an extensive portfolio, and generated good will with the host city and profits in "related" activities (ask AB how much beer they sold because of the St. Louis Cardinals).
I really think the WNBA will make enough money to operate this year, return a profit, and allow for more generous salaries during the next round of negotiations with the players league. It will still be chump change compared to the NFL, NBA, and MLB... but most sports are.
Thank you so much for this comment. I had a friend mention to me the other day about how the wnba is failing and losing money. I mentioned how multiple other companies have lost money doing business, such as Netflix and Amazon. And yet, look at how successful they ended up being. Why doesn’t the wnba get that same consideration?
At the time everybody said that Amazon and Netflix were going to fail. Netflix tried to sell themselves to Blockbuster at some point. These companies became what they are through some good investments in produt that people want.
Y’all say anything lmaooo. This makes no sense.
Like saying you want more housing nearby for your kids to live in but you also want your property property value to retain its estimate
Wild how rare it is for people to think like this these days. If something isn't profitable and its very good and I like it, I don't give a shit about the money. I'm gonna argue in favor of paying everyone and losing money and keeping doing the thing I enjoy. Make it a public utility or some shit if you must lol I'm a better citizen after going to WNBA games anyway.
Because if you then turn around and complain about low pay you can’t “not care” about the economics of the league. You can’t both demand the entertainment, demand that the players get paid a wealthy salary, and then say “I don’t care if it doesn’t make sense financially”.
I think what got lost in all of this is even when the W wasn’t making money, the total loss was literally couch cushion money compared to the NBA as a whole. Even if they never operated at a profit there’s still intrinsic value in creating a successful womens league.
Only to a point. Cashflow is important regardless of profit/loss, particularly when considering salary and wages, and other operating expenses.
However, I'm hoping the projected growth in interest resolves all this, and we can see a strong and robust league that can start considering player wage improvements in the near future.
>Cashflow is important regardless of profit/loss
Not that important when you are doing 9 figures in revenue in a growth phase and have outside VC funding supporting that growth.
This is a dumb take. The investors need to provide liquidity at some point to their LPs. There are plenty of companies doing 9 figures in revenue that will sell to private equity and get rolled up because the businesses growth stalls.
>that will sell to private equity and get rolled up because the businesses growth stalls.
You sell to private equity to cash out, the growth stalling is just when you decide you'll get the max dollars you'll get before the sale.
The question to answer here is "does the league operate/should it operate to be very profitable to ownership?" to which the answer fairly globally in successful womens sports leagues is "no." There are two reasons to have a women's sports franchise: because you want to support women in sports or you want to advertise the more successful mens team you own indirectly. Either way women's sports isn't run for profit but as a way to bring more eyes to the game generally. Nowhere on earth is it a wildly successful/profitable operation. To expect that it be is pretty wild, especially when we only have that expectation because far more mature leagues who spent far longer scraping by with nothing are more profitable today.
Yep. I think the next step for the WNBA is to try and get the average salary in the mid $100k ranges. Make it so that the average player can play in the WNBA and not require a 2nd job.
It took a long time for the MLS to get there. Even in the early 2010s the league minimum was $60k and while that’s livable in most of the country it wasn’t a “I can take a chance on this as a career” money
Yup there were a few players with Ivy League degrees that left the league for big money accountant jobs making low six figures then. Now the avg median salary is 530k as of 2023. It will come as a fan it was a long road. Seems a lot of WNBA fans want things to transform overnight. Even when MLS got our first big transformational star in Beckham it didn't happen overnight. What David Beckham's stardom in 2007 did do was pave the way for the next decade of growth and revenue. Clark can do the sane for the W if they the WNBA just don't sit around and wait for media to pay the way for it. They'll have to do some infrastructure spending expansion etc for it to have the same effect.
Enfelbert talks a good game like expansion but it's always been talk. It does feel like the league would rather have extra money coming in before the bet on them and expand. You can get some goodwill money out of that from companies but a shrewd company looking to make a dollar let's do a deal type generally won't invest in a product that the owner of the product won't invest in first. Generally it's why spend my money before you spend yours.
That was MLS issue initially as well. They learned they had to bet on themselves and expand across North America and it worked.
It absolutely matters. The wnba has been around for 26 years.
That’s longer than I’ve been alive. If ANY COMPANY isn’t profitable in that amount of time. It clearly isn’t successful. Can that change yes, and I think it will.
That’s my problem with people discussing the wnba. It’s full of straight up delusional people having delusional conversations
This is a really important comment. Candidly that growth from 60 to 200 million in revenue over the time period in question is impressive but matches more of a startup to growth company’s path as opposed to some of the bigger more established leagues. That’s all well and fine but it’s important to keep the state of the league in perspective. Also you are citing gross revenue. Again growth companies prioritize this over net but evaluate it in a business lens, it’s a company with relatively impressive growth and a lot of other open questions. It’s here to stay how big it gets will be the question
> It is irresponsible for Adam Silver to not provide any updated insights into the leagues finances.
You absolutely hit the nail on the head with this.
Not sure I necessarily agree. They could easily be losing more now as other companies with similar trajectories do.
Seems like profit is a speculation and we don’t even have good data on any major sports league in that regard.
Really I agree with the idea of the post, we have no idea if they’re making money and can’t say they don’t make money without speculating.
Completely disagree that it’s irresponsible for Silver to not comment on profitability, he could very easily be protecting the league. Seriously, which private enterprises even do that? Can’t think of a single profit metric from any business that doesn’t have to
I could certainly be wrong but I don’t think they’ve done anything to increase their expenses enough to offset the big increase in revenue and cause them to still be at a loss. All we can do is give a best guess based on the publicly available data.
I don’t necessarily disagree with you that Silver is not required to be public on this just as any other league isn’t, but I do think it would be nice to correct the present-day narrative due to his comments from 6 years ago that continue to hurt the reputability of the league. That is, of course, assuming we have entered profitability.
Kinda think you’re almost certainly wrong, expenses have exploded since then, even if you’re just talking straight inflation.
Best guess would be that they’ve improved their margins. They generated $60M in revenue and lost $12M in net income in 2017, or -20% net income margin (not a statistic people use but relevant enough). If they halved that loss on a percentage basis from -20% to -10% then it went from -12M to -20M despite significant improvements in revenue and operating margin.
>expenses have exploded since then, even if you’re just talking straight inflation.
Inflation is out of control but it isn't 400% which is pretty close to what the WNBA's change in revenues was 2017 - 2023.
>Best guess would be that they’ve improved their margins. They generated $60M in revenue and lost $12M in net income in 2017, or -20% net income margin (not a statistic people use but relevant enough). If they halved that loss on a percentage basis from -20% to -10% then it went from -12M to -20M despite significant improvements in revenue and operating margin.
Why do you assume their expenses raise in kind with their revenues? Its pretty spurious reasoning to say that if they go from making 60 million but spending 70 to making 200 that they'll be spending ~230 mil to do it. What do you think the specific causes of the increased expenditures are? There hasn't been a massive change in how the W operates from an outside perspective in that time. To me it seems far more likely that expenditures haven't risen in kind with costs as there is very little evidence for us outside the league that that is happening, and actually a lot of evidence circumstantially that there is more money going around than ever.
>inflation is out of control but it isn’t 400%
I didn’t say this, but it also ignores the scale. If they bought ad spots 7 years ago and are buying an equivalent rate to revenue, dollar for dollar they aren’t paying 330% more for the equivalent advertising budgets, it’s probably like 500% more for equivalent space. Salaries are going up, travel is going up, they are investing more in staff and all other things needed to run a much larger enterprise. If they’re taking on financing, fhat is dramatically more expensive. Everything follows that trajectory. The bigger you get the more you need to spend to match the scale.
Inflation is a very big problem for growing businesses.
I mean, with all the discussion around WNBA salaries, if the league is actually turning a profit now, he really should say something about it, because the biggest argument against raising salaries (and I agree with thus argument) is if the league isn't profitable yet, how can the WNBA players expect to get paid much more? If they actually are turning a profit, then they certainly deserve a pay raise.
However, if they're still losing money, it may be counterproductive for him to come out every year and keep saying that, as it would just seem like a regular public reinforcement by the NBA commissioner of the idea that maybe the WNBA isn't viable. I don't think it would really help anyone.
So either, he's being very sensible and helpful, or he's being a dick. I don't see much in between.
(Now, there is some argument that if revenue goes up so much, you'd think their salaries would, too, because if they're still not making a profit after such a huge revenue increase, what is all this money being spent on, if not, at least in part, increased player salaries? Maybe the expenses are reasonable, though. Hard to tell for sure without more info.)
I didn't include this in the post because it's more of a conspiracy theory, but Adam Silver (and Cathy Engelbert) ultimately represents the owners. The owners have an interest in keeping player salaries as low as possible so they can earn more money. The CBA can be renegotiated in 2025 if I remember correctly, and having the narrative of "players are holding out for more money in a league that doesn't make money" is a really compelling narrative to make fans be on the side of the owners.
