The NBA owns 42% of the WNBA. However, while NBA players get an estimated 49-51% of their league\u2019s basketball revenue, WNBA players receive only 9.3% of the league\u2019s basketball-generated revenue, according to a report by MarketWatch<\/a>.<\/p>\n In a \u201cToday\u201d<\/a> interview with Craig Melvin, Silver acknowledged the WNBA players\u2019 demands and said he expects them to receive a big pay increase at the end of this year\u2019s contract negotiation cycle.<\/p>\n \u201cI think \u2018share\u2019 isn\u2019t the right way to look at it because there\u2019s so much more revenue in the NBA. I think you should look at it in absolute numbers in terms of what they\u2019re making, and they are going to bet a big increase in this cycle of collective bargaining, and they deserve it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Silver\u2019s comments come well over a year after widespread outrage online due to the news that Indiana Fever superstar Caitlin Clark, one of the world\u2019s most popular athletes<\/a>, was reported to make just $76,535 in her rookie season with the WNBA.<\/p>\n Silver, notably, does not serve as commissioner of both the NBA and WNBA. However, as the NBA owns such a large percentage of the latter league, WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert does report to him.<\/p>\n Engelbert has come under heavy fire in recent weeks, following a season exit interview conducted by Minnesota Lynx superstar Napheesa Collier in which Collier said the WNBA had \u201cthe worst leadership in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n The pro athlete also recounted several alleged conversations she had with Engelbert, one of which was purportedly punctuated by Engelbert\u2019s assertion that league stars like Clark and Angel Reese should be \u201cgrateful\u201d for the platform the league gives them and that they should be \u201con their knees thanking their lucky stars\u201d for the media rights deal Engelbert secured for the WNBA. Other players then shared similar stories of their own.<\/p>\n Afterward, Engelbert publicly addressed Collier\u2019s remarks, telling the media, \u201cI was disheartened to hear that some players feel the league and me personally do not care about them or listen to them. And if the players in the W don\u2019t feel appreciated and valued by the league, then we have to do better and I have to do better.\u201d<\/p>\n Collier is not the only WNBA star who has called for better treatment and pay at a league level. In July, many of the league\u2019s biggest players attended the WNBA All-Star Game in black shirts that sported the words \u201cPay Us What You Owe Us\u201d on them.<\/p>\n While the WNBA is not, as Silver noted, as massive of a platform yet as the NBA, its popularity has been growing exponentially in recent years, thanks in part to the emergence of attention-grabbing young superstars like Clark, Reese and Paige Bueckers. Several WNBA stars have, meanwhile, made it clear that they do not believe they should be paid as much as their NBA counterparts but simply a similar share of their league\u2019s income.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of times, the misinformation comes in where we\u2019re asking to be paid what the men are being paid. That\u2019s not true,\u201d Los Angeles Sparks guard Kelsey Plum explained on the \u201cAll the Smoke\u201d podcast<\/a> in July. \u201cWe\u2019re asking [for] just the same percentage of revenue or a similar percentage of revenue. And right now, that\u2019s not the case. And so that\u2019s what we\u2019re fighting for.\u201d<\/p>\n The post NBA Commissioner Adam Silver Says WNBA Stars Deserve a Big Increase in Pay Amid Collective Bargaining | Video<\/a> appeared first on TheWrap<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NBA Commissioner Adam Silver acknowledged on Tuesday that WNBA players are right to expect a big pay increase…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":232214,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[23867,724,49,735,48,11628,9963,110246,2803,631,632,729,459,4658,110247,82,630,11043],"class_list":{"0":"post-232213","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wnba","8":"tag-adam-silver","9":"tag-angel-reese","10":"tag-ca","11":"tag-caitlin-clark","12":"tag-canada","13":"tag-cathy-engelbert","14":"tag-collective-bargaining-agreement","15":"tag-craig-melvin","16":"tag-indiana-fever","17":"tag-kelsey-plum","18":"tag-los-angeles-sparks","19":"tag-napheesa-collier","20":"tag-nba","21":"tag-paige-bueckers","22":"tag-pay-increase","23":"tag-sports","24":"tag-wnba","25":"tag-wnba-players"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232213"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232213\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/232214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/a2b8454386799c9c4a16d07f2bdaf265.jpeg\"\/)
<\/a><\/p>\n