{"id":886712,"date":"2026-10-18T14:54:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-18T14:54:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/886712\/"},"modified":"2026-10-18T14:54:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-18T14:54:10","slug":"the-nobel-winner-behind-wnbas-historic-pay-raise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/886712\/","title":{"rendered":"The Nobel winner behind WNBA\u2019s historic pay raise"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nobel Prize-winning economist Claudia Goldin says she doesn\u2019t watch basketball\u2014but even if she might think a slam dunk is a dipping sauce, she knows a wage gap when she sees one. Goldin used her expertise in gender pay disparities to advise the WNBA players union on salary negotiations last year, which helped the players secure an unprecedented 400% pay bump<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Goldin helped crunch the numbers behind WNBA players\u2019 claim that their pay didn\u2019t reflect the league\u2019s rising popularity, which was turbocharged by superstars like Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese. She dug into the league\u2019s TV ratings to argue<\/a> that the WNBA\u2019s average yearly paycheck of $127k in 2024\u2014compared with the NBA\u2019s $10 million average\u2014constituted an \u201cembarrassing\u201d wage gap:<\/p>\n

Goldin calculated that the WNBA attracted ~30% as many monetizable broadcast viewers per player as the NBA, when accounting for the number of games and their length.She argued that since there were similar disparities in per-player game attendance, equitable WNBA salaries would be a third to a quarter of NBA paychecks on average.<\/p>\n

Soon after, the league and the union signed a contract bumping players\u2019 estimated average annual salary to $583,000, expected to rise to more than $1 million by 2032.<\/p>\n

But what about profit? Goldin rejected the idea that the pay gap reflects the WNBA\u2019s unprofitability, noting that the league\u2019s costly expansion to new cities shows that investors see it as lucrative.<\/p>\n

Other economists seconded Goldin\u2019s findings and said that breaking down the exact revenue the NBA and WNBA contribute to their joint owners might show the WNBA isn\u2019t losing money. They also pointed out<\/a> that the NBA spends 50% of its revenue on player salaries, while WNBA paychecks represent a much smaller fraction.<\/p>\n

Looking ahead\u2026the WNBA is among the fastest-growing sports leagues in the US as viewership grew 17% last season, though some skeptics have questioned<\/a> whether it can maintain this momentum.\u2014SK<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nobel Prize-winning economist Claudia Goldin says she doesn\u2019t watch basketball\u2014but even if she might think a slam dunk…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":886713,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[99,434],"class_list":["post-886712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/886712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=886712"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/886712\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/886713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=886712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=886712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=886712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}