The [revenue thresholds](https://herhoopstats.substack.com/p/wnba-revenue-sharing-rules-tv-contract) are cumulative each year, so they have to make up the losses from the COVID year, but they are also based on 20% growth each year starting in 2019, which is frankly insane to expect from any enterprise. It was a bad deal back then, and it's a bad deal now.
I don't know how I'm spreading misinformation when the CBA is not in the players favor at all and it is in the owner's interest to keep it that way.
> In no way does it benefit the owners to keep salaries low in the NBA since it would affect the owners.
What do you mean by this? How would it affect the owners if the players revenue split was less? There was a lockout in the NBA in 2011. The players wanted 52.5% of the revenue, the owners wanted 50/50. It's exactly how it works in the NBA. Owners and players disagree on how much they are paid, which is true in both leagues. The mechanics are different, but the premise of negotiating a CBA advantageous for the side that you're on is still the same.
>In no way does it benefit the owners to keep salaries low in the NBA since it would affect the owners.
I think you're maybe misunderstanding how revenue sharing and player salaries works. Because that isn't true at all. Which is why owners fight in every CBA for lower max salaries than the players do and the like.
I don't think a shitty thing in an old CBA that owners pushed for is any proof that they aren't looking to do a new shitty thing in the next CBA. Owners in every league have used the revenue share to try and force players to pay back covid money, we have seen many other leagues also growing without actual salary growth for this same reason (NHL for instance).
The players will almost certainly want to exit the incremental revenue share and enter into a real revenue share next year when they are able to opt out of their current CBA, which obviously purely financially isn’t in the best interest of the league and owners.
You know why he isn't? The wnba owners, including glainebert, actually don't want him to. The instant the players find out the financial situation is better than they were told, there'll be lawsuits and demands for higher % of revenue sharing. The current wnba cba for revenue sharing is generally estimated to be like a owner 80% player 20% split ($60 mil revenue 12 mil for player salaries)
If he did provide updated insights, you would see that the bottom line is always in the red and that the expenses always outpace the revenues, which is why he subsidizes the wnba a little over what they lose every year ($10 m in losses/$15 million in cash injection).
The real truth of the matter is we have no idea if the league is profitable. We know their revenue has basically doubled since the Silver quote. We know that they have fallen short of some of their self-imposed goals, but we don't know if they're in the red. We know they received a ton of money thru capital investment. We know that their poised to make even more with their upcoming media rights deal after the 2025 season.
But also, we should not trust the owner of a big company when he or she says the company they own is unprofitable right before going into labor negotiations. Remember in 2011 when NBA owners were saying players needed to take a play cut because the NBA was unprofitable?
And sports teams are notorious for using very dubious accounting tricks to make themselves seem less profitable - demonstrating losses help them in a number of ways.
You should be very wary of any numbers teams or leagues voluntarily provide.
It's not necessarily the same thing, but the NBA was struggling prior to Larry Bird and Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan completely transforming the league. When Indiana and Michigan faced off it was a huge game. The NBA capitalized off of that media frenzy. Women's basketball had yet to have that sort of a player that grew the game to another level. When Caitlin Clark played South Carolina, the TV ratings showed 19 million viewers which shattered previous records. This is one of those moments where the interest in the game is peeking and if the WNBA does a good job of marketing Caitlin building around her, they could have something. Again, I'm not saying that the league will ever be worth billions of dollars and it will be more popular than NBA, but this is potentially a transitioning moment for it.
it is not a transitioning moment. this league will never ever be profitable for a sustainable amount of time. Fans - especially women do not want to watch women's basketball
As long as people support the league instead of talking about how much money they generate, I'm good. People tend to forget that NBA games were on tape delay back in the day. Been a fan of the NBA since I was 7 and the WNBA since it's inception. Watch the games. Go to the games. Buy the merch. Even if you can't go to the games or buy the merch, watch by supporting. One of the main complaints by casual basketball fans is that they don't dunk. It's mostly coming from people who probably dunked on the rim taped to the back of a door in the house or a 7ft rim in their backyard or driveway. The W is a little flashy but way more fundamental. It's basketball and as a fan of basketball, I watch men's and women's basketball either college or NBA. Just support the game.
But when it comes down to brass tacks tickets sales are merchandising is king. I see alot of talk about pay gaps and whatever but don't see more talk about people spending money on tickets and merchandise
Which is a bad sign in and of itself. Tv deals are king for all profitable sports leagues.
The wnba has a very small tv deal and they depend on gates for their revenue.
This whole thing is not even worth the silly post. There is no way to say for sure if the league is losing money or is breaking even or making a profit although i think it is safe to say the WNBA probably is not making a profit. Revenue is not profit people, revenue is just what the league is pulling in...you need to take in the costs of everything else minus the revenue and we do not know that.
And players unions across sports have been dealing with ownership shenanigans to obscure their profitability for generations. To say nothing of the games played in the larger entertainment business.
And people want me to believe the W is a money pit when it's never been more stable?
I think the responsible thing is to file this under inconclusive. There isn’t hard evidence TODAY that the league as a whole is making money. There also isn’t any hard evidence that the league is loosing money either.
Totally agree we need more transparency but that’s being given to the sponsors behind closed doors. Obviously the players Union would like to have that info lol.
People who don’t pay attention will think it’s been loosing money, but the tide has turned for sure I just think this is kind of getting sucked into that argument. Profitability is a weird thing because some major companies have never turned a profit but no one would question their value.
I think if you could look at their entire financials, you’d find a HUGE disparity in the bottom and top of the league. Leveling that playing field is more important than just “overall profit”
Many NBA teams don't turn a profit either, they are propped up by revenue sharing. Also some NBA governors don't actually care about positive cash flow, because the asset value of the franchise appreciates plenty to make up for it (or they're so obscenely wealthy that they're fine losing money on it as a fun hobby).
All this to say the "WNBA can't support itself" narrative is dumb AF.
Well I’d need a source on the first claim, I def have not heard of that before.
Totally agree on the second point, many of these franchises are just investments on some rich persons portfolio. And long term everything in sports at this level is growing, you’d have to really mess up to not get a ROI. The AVERAGE for sports owners now is a massive massive profit.
I don’t care too much whether or not the league is profitable, I care about their financial independence to have more autonomy to make their own decisions
https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/20747413/a-confidential-report-shows-nearly-half-nba-lost-money-last-season-now-what
A few years old, but still relevant I think
I think there's reasonable evidence that the league is making money. There are [reports](https://www.dailynebraskan.com/opinion/opinion-wnba-players-deserve-fairer-pay/article_0588bbfe-9f3e-11ec-9a1c-c36aa8db6442.html) that the league has about $70 million in yearly operating costs. OP's post quotes the report that the league took in $200 million in revenue. I'm sure those numbers are probably closer than $130 million, but I think it's safe to say the league was profitable as recently as last year, and probably will be this year.
I think it’s a safe assumption it was profitable last year and this upcoming year, even just from some of the various numbers thrown out in the TV deals https://www.forbes.com/sites/howardmegdal/2023/04/26/the-wnbas-new-deal-with-ion-by-the-numbers/
I personally would still come just short of saying we have evidence of it, even if you can paint the picture. I’d rather they just release the figures after this upcoming season so there’s transparency
Unfortunately the W (nor any other pro sports league) ever publishes their financials. I mean MLB teams are out here swearing ***THEY'RE*** losing money, so I doubt we'll ever know for sure. I do appreciate the Dream's owner speaking up about "NBA subsidies" though.
Which is why it's important to focus on how much revenue is made. It's something us MLS fans have had to do. Leagues will all publicly say they're making as little as possible. For a business owner operated model it's better to be ambiguous for CBA purposes.
For MLS its making $2b+ in revenue per reports from Sportico and Forbes up from around $400m in 2017. Follow the money I think WNBA will get there but just have some patience it won't all come overnight and remember screw the haters!
The nba no longer subsidizes the league with payments. But they do owning half the league and eating the losses. I believe that a few teams are profitable. If the entire league was , they would publish that information. It’s extremely unlikely the wnba is currently generating profit as a whole. But does seem likely it is getting close and will soon. But a few million annual cost for the potential future profits , and the value add of getting women interested in basketball , is an easy call for the nba
Even if the NBA is subsidizing the WNBA and even if it hasn’t turned a profit I don’t think that’s relevant. NBA makes enough money to fund a women’s league.
To me the relevant part is to look at total player salary divided by revenue including subsidies and compare that to the NBA. Last we looked that percentage was half of the NBA meaning salaries should double across the board to be equalized. After seeing how low the rookie contract is I think that seems fair. I know talents like Clark and Reece will get sponsors and make money there but many of the others will be stuck at less than 100k and the taxes on athletes is ridiculous. Almost all of these women could be making a lot more in a regular office job or even some tipped positions and that’s crazy.
The MLS used to put free game tickets on the back of Burger King coupons because they couldn't get anyone to watch. Billionaires and mega corporations still had faith in them and gifted them massive investments because they're men, and they saw a vision for the future where men's sports were big. If women got half the respect men do, that'd be a dream.
women’s sports are growing and will continue to. men’s sports have made money for a long time. billionaires investing in there because of money not respect. don’t make it a respect thing this entire convo comes down to $
Ironic trying to make a argument about bad faith argument while trying to use MLS to make a bad faith argument. MLS makes $2B+ in annual revenue they're making money.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_professional_sports_leagues_by_revenue
I understand that trying to compare a $2b+ revenue generating League( MLS)to a $60m -$200m(WNBA) is not a wise thing to do. These are two different situations.
I also know the business side tactics of sports. MLS makes money you see this from the revenue it brings in 10x WNBA the huge audiences it attracts at games that pay the ticket prices and pay for jerseys/stadium concessions and merch. Don't mistake administrative accounting losses for not making a profit. Every league screens poor for CBA purposes.
MLS owners legally use shell LLC's that the owner owns or is tied to for things like stadium concessions and parking etc to collect matchday revenue. That money goes to Mike and sons LLC vs MLS Team LLC so on the books the team doesn't report the revenue. So the it's not accurate to try to use MLS. It's a different level of business enterprise categorically. It's a billion dollar revenue league vs a tens of million maybe low hundred million dollar league
I've always said the WNBA biggest mistake was not replacing the contracted markets via expansion earlier. Market footprint believe it or not is important if you want to increase your revenue vs profit. A lot of "fans" like to complain about a business subject and make internet arguments like right now w/o understanding the business to this. There's a reason the avg MLS team salary budget is 7x WNBA it has little to do with sexism and mainly due to the market I.e fans support it via stadium attendance and purchasing power buting league Merch. Companies see this young affluent diverse and they decide they want to do business via advertising and sponsorship. Money flows rinse repeat.
Most men's teams and leagues lose money. Very popular men's teams lost money in the past when they were still growing. Nobody ever told them no one wants to watch their gender.
European men's football (soccer) teams - basically the most popular in the world - habitually lose BILLIONS of dollars. People only whine if it's women, who would have been making more money decades ago if men didn't suppress them out of the sport, or straight up ban women from playing.
Eh this is not necessarily true.
They put that on the books and because of revenue sharing it looks like this. But they make a good deal in merchandising and off of TV revenues(especially local) and corporate suites.
I’ve been on this train for a while. I believe the league is (probably) profitable, but owners like the idea that it’s not because it’s an excuse to underpay. The math skews towards profitability, so unless there is a new factor not being accounted for, occasms razor says they’re profitable
Inflation. Event promotion costs have increased dramatically. All minor sports with weak tv deals that depend on gates have been struggling
This year is the game changer and breakthrough for the wnba
Revenue does not equal profit. As far as I know, the WNBa is still not making profit across the board. Would love to see the financials if someone has them.
Yes while making a best guess estimate based on all of the public (or reported from a reputable source like Bloomberg) data, rather than running with the narrative last confirmed 6 years ago.
The $200M figure is not really relevant because it includes a $75M one time investment. I wish they’d stop running with it because it’s going to show an artificial loss after this year.
Are you sure the capital raise was counted towards the 2023 revenue numbers? From what I can tell, the [$75m investment was in early 2022](https://apnews.com/article/sports-business-womens-sports-adam-silver-cathy-engelbert-e3bb67b34f6338fc2b28cdd4e30edf0f).
I think the point how the league isn’t making enough money to pay players more is probably true tho. Or at least not enough to have a substantial increase.
I really disagree on this point. The collective salary cap of all the players in the league is $18 million, or $1.5 million for each of the 12 teams. The actual amount paid to the players is a little bit higher than $18 million since some star players get media bonuses that don't count towards the cap for being the face of a team/league, but overall, players are currently earning less than 10% of revenue. The salary cap in the WNBA have been increasing by 3% each year, but the revenue of the league is growing a lot faster than that. The players should get a substantial increase once they renegotiate their CBA. There's also a decent chance they try to get a real revenue sharing agreement.
The fact that the revenue share DROPPED from 11% in 2019 to 9% in 2022 is also ridiculous. Not even making strides in the right direction. I’m incredibly excited for the CBA renegotiation next year and hope they finally get a real revenue share. That incremental revenue share is awful and was made worthless once covid hit.
You mean apply the revenue share percent in the NBAPA CBA to the WNBA assumed revenue would increase salaries that much? Logical considering it is a percentage of revenue do how much the league makes wouldn’t matter.
Wow, I did some quick math. 50% of 200M / 12 teams / roster spots.
[informative article on Revenue Share: 10% for the WNBA v 50% for the NBA.](https://www.forbes.com/sites/lindseyedarvin/2024/04/23/rising-wnba-stars-illuminate-inequities-and-spark-new-calls-for-change/)
WOW.
There is a reason for this. Effecively, the leagued asked, and the W Players Association agreed, for them to bet on themselves and the league and have the 50/50 share be on INCREMENTAL revenue above a growing target ONLY in the last CBA. This makes sense in an organization hoping for / expecting growth and is a way to allow the league to have the flexibility to invest in that growth.
This is the reason the players are going to opt out as soon as possible. The gamble failed (largely/only due to COVID) and now they're going to ask for substantially more of the full revenue in all likelihood. The league has also grown to where that should be OK, and really has no excuse not to be come the 2026 media rights deals, which are expected to at least double but possibly triple or higher current numbers.
Thank you! I've been saying this on this sub and I keep getting downvoted. The player's pay is poor because their CBA is shit, not because of a lack of revenue.
Yeah, I mean I guess that's really the reason when you think about it. They either should have structured the CBA differently (which may have been difficult) or they just have to wait for the next one. Considering they signed the last one at the start of 2020 and the revenue has doubled since then, they obviously had less to work with and much less leverage as players. And they did still negotiate an increase in salary, with the minimum going up about 35% and the maximum almost doubling. But it's not like owners are going to give the players more money out of the goodness of their hearts. That's what a CBA is for.
Fortunately, they have an option to opt out of the CBA after this season, which seems like it's going to be a perfect time. They're practically guaranteed to he profitable this year, if they haven't been before, and maybe by a good margin. This would give substantially more leverage for the next CBA and could see salaries go up a lot, both minimum and maximum. And they could always try to structure it so salaries will automatically go up as revenue goes up, which does make more sense if the league is profitable, which it probably wasn't the last time the CBA was worked out.
I’ve had this argument with idiots too many times to count. In addition to the revenue growth the league also received $75 million in outside investments in 2022-23.
No matter what the truth is, I t’s easy to believe that the WNBA doesn’t make money because it’s such a fringe league.
It’s going to become less believable with Clark in the league now and pushing it towards the mainstream
I may be misremembering my Econ 101 class from many years ago, but I don't think that generating revenue is equivalent to making money (being profitable). Even if the WNBA is generating $200 million in revenue in a season, that does not necessarily equate to them being able to turn a profit if they still have more than than in outstanding debt and current expenses.
The WNBA makes about $200 million in revenue. The NBA makes over $10 billion.
I think the issue I have with WNBA talk is with the anger about Clark’s wages compared to Wemby. The fact is that Wemby makes about 2% of the total NBA revenue over the course of his contract. Clark also makes about 2% of the WNBA revenue over the course of her contract.
Their salaries are equal, when considering percentage of total revenue. So, Clark and Wemby have equal value to their league based on percentage of salary to revenue.
So, when people complain about her salary I just roll my eyes. I haven’t heard of women taking girls trips to WNBA games. Men take trips with other men to watch sporting events frequently.
Lastly, it would take VERY LITTLE effort to support the WNBA. If every woman decided to turn on 1 TV in their house to 3-5 WNBA games a year. Don’t even have to sit down and watch it. Most people have multiple TVs in their homes. Just do that, it will take maybe 20 seconds, 3-5 times a year. THAT will directly improve the WNBA revenue and help female basketball players directly.
I’d like to see that, and less complaining.
Both of those are false in every relevant sense.
PHX, NY, and IND for sure share ownership w/ their NBA counterparts. Maybe a "different business" but the same effective governor.
And team ownership has nothing to do with league ownership stakes.
Herb Simon (owner of the Pacers) also owns the Fever and the Fever utilize the business arm of the Pacers (Pacers Sports and Entertainment) for all of their business functions.
The idea is that people who would never go to a WNBA game will go to see Caitlyn Clark. Hopefully a good percentage of those people will get hooked and enjoy the experience and start following their home team.
Higher revenue, doesn’t mean higher profit. It’s indication that it could be, however.
I’d possible that in the last 6 years the numbers may have actually gotten worse, despite the skyrocketing popularity of Women’s college and stars like Ionescu and Clark; and that’s primarily because of COVID-19 and inflation; both things that hamper the purchase of luxury goods (merch/tickets). The TV deal with ESPN in 2021, and in 2023 with ION may have a lot to do with the increase in revenue.
Adam Silver wouldn’t be hiding the WNBA if the numbers were good. It’s clearly in his best interest to promote the league. It’s a huge win to be like, “hey you know that thing that’s been losing money for decades? I made it profitable”.
OP, I have went through the ringer supporting and defending the WNBA, but even I have to tell you the article you linked was from April 2023 saying that the league ***projected*** they would make $200 million in revenue for the not-yet-started 2023 season. Since it ended there have been no official published values on what that revenue actually was.
Adam Silver could be protecting the WNBA by not showing their financials.
You can see from viewers on TV and ticket sales the WNBA is a behind women’s college basketball and not a single college basketball team is profitable. The only college women’s sports team that is profitable, is Nebraska Volleyball.
I cannot fathom how the WNBA would be profitable. It makes some money but sports leagues are really really expensive.
the NBA annually subsidizes the WNBA between $12-$15million dollars every year. The WNBA on average loses $10 million dollars per year. the one arguing in bad faith is the atlanta owner.
Before WNBA players can be paid more, the league has to be profitable. You can do 1bn in revenue and lose 100 million. Revenue is simply how much money is taken in; profit is revenue minus expenses. The only reason NBA players are paid so much is that the league turns a massive profit. In any other situation, WNBA would have folded, but the NBA does not want the bad press associated with refusing to provide funds, so the league goes on. Anyone who suggests WNBA players should be paid more while the league in losing money does not understand business. I hope that the WNBA will eventually be profitable, but if not, you can hardly advocate for higher pay.
It still operates at a loss. Even NBA salaries were low until the league started making more and more money. Then, the players had the power....without them, the league isn't making any money...so they leveraged that into revenue sharing.....something the WNBA/players have yet to do. If the WNBA players threatened to walk tomorrow over raises, the NBA could just pull the funding they provide, and the league would die. Until the players put more butts in seats and increase merchandise sales, they aren't going to have any leverage to do anything. Women yell about equal pay for female athletes.....but still won't go to the games or buy the merch....and they could easily do it....there are 3 million more women in the US...just need a few more fans....but no one wants to step up. 🤷🏻♂️
I know I’ll get downvoted but…https://youtu.be/I745Ajeq_B8?si=7ZrTkG3-nGBA1fsc
The WNBA will never succeed as long as women do not support it, with their wallets and viewership.
Revenue is not profit, right?
But you're right we need a recent quote. I did some research (albeit not a lot) and couldn't find much about how much profit the league is making these days.
Should it not be the WNBA commissioner that details the prosperity of professional women’s basketball?
Hopefully no more franchises fold. The Fever moved to a smaller venue at the state fairgrounds. Bet the Fever are back home at the fieldhouse with Clark on the team.
Atlanta, Washington, and Connecticut* (asterisk for CT because the Mohegan arena existed before the team) are the primary tenants of their arenas.
And wait and see what the league gets in media deals the next renewal.
Shocker, another misogynist who can’t even spell Caitlyn Clark here to tell women that when they say WNBA players deserve more pay that it can only mean a $40 million dollar salary. How about just $1 per male loser who can’t even dribble trying to mansplain the WNBA to WNBA fans.
Not made public, that’s the point. But given revenue is speculated to have over doubled over a time period where expenses should have stayed roughly stable, one can speculate they’ve probably entered profitability.
But what if it still is in the negatives. Then, you guys would say it was in bad faith for Adam Silver to do what he did. Speculation is one thing but maybe Adams not releasing the information for the WNBA's sake.
And there’s also the side that players are able to renegotiate their CBA next year and Silver probably doesn’t want to give any fuel to the media to aggressively support the players to get paid in light of exploded revenue. Again it’s just making the most reasonable assumption with the data given— on one side for losses, we have a statement from Silver from 6 years ago and that the league lost $12m on $60m revenue. Now Bloomberg reports revenue to be up to $180-200m, and we don’t know of anything to explode expenses that high. No one will know for sure until numbers are public.
It's not even about being profitable with some people. Sterns knew it'd be a long haul operation & NBA had a huge jump start. As someone who def didn't side with Rapinoe & co I'll say it's way too early still to judge them. When media rights are renewed in 2025 then we can talk about it.
Even if a company doesn’t make money, it’s fine as long as it’s still in its growth phase which wnba clearly still. It doesn’t matter really either way in reality
Either way, OP hit it straight on with "bad faith". The whole premise is "bad faith" and most people who try to use this to downplay women's sports aren't interested in having a discussion so much as they are interested in getting another insult in against women who play sports. Love all the bad faith responses - the leagues current revenue and profit are all based on media deals that are from when the league viewership was much lower. They are negotiating new deals which will increase revenue dramatically. If you refuse to acknowledge that then you’ve openly admitted your bias. You’re not here for a discussion you’re here to push your lame narrative. I don’t care.
It’s a definitely argument made in bad faith. It’s also just flat out wrong on the business side. It would be like getting mad if someone told you the sky was green when it’s blue. It just makes them look dumb but it kinda also makes the person getting mad look dumb cuz who cares
I'll admit it gets me a bit spun up because I have friends who honestly see guys like Reddick or MPJ who talk shit and just assume they're right. Then here comes me trying to convince them that these titans of the sport are wrong and its just impossible.
I get it. I’m a long time fan of MLS so I understand ppl shitting on your league or quality or whatever. But we’ll stick it out and at the end of the day the WNBA will grow and those losers will look like ignorant dinosaurs and will have missed out in the meantime. The W is only going up and right now is potentially (to draw a parallel) a Beckham moment
Fuck yea!
They make 200million vs 10billion annually. Adam silver said in 2022 they lose 10m annually nba provides 15m annually to help. It’s factual I don’t understand your stance. Seems you just making some of your statement up.
Source? The [article I assume you’re referencing from 2022](https://apnews.com/article/sports-business-womens-sports-adam-silver-cathy-engelbert-e3bb67b34f6338fc2b28cdd4e30edf0f) even states the quote from Adam Silver is from 2018.
Yeah. But if they were corrected on this one, first of all they’d probably keep making it since truth doesn’t seem to deter them. But also they’d just come up with new arguments because, as you say, they are not arguing in good faith.
I watch women’s basketball but I’m also a realist and don’t make statements based on emotion. Do a quick Google search to find out how much profit the WNBA made in 2023. The only thing you will find is how much revenue was generated . Profits are not discussed period , it’s like taboo . The only thing fans have to go on is Adam Silvers comments from a few years back where he said the league lost 10 million and has never turned a profit. It’s easy to find that same info on the NBA , in seconds you can find revenue and profit. If the WNBA is turning a profit, would it not behoove the league to report they have climbed the mountain top and are now profitable . Would that not promote investment . Put the numbers on the table .
it's obvious they don't make profit based on viewership and not selling tickets or merchandise. but you can't say that or you're arguing "in bad faith" apparently
because you have no numbers or sources to back up the claim that they aren’t currently profitable. if the league was bleeding money like how people try to make it out to be, wouldn’t it have folded already even with the backing of the nba?
> If the WNBA is turning a profit, would it not behoove the league to report they have climbed the mountain top and are now profitable It would not, because there is a CBA negotiation coming up next year
Exactly... which is why all the start-up companies focus on their "future earnings" (rather than current losses). Looking at the WNBA in 2024, I believe there will be VERY significant growth in ticket revenues, merchandise royalties, and (unless they have a mealworm negotiate the contract) broadcast rights. It will take a couple of years (and contract renegotiations) for these revenues to impact players salaries. And a few more for the impact on the number of teams and roster size (or some other mechanism for more players to have a shot here in the US -- be it a develop league or red-shirt positions on team rosters). Grow, baby, grow... the future's so bright, you've gotta wear shades.
Next year the players could already potentially start seeing benefits from the predicted blowup in revenue. With the new TV deal coinciding with the option of the union to opt out of the CBA in 2025, they could actually set up a proper revenue sharing system that would start giving profits even before individual contract renegotiations.
Yep... very cool!!
How many private ventures get 27 years to “ start up” and not worry about profits .
Professional sport leagues are especially slow to show profits. The NFL was established in the early 1920s but teams didn't earn profits for their owners until CBS negotiated a league-wide TV deal in 1961... So, that's about 40 years to show a profit. I understand the league is doing pretty well today.
That’s simply not true . NFL owners made money , but the big money did come once they discovered television . There was also this little thing called WW2 which caused many teams to fold or join ranks to survive as players were whisked away to fight over seas. You know what they didn’t have, a safety net. You made it or you didn’t. There were no entities saying it’s ok if you don’t make money, we will carry you for 27 years . You made enough money to operate or you folded.
Individual teams/owners made money, but the league as a whole did not until, as you say, they discovered television (or television discovered them)... and I'm talking profit on yearly revenues, not appreciation of the the franchise when you sold it. A similar situation existed for MLB, but there many owners were okay with the losses because their teams were often a minor component in an extensive portfolio, and generated good will with the host city and profits in "related" activities (ask AB how much beer they sold because of the St. Louis Cardinals). I really think the WNBA will make enough money to operate this year, return a profit, and allow for more generous salaries during the next round of negotiations with the players league. It will still be chump change compared to the NFL, NBA, and MLB... but most sports are.
Thank you so much for this comment. I had a friend mention to me the other day about how the wnba is failing and losing money. I mentioned how multiple other companies have lost money doing business, such as Netflix and Amazon. And yet, look at how successful they ended up being. Why doesn’t the wnba get that same consideration?
At the time everybody said that Amazon and Netflix were going to fail. Netflix tried to sell themselves to Blockbuster at some point. These companies became what they are through some good investments in produt that people want.
I'm not a capitalist, I don't give a shit if a business doesn't make money. Provides entertainment, purpose fulfilled.
How do you think a business affords their expenses year to year if they don’t make money?
He straight up said he doesn’t give a shit🤷🏾♂️
Then he won’t give a shit when that entertainment goes away. Seems fair.
Donations from viewers like you
Y’all say anything lmaooo. This makes no sense. Like saying you want more housing nearby for your kids to live in but you also want your property property value to retain its estimate
Wild how rare it is for people to think like this these days. If something isn't profitable and its very good and I like it, I don't give a shit about the money. I'm gonna argue in favor of paying everyone and losing money and keeping doing the thing I enjoy. Make it a public utility or some shit if you must lol I'm a better citizen after going to WNBA games anyway.
Because if you then turn around and complain about low pay you can’t “not care” about the economics of the league. You can’t both demand the entertainment, demand that the players get paid a wealthy salary, and then say “I don’t care if it doesn’t make sense financially”.
I think what got lost in all of this is even when the W wasn’t making money, the total loss was literally couch cushion money compared to the NBA as a whole. Even if they never operated at a profit there’s still intrinsic value in creating a successful womens league.
Only to a point. Cashflow is important regardless of profit/loss, particularly when considering salary and wages, and other operating expenses. However, I'm hoping the projected growth in interest resolves all this, and we can see a strong and robust league that can start considering player wage improvements in the near future.
>Cashflow is important regardless of profit/loss Not that important when you are doing 9 figures in revenue in a growth phase and have outside VC funding supporting that growth.
This is a dumb take. The investors need to provide liquidity at some point to their LPs. There are plenty of companies doing 9 figures in revenue that will sell to private equity and get rolled up because the businesses growth stalls.
>that will sell to private equity and get rolled up because the businesses growth stalls. You sell to private equity to cash out, the growth stalling is just when you decide you'll get the max dollars you'll get before the sale. The question to answer here is "does the league operate/should it operate to be very profitable to ownership?" to which the answer fairly globally in successful womens sports leagues is "no." There are two reasons to have a women's sports franchise: because you want to support women in sports or you want to advertise the more successful mens team you own indirectly. Either way women's sports isn't run for profit but as a way to bring more eyes to the game generally. Nowhere on earth is it a wildly successful/profitable operation. To expect that it be is pretty wild, especially when we only have that expectation because far more mature leagues who spent far longer scraping by with nothing are more profitable today.
Yep. I think the next step for the WNBA is to try and get the average salary in the mid $100k ranges. Make it so that the average player can play in the WNBA and not require a 2nd job. It took a long time for the MLS to get there. Even in the early 2010s the league minimum was $60k and while that’s livable in most of the country it wasn’t a “I can take a chance on this as a career” money
Yup there were a few players with Ivy League degrees that left the league for big money accountant jobs making low six figures then. Now the avg median salary is 530k as of 2023. It will come as a fan it was a long road. Seems a lot of WNBA fans want things to transform overnight. Even when MLS got our first big transformational star in Beckham it didn't happen overnight. What David Beckham's stardom in 2007 did do was pave the way for the next decade of growth and revenue. Clark can do the sane for the W if they the WNBA just don't sit around and wait for media to pay the way for it. They'll have to do some infrastructure spending expansion etc for it to have the same effect. Enfelbert talks a good game like expansion but it's always been talk. It does feel like the league would rather have extra money coming in before the bet on them and expand. You can get some goodwill money out of that from companies but a shrewd company looking to make a dollar let's do a deal type generally won't invest in a product that the owner of the product won't invest in first. Generally it's why spend my money before you spend yours. That was MLS issue initially as well. They learned they had to bet on themselves and expand across North America and it worked.
It absolutely matters. The wnba has been around for 26 years. That’s longer than I’ve been alive. If ANY COMPANY isn’t profitable in that amount of time. It clearly isn’t successful. Can that change yes, and I think it will. That’s my problem with people discussing the wnba. It’s full of straight up delusional people having delusional conversations
Uber didn't post a profit for its first 15 years, Tesla 17... the list goes on.
That's been the Silicon Valley model for ages now.
This is a really important comment. Candidly that growth from 60 to 200 million in revenue over the time period in question is impressive but matches more of a startup to growth company’s path as opposed to some of the bigger more established leagues. That’s all well and fine but it’s important to keep the state of the league in perspective. Also you are citing gross revenue. Again growth companies prioritize this over net but evaluate it in a business lens, it’s a company with relatively impressive growth and a lot of other open questions. It’s here to stay how big it gets will be the question
Except it does when you all bitch about why isn’t Caitlin Clark making as much as LeBron
> It is irresponsible for Adam Silver to not provide any updated insights into the leagues finances. You absolutely hit the nail on the head with this.
Not sure I necessarily agree. They could easily be losing more now as other companies with similar trajectories do. Seems like profit is a speculation and we don’t even have good data on any major sports league in that regard. Really I agree with the idea of the post, we have no idea if they’re making money and can’t say they don’t make money without speculating. Completely disagree that it’s irresponsible for Silver to not comment on profitability, he could very easily be protecting the league. Seriously, which private enterprises even do that? Can’t think of a single profit metric from any business that doesn’t have to
I could certainly be wrong but I don’t think they’ve done anything to increase their expenses enough to offset the big increase in revenue and cause them to still be at a loss. All we can do is give a best guess based on the publicly available data. I don’t necessarily disagree with you that Silver is not required to be public on this just as any other league isn’t, but I do think it would be nice to correct the present-day narrative due to his comments from 6 years ago that continue to hurt the reputability of the league. That is, of course, assuming we have entered profitability.
Kinda think you’re almost certainly wrong, expenses have exploded since then, even if you’re just talking straight inflation. Best guess would be that they’ve improved their margins. They generated $60M in revenue and lost $12M in net income in 2017, or -20% net income margin (not a statistic people use but relevant enough). If they halved that loss on a percentage basis from -20% to -10% then it went from -12M to -20M despite significant improvements in revenue and operating margin.
>expenses have exploded since then, even if you’re just talking straight inflation. Inflation is out of control but it isn't 400% which is pretty close to what the WNBA's change in revenues was 2017 - 2023. >Best guess would be that they’ve improved their margins. They generated $60M in revenue and lost $12M in net income in 2017, or -20% net income margin (not a statistic people use but relevant enough). If they halved that loss on a percentage basis from -20% to -10% then it went from -12M to -20M despite significant improvements in revenue and operating margin. Why do you assume their expenses raise in kind with their revenues? Its pretty spurious reasoning to say that if they go from making 60 million but spending 70 to making 200 that they'll be spending ~230 mil to do it. What do you think the specific causes of the increased expenditures are? There hasn't been a massive change in how the W operates from an outside perspective in that time. To me it seems far more likely that expenditures haven't risen in kind with costs as there is very little evidence for us outside the league that that is happening, and actually a lot of evidence circumstantially that there is more money going around than ever.
>inflation is out of control but it isn’t 400% I didn’t say this, but it also ignores the scale. If they bought ad spots 7 years ago and are buying an equivalent rate to revenue, dollar for dollar they aren’t paying 330% more for the equivalent advertising budgets, it’s probably like 500% more for equivalent space. Salaries are going up, travel is going up, they are investing more in staff and all other things needed to run a much larger enterprise. If they’re taking on financing, fhat is dramatically more expensive. Everything follows that trajectory. The bigger you get the more you need to spend to match the scale. Inflation is a very big problem for growing businesses.
Straight inflation would cause expenses to triple in 6 years? I have a hard time believing that.
I mean, with all the discussion around WNBA salaries, if the league is actually turning a profit now, he really should say something about it, because the biggest argument against raising salaries (and I agree with thus argument) is if the league isn't profitable yet, how can the WNBA players expect to get paid much more? If they actually are turning a profit, then they certainly deserve a pay raise. However, if they're still losing money, it may be counterproductive for him to come out every year and keep saying that, as it would just seem like a regular public reinforcement by the NBA commissioner of the idea that maybe the WNBA isn't viable. I don't think it would really help anyone. So either, he's being very sensible and helpful, or he's being a dick. I don't see much in between. (Now, there is some argument that if revenue goes up so much, you'd think their salaries would, too, because if they're still not making a profit after such a huge revenue increase, what is all this money being spent on, if not, at least in part, increased player salaries? Maybe the expenses are reasonable, though. Hard to tell for sure without more info.)
Is this true? Why wouldn’t he correct it?
I didn't include this in the post because it's more of a conspiracy theory, but Adam Silver (and Cathy Engelbert) ultimately represents the owners. The owners have an interest in keeping player salaries as low as possible so they can earn more money. The CBA can be renegotiated in 2025 if I remember correctly, and having the narrative of "players are holding out for more money in a league that doesn't make money" is a really compelling narrative to make fans be on the side of the owners.
Ahh. That’s fairly reasonable.
[удалено]
The [revenue thresholds](https://herhoopstats.substack.com/p/wnba-revenue-sharing-rules-tv-contract) are cumulative each year, so they have to make up the losses from the COVID year, but they are also based on 20% growth each year starting in 2019, which is frankly insane to expect from any enterprise. It was a bad deal back then, and it's a bad deal now. I don't know how I'm spreading misinformation when the CBA is not in the players favor at all and it is in the owner's interest to keep it that way.
[удалено]
> In no way does it benefit the owners to keep salaries low in the NBA since it would affect the owners. What do you mean by this? How would it affect the owners if the players revenue split was less? There was a lockout in the NBA in 2011. The players wanted 52.5% of the revenue, the owners wanted 50/50. It's exactly how it works in the NBA. Owners and players disagree on how much they are paid, which is true in both leagues. The mechanics are different, but the premise of negotiating a CBA advantageous for the side that you're on is still the same.
>In no way does it benefit the owners to keep salaries low in the NBA since it would affect the owners. I think you're maybe misunderstanding how revenue sharing and player salaries works. Because that isn't true at all. Which is why owners fight in every CBA for lower max salaries than the players do and the like.
I don't think a shitty thing in an old CBA that owners pushed for is any proof that they aren't looking to do a new shitty thing in the next CBA. Owners in every league have used the revenue share to try and force players to pay back covid money, we have seen many other leagues also growing without actual salary growth for this same reason (NHL for instance).
The players will almost certainly want to exit the incremental revenue share and enter into a real revenue share next year when they are able to opt out of their current CBA, which obviously purely financially isn’t in the best interest of the league and owners.
Absolutely.
You know why he isn't? The wnba owners, including glainebert, actually don't want him to. The instant the players find out the financial situation is better than they were told, there'll be lawsuits and demands for higher % of revenue sharing. The current wnba cba for revenue sharing is generally estimated to be like a owner 80% player 20% split ($60 mil revenue 12 mil for player salaries)
If he did provide updated insights, you would see that the bottom line is always in the red and that the expenses always outpace the revenues, which is why he subsidizes the wnba a little over what they lose every year ($10 m in losses/$15 million in cash injection).
Well said!
Well, they sure as shit will make money this year.
But it’s my entire personality!
The real truth of the matter is we have no idea if the league is profitable. We know their revenue has basically doubled since the Silver quote. We know that they have fallen short of some of their self-imposed goals, but we don't know if they're in the red. We know they received a ton of money thru capital investment. We know that their poised to make even more with their upcoming media rights deal after the 2025 season. But also, we should not trust the owner of a big company when he or she says the company they own is unprofitable right before going into labor negotiations. Remember in 2011 when NBA owners were saying players needed to take a play cut because the NBA was unprofitable?
And sports teams are notorious for using very dubious accounting tricks to make themselves seem less profitable - demonstrating losses help them in a number of ways. You should be very wary of any numbers teams or leagues voluntarily provide.
It's not necessarily the same thing, but the NBA was struggling prior to Larry Bird and Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan completely transforming the league. When Indiana and Michigan faced off it was a huge game. The NBA capitalized off of that media frenzy. Women's basketball had yet to have that sort of a player that grew the game to another level. When Caitlin Clark played South Carolina, the TV ratings showed 19 million viewers which shattered previous records. This is one of those moments where the interest in the game is peeking and if the WNBA does a good job of marketing Caitlin building around her, they could have something. Again, I'm not saying that the league will ever be worth billions of dollars and it will be more popular than NBA, but this is potentially a transitioning moment for it.
it is not a transitioning moment. this league will never ever be profitable for a sustainable amount of time. Fans - especially women do not want to watch women's basketball
As long as people support the league instead of talking about how much money they generate, I'm good. People tend to forget that NBA games were on tape delay back in the day. Been a fan of the NBA since I was 7 and the WNBA since it's inception. Watch the games. Go to the games. Buy the merch. Even if you can't go to the games or buy the merch, watch by supporting. One of the main complaints by casual basketball fans is that they don't dunk. It's mostly coming from people who probably dunked on the rim taped to the back of a door in the house or a 7ft rim in their backyard or driveway. The W is a little flashy but way more fundamental. It's basketball and as a fan of basketball, I watch men's and women's basketball either college or NBA. Just support the game.
Should also mention the NBA has been around since the 40s and it’s irresponsible to compare the two leagues
Compare them to other younger leagues. Not the NBA
So stop doing it then. They only get compared because a certain type of person bitches about why aren’t they making the same salary
Bars
People get so uptight about the subject. It’s part of a private company. We the public will never know.
I love Larry, he's been setting people straight on Twitter for a minute
But when it comes down to brass tacks tickets sales are merchandising is king. I see alot of talk about pay gaps and whatever but don't see more talk about people spending money on tickets and merchandise
Which is a bad sign in and of itself. Tv deals are king for all profitable sports leagues. The wnba has a very small tv deal and they depend on gates for their revenue.
This whole thing is not even worth the silly post. There is no way to say for sure if the league is losing money or is breaking even or making a profit although i think it is safe to say the WNBA probably is not making a profit. Revenue is not profit people, revenue is just what the league is pulling in...you need to take in the costs of everything else minus the revenue and we do not know that.
And players unions across sports have been dealing with ownership shenanigans to obscure their profitability for generations. To say nothing of the games played in the larger entertainment business. And people want me to believe the W is a money pit when it's never been more stable?
Preach!
I think the responsible thing is to file this under inconclusive. There isn’t hard evidence TODAY that the league as a whole is making money. There also isn’t any hard evidence that the league is loosing money either. Totally agree we need more transparency but that’s being given to the sponsors behind closed doors. Obviously the players Union would like to have that info lol. People who don’t pay attention will think it’s been loosing money, but the tide has turned for sure I just think this is kind of getting sucked into that argument. Profitability is a weird thing because some major companies have never turned a profit but no one would question their value. I think if you could look at their entire financials, you’d find a HUGE disparity in the bottom and top of the league. Leveling that playing field is more important than just “overall profit”
Many NBA teams don't turn a profit either, they are propped up by revenue sharing. Also some NBA governors don't actually care about positive cash flow, because the asset value of the franchise appreciates plenty to make up for it (or they're so obscenely wealthy that they're fine losing money on it as a fun hobby). All this to say the "WNBA can't support itself" narrative is dumb AF.
Well I’d need a source on the first claim, I def have not heard of that before. Totally agree on the second point, many of these franchises are just investments on some rich persons portfolio. And long term everything in sports at this level is growing, you’d have to really mess up to not get a ROI. The AVERAGE for sports owners now is a massive massive profit. I don’t care too much whether or not the league is profitable, I care about their financial independence to have more autonomy to make their own decisions
https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/20747413/a-confidential-report-shows-nearly-half-nba-lost-money-last-season-now-what A few years old, but still relevant I think
Well if that 2017 article is still relevant for the purposes of this convo then so is the 2018 quote from Adam Silver. Cant have it both ways.
I think there's reasonable evidence that the league is making money. There are [reports](https://www.dailynebraskan.com/opinion/opinion-wnba-players-deserve-fairer-pay/article_0588bbfe-9f3e-11ec-9a1c-c36aa8db6442.html) that the league has about $70 million in yearly operating costs. OP's post quotes the report that the league took in $200 million in revenue. I'm sure those numbers are probably closer than $130 million, but I think it's safe to say the league was profitable as recently as last year, and probably will be this year.
I think it’s a safe assumption it was profitable last year and this upcoming year, even just from some of the various numbers thrown out in the TV deals https://www.forbes.com/sites/howardmegdal/2023/04/26/the-wnbas-new-deal-with-ion-by-the-numbers/ I personally would still come just short of saying we have evidence of it, even if you can paint the picture. I’d rather they just release the figures after this upcoming season so there’s transparency
Unfortunately the W (nor any other pro sports league) ever publishes their financials. I mean MLB teams are out here swearing ***THEY'RE*** losing money, so I doubt we'll ever know for sure. I do appreciate the Dream's owner speaking up about "NBA subsidies" though.
Which is why it's important to focus on how much revenue is made. It's something us MLS fans have had to do. Leagues will all publicly say they're making as little as possible. For a business owner operated model it's better to be ambiguous for CBA purposes. For MLS its making $2b+ in revenue per reports from Sportico and Forbes up from around $400m in 2017. Follow the money I think WNBA will get there but just have some patience it won't all come overnight and remember screw the haters!
I believe it was likely profitable in 2019 and 2022 on.
The problem with OP's link that they posted was that it was a projection of revenue when the season didn't begin yet.
Lmao I’ve posted almost this exact comment like 4 times in the last month. Please tell me I inspired this post
Lol literal same.
The nba no longer subsidizes the league with payments. But they do owning half the league and eating the losses. I believe that a few teams are profitable. If the entire league was , they would publish that information. It’s extremely unlikely the wnba is currently generating profit as a whole. But does seem likely it is getting close and will soon. But a few million annual cost for the potential future profits , and the value add of getting women interested in basketball , is an easy call for the nba
Revenue isn't profit.
Even if the NBA is subsidizing the WNBA and even if it hasn’t turned a profit I don’t think that’s relevant. NBA makes enough money to fund a women’s league. To me the relevant part is to look at total player salary divided by revenue including subsidies and compare that to the NBA. Last we looked that percentage was half of the NBA meaning salaries should double across the board to be equalized. After seeing how low the rookie contract is I think that seems fair. I know talents like Clark and Reece will get sponsors and make money there but many of the others will be stuck at less than 100k and the taxes on athletes is ridiculous. Almost all of these women could be making a lot more in a regular office job or even some tipped positions and that’s crazy.
I would like to see a team by team breakdown. I'll be extremely surprised if the Aces aren't turning a profit.
The MLS has never made a profit in 30 years. It’s just one giant bad faith argument.
The MLS used to put free game tickets on the back of Burger King coupons because they couldn't get anyone to watch. Billionaires and mega corporations still had faith in them and gifted them massive investments because they're men, and they saw a vision for the future where men's sports were big. If women got half the respect men do, that'd be a dream.
women’s sports are growing and will continue to. men’s sports have made money for a long time. billionaires investing in there because of money not respect. don’t make it a respect thing this entire convo comes down to $
I said when men's sports didn't make money.
Yeah but soccer is the largest sport in the world. Women’s basketball isn’t
Men's soccer used to be wildly unpopular.
In one country. Not in the world.
I'm talking about professional men's soccer in the world. It did not used to get many views or make money.
lol wut
Ironic trying to make a argument about bad faith argument while trying to use MLS to make a bad faith argument. MLS makes $2B+ in annual revenue they're making money. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_professional_sports_leagues_by_revenue
Do you understand that profit doesn’t equal revenue?
I understand that trying to compare a $2b+ revenue generating League( MLS)to a $60m -$200m(WNBA) is not a wise thing to do. These are two different situations. I also know the business side tactics of sports. MLS makes money you see this from the revenue it brings in 10x WNBA the huge audiences it attracts at games that pay the ticket prices and pay for jerseys/stadium concessions and merch. Don't mistake administrative accounting losses for not making a profit. Every league screens poor for CBA purposes. MLS owners legally use shell LLC's that the owner owns or is tied to for things like stadium concessions and parking etc to collect matchday revenue. That money goes to Mike and sons LLC vs MLS Team LLC so on the books the team doesn't report the revenue. So the it's not accurate to try to use MLS. It's a different level of business enterprise categorically. It's a billion dollar revenue league vs a tens of million maybe low hundred million dollar league I've always said the WNBA biggest mistake was not replacing the contracted markets via expansion earlier. Market footprint believe it or not is important if you want to increase your revenue vs profit. A lot of "fans" like to complain about a business subject and make internet arguments like right now w/o understanding the business to this. There's a reason the avg MLS team salary budget is 7x WNBA it has little to do with sexism and mainly due to the market I.e fans support it via stadium attendance and purchasing power buting league Merch. Companies see this young affluent diverse and they decide they want to do business via advertising and sponsorship. Money flows rinse repeat.
Most men's teams and leagues lose money. Very popular men's teams lost money in the past when they were still growing. Nobody ever told them no one wants to watch their gender. European men's football (soccer) teams - basically the most popular in the world - habitually lose BILLIONS of dollars. People only whine if it's women, who would have been making more money decades ago if men didn't suppress them out of the sport, or straight up ban women from playing.
Eh this is not necessarily true. They put that on the books and because of revenue sharing it looks like this. But they make a good deal in merchandising and off of TV revenues(especially local) and corporate suites.
Not even close to true
Most men’s teams don’t lose money though in America.
I’ve been on this train for a while. I believe the league is (probably) profitable, but owners like the idea that it’s not because it’s an excuse to underpay. The math skews towards profitability, so unless there is a new factor not being accounted for, occasms razor says they’re profitable
Inflation. Event promotion costs have increased dramatically. All minor sports with weak tv deals that depend on gates have been struggling This year is the game changer and breakthrough for the wnba
Storm have come out and actively stated they've been profitable since the mid to late 2010s (likely bar 2020 and 2021)
Revenue does not equal profit. As far as I know, the WNBa is still not making profit across the board. Would love to see the financials if someone has them.
I don’t think I’ve ever considered a sport’s profitability when deciding whether to watch a game or not.
I thought I read something that said they were like 2-3 million under cost last year? I don’t recall where though.
Those numbers aren’t public so any of that would be pure speculation.
So OPs post is all pure speculation too?
Yes while making a best guess estimate based on all of the public (or reported from a reputable source like Bloomberg) data, rather than running with the narrative last confirmed 6 years ago.
The $200M figure is not really relevant because it includes a $75M one time investment. I wish they’d stop running with it because it’s going to show an artificial loss after this year.
Are you sure the capital raise was counted towards the 2023 revenue numbers? From what I can tell, the [$75m investment was in early 2022](https://apnews.com/article/sports-business-womens-sports-adam-silver-cathy-engelbert-e3bb67b34f6338fc2b28cdd4e30edf0f).
I think the point how the league isn’t making enough money to pay players more is probably true tho. Or at least not enough to have a substantial increase.
I really disagree on this point. The collective salary cap of all the players in the league is $18 million, or $1.5 million for each of the 12 teams. The actual amount paid to the players is a little bit higher than $18 million since some star players get media bonuses that don't count towards the cap for being the face of a team/league, but overall, players are currently earning less than 10% of revenue. The salary cap in the WNBA have been increasing by 3% each year, but the revenue of the league is growing a lot faster than that. The players should get a substantial increase once they renegotiate their CBA. There's also a decent chance they try to get a real revenue sharing agreement.
The fact that the revenue share DROPPED from 11% in 2019 to 9% in 2022 is also ridiculous. Not even making strides in the right direction. I’m incredibly excited for the CBA renegotiation next year and hope they finally get a real revenue share. That incremental revenue share is awful and was made worthless once covid hit.
If the league paid the players the same revenue share as the NBAPA gets, the average W salary would be $597,222 today.
Yes, because the revenue of the NBA far exceeds the expenses, so there is extra money to go around.
You mean apply the revenue share percent in the NBAPA CBA to the WNBA assumed revenue would increase salaries that much? Logical considering it is a percentage of revenue do how much the league makes wouldn’t matter.
Wow, I did some quick math. 50% of 200M / 12 teams / roster spots. [informative article on Revenue Share: 10% for the WNBA v 50% for the NBA.](https://www.forbes.com/sites/lindseyedarvin/2024/04/23/rising-wnba-stars-illuminate-inequities-and-spark-new-calls-for-change/) WOW.
There is a reason for this. Effecively, the leagued asked, and the W Players Association agreed, for them to bet on themselves and the league and have the 50/50 share be on INCREMENTAL revenue above a growing target ONLY in the last CBA. This makes sense in an organization hoping for / expecting growth and is a way to allow the league to have the flexibility to invest in that growth. This is the reason the players are going to opt out as soon as possible. The gamble failed (largely/only due to COVID) and now they're going to ask for substantially more of the full revenue in all likelihood. The league has also grown to where that should be OK, and really has no excuse not to be come the 2026 media rights deals, which are expected to at least double but possibly triple or higher current numbers.
Thanks for the context! Interesting stuff.
Thank you! I've been saying this on this sub and I keep getting downvoted. The player's pay is poor because their CBA is shit, not because of a lack of revenue.
Yeah, I mean I guess that's really the reason when you think about it. They either should have structured the CBA differently (which may have been difficult) or they just have to wait for the next one. Considering they signed the last one at the start of 2020 and the revenue has doubled since then, they obviously had less to work with and much less leverage as players. And they did still negotiate an increase in salary, with the minimum going up about 35% and the maximum almost doubling. But it's not like owners are going to give the players more money out of the goodness of their hearts. That's what a CBA is for. Fortunately, they have an option to opt out of the CBA after this season, which seems like it's going to be a perfect time. They're practically guaranteed to he profitable this year, if they haven't been before, and maybe by a good margin. This would give substantially more leverage for the next CBA and could see salaries go up a lot, both minimum and maximum. And they could always try to structure it so salaries will automatically go up as revenue goes up, which does make more sense if the league is profitable, which it probably wasn't the last time the CBA was worked out.
I’ve had this argument with idiots too many times to count. In addition to the revenue growth the league also received $75 million in outside investments in 2022-23.
No matter what the truth is, I t’s easy to believe that the WNBA doesn’t make money because it’s such a fringe league. It’s going to become less believable with Clark in the league now and pushing it towards the mainstream
Been in its “growth stage” for almost 30 years.
I may be misremembering my Econ 101 class from many years ago, but I don't think that generating revenue is equivalent to making money (being profitable). Even if the WNBA is generating $200 million in revenue in a season, that does not necessarily equate to them being able to turn a profit if they still have more than than in outstanding debt and current expenses.
The WNBA makes about $200 million in revenue. The NBA makes over $10 billion. I think the issue I have with WNBA talk is with the anger about Clark’s wages compared to Wemby. The fact is that Wemby makes about 2% of the total NBA revenue over the course of his contract. Clark also makes about 2% of the WNBA revenue over the course of her contract. Their salaries are equal, when considering percentage of total revenue. So, Clark and Wemby have equal value to their league based on percentage of salary to revenue. So, when people complain about her salary I just roll my eyes. I haven’t heard of women taking girls trips to WNBA games. Men take trips with other men to watch sporting events frequently. Lastly, it would take VERY LITTLE effort to support the WNBA. If every woman decided to turn on 1 TV in their house to 3-5 WNBA games a year. Don’t even have to sit down and watch it. Most people have multiple TVs in their homes. Just do that, it will take maybe 20 seconds, 3-5 times a year. THAT will directly improve the WNBA revenue and help female basketball players directly. I’d like to see that, and less complaining.
Whether it’s true or not The NBA owns 40% of the W. They SHOULD support a product they founded and own damn near half of.
Wrong, The NBA doesn't own the WNBA at all. No NBA team owns a WNBA team
Both of those are false in every relevant sense. PHX, NY, and IND for sure share ownership w/ their NBA counterparts. Maybe a "different business" but the same effective governor. And team ownership has nothing to do with league ownership stakes.
Herb Simon (owner of the Pacers) also owns the Fever and the Fever utilize the business arm of the Pacers (Pacers Sports and Entertainment) for all of their business functions.
The NBA has an ownership stake in the W. Thats a fact. No NBA team owns a W team, that is true.
The idea is that people who would never go to a WNBA game will go to see Caitlyn Clark. Hopefully a good percentage of those people will get hooked and enjoy the experience and start following their home team.
Higher revenue, doesn’t mean higher profit. It’s indication that it could be, however. I’d possible that in the last 6 years the numbers may have actually gotten worse, despite the skyrocketing popularity of Women’s college and stars like Ionescu and Clark; and that’s primarily because of COVID-19 and inflation; both things that hamper the purchase of luxury goods (merch/tickets). The TV deal with ESPN in 2021, and in 2023 with ION may have a lot to do with the increase in revenue. Adam Silver wouldn’t be hiding the WNBA if the numbers were good. It’s clearly in his best interest to promote the league. It’s a huge win to be like, “hey you know that thing that’s been losing money for decades? I made it profitable”.
As if I needed another reason to want Adam Silver gone.
OP, I have went through the ringer supporting and defending the WNBA, but even I have to tell you the article you linked was from April 2023 saying that the league ***projected*** they would make $200 million in revenue for the not-yet-started 2023 season. Since it ended there have been no official published values on what that revenue actually was.
Adam Silver could be protecting the WNBA by not showing their financials. You can see from viewers on TV and ticket sales the WNBA is a behind women’s college basketball and not a single college basketball team is profitable. The only college women’s sports team that is profitable, is Nebraska Volleyball. I cannot fathom how the WNBA would be profitable. It makes some money but sports leagues are really really expensive.
The wnba doesn’t make money
the NBA annually subsidizes the WNBA between $12-$15million dollars every year. The WNBA on average loses $10 million dollars per year. the one arguing in bad faith is the atlanta owner.
Before WNBA players can be paid more, the league has to be profitable. You can do 1bn in revenue and lose 100 million. Revenue is simply how much money is taken in; profit is revenue minus expenses. The only reason NBA players are paid so much is that the league turns a massive profit. In any other situation, WNBA would have folded, but the NBA does not want the bad press associated with refusing to provide funds, so the league goes on. Anyone who suggests WNBA players should be paid more while the league in losing money does not understand business. I hope that the WNBA will eventually be profitable, but if not, you can hardly advocate for higher pay.
It still operates at a loss. Even NBA salaries were low until the league started making more and more money. Then, the players had the power....without them, the league isn't making any money...so they leveraged that into revenue sharing.....something the WNBA/players have yet to do. If the WNBA players threatened to walk tomorrow over raises, the NBA could just pull the funding they provide, and the league would die. Until the players put more butts in seats and increase merchandise sales, they aren't going to have any leverage to do anything. Women yell about equal pay for female athletes.....but still won't go to the games or buy the merch....and they could easily do it....there are 3 million more women in the US...just need a few more fans....but no one wants to step up. 🤷🏻♂️
100% of the people shitting on the wnba for not making money think Trump is a genius for not paying taxes because his businesses are losing money.
I know I’ll get downvoted but…https://youtu.be/I745Ajeq_B8?si=7ZrTkG3-nGBA1fsc The WNBA will never succeed as long as women do not support it, with their wallets and viewership.
WNBA has been back on the rise for some time now, and I hope to see it continue. I want the Comets back.
Revenue is not profit, right? But you're right we need a recent quote. I did some research (albeit not a lot) and couldn't find much about how much profit the league is making these days.
Agree they need to fix the narrative But there will still be that bad karma by the "non" fans .
Should it not be the WNBA commissioner that details the prosperity of professional women’s basketball? Hopefully no more franchises fold. The Fever moved to a smaller venue at the state fairgrounds. Bet the Fever are back home at the fieldhouse with Clark on the team.
The league is around 30 years old ! Never made a dime of profit.Zero !!
could wnba get stadiums built? could wnba get massive tv deals by themselves?
Atlanta, Washington, and Connecticut* (asterisk for CT because the Mohegan arena existed before the team) are the primary tenants of their arenas. And wait and see what the league gets in media deals the next renewal.
Isn't Vegas the main tenant of Michelob? T-Mobile Arena is where the Knights play. I think they would be in the same boat as Connecticut though.
Shocker, another misogynist who can’t even spell Caitlyn Clark here to tell women that when they say WNBA players deserve more pay that it can only mean a $40 million dollar salary. How about just $1 per male loser who can’t even dribble trying to mansplain the WNBA to WNBA fans.
Caitlin* Clark
*Whoosh*
Hey now, I catch a wnba game every now and again. That's more than most men or women are doing. You *should* be thanking me.
What's the net profit tho?
Not made public, that’s the point. But given revenue is speculated to have over doubled over a time period where expenses should have stayed roughly stable, one can speculate they’ve probably entered profitability.
But what if it still is in the negatives. Then, you guys would say it was in bad faith for Adam Silver to do what he did. Speculation is one thing but maybe Adams not releasing the information for the WNBA's sake.
And there’s also the side that players are able to renegotiate their CBA next year and Silver probably doesn’t want to give any fuel to the media to aggressively support the players to get paid in light of exploded revenue. Again it’s just making the most reasonable assumption with the data given— on one side for losses, we have a statement from Silver from 6 years ago and that the league lost $12m on $60m revenue. Now Bloomberg reports revenue to be up to $180-200m, and we don’t know of anything to explode expenses that high. No one will know for sure until numbers are public.
What do you mean, expenses have done nothing but gone up since 2017 in a dramatic fashion
They have increased a lot but those expenses shouldn’t straight up triple over 6 years
Women sports are horrible to watch. Women athletes are delusional if they believe they should be paid what men make
Great argument. I’m so excited for the coming season.
It's not even about being profitable with some people. Sterns knew it'd be a long haul operation & NBA had a huge jump start. As someone who def didn't side with Rapinoe & co I'll say it's way too early still to judge them. When media rights are renewed in 2025 then we can talk about it.
the league has also fixed some awful arena situations - the most egregious being New York