‘Pay us what you owe us': America divided by WNBA T-shirt stunt
The blunt message was delivered during warm ups ahead of the WNBA All Star Game on Sunday amid ongoing collective bargaining agreement negotiations between the players and the league.
With a late October deadline looming, the players' stance is clear … they want a bigger piece of the pie.
It's not the first time WNBA players have demanded more pay, with the talking point rearing its head every year.
The latest act however comes off the back of the league agreeing to an 11-year, $AUD3.38 billion TV rights deal with Disney, Amazon Prime Video and NBCUniversal that will come into play from 2026.
The WNBA is booming with TV ratings (up 23%), ticket sales (up 26%) and attendance (13%) all surging halfway through the season, according to NPR.
But the simple act of wearing a T-shirts demanding to be paid more sparked widespread divide with many believing the players are deserving of greater pay, while countless others pointed to the league's struggling finances which have seen the WNBA never make a profit.
What is the WNBA's revenue?
That's the big talking point behind all of the ongoing CBA negotiations, the WNBA players are chasing a large share of the league's revenue.
Under the current CBA, the players split 9.3 per cent of league revenue. A figure far lesser than the NBA which sees players split between 49 and 51 per cent.
The league currently operates off a revenue of $200m, but as is often pointed out when these discussions come to the table … the WNBA has yet to turn a profit since its inception in 1996.
The NBA owns nearly 60 per cent of the league with team owners investing millions every year to the WNBA.
Despite the recent uptick, the 2024 WNBA season saw the league lose $40 million.
The new TV rights deal will inject $200m annually into the league, compared to the current deal which injects roughly $45m per season.
With that deal set to come into play from 2026 onwards, WNBA players could soon see their salaries rise and the league turn a profit for the first time.
What is the difference in WNBA and NBA salaries?
According to Sports Illustrated, WNBA salaries roughly range from a minimum of $USD66,000 to a super maximum contract of around $USD250,000.
Despite being the face of the league, Caitlin Clark remains on a rookie contract which will see her earn $78,000 in 2025.
Compare those figures to the NBA and the difference is eye-watering.
The average NBA salary for the 2024-25 season was projected to be $11,910,649, according to SI.
The minimum salary came in at $1,157,153 while the highest-paid player, Stephen Curry, earned a staggering $55.7 million.
America divided by players calling for more pay
You can almost guarantee that anytime a WNBA player speaks out about wanting to be paid more, social media will be flooded with vitriol
It kicked into overdrive on Sunday as images of the players wearing the shirts began to spread across the internet.
End Wokeness wrote on X: 'The WNBA loses $50 million every year and has NEVER generated a profit. You deserve $0.00.'
Jake Crain added: 'There is no league as tone deaf as the WNBA. 'Pay us what you owe us' shirts when you have to be subsidised is wild.'
Fox Sports Radio host Aaron Torres wrote: 'There is no group of more delusional people on planet Earth, than WNBA players.'
Of course not everyone was on the side of the corporation with a plethora of fans backing the players in chasing what they're worth.
WTH News wrote: 'They're not asking for NBA bags, just their damn slice of the pie. Talent's on the court, money's on the table — time to match the energy. You don't build a league on players and leave them crumbs.'
NBA and WNBA beat reporter Andrew Dukowitz wrote: 'The league is built on players, they deserve to get a bigger slice of the pie for the work they all have put in, and as the revenue grows, they should as well. The WNBA players are not asking to be paid dollar for dollar what the NBA players make, from what I understand they just want a fair share of the revenue.'
Barstool Sports' Dave Portnoy took his outrage even further, savaging people who don't believe the WNBA players don't deserve a bigger slice.
'I don't know how anybody in the world with a brain, and maybe my brain is just bigger than most, can rationally say women don't deserve more money at this point,' Portnoy said in a video posted to social media.
'Franchise values are exploding. Ticket sales, merch, TV rights all exploding. The players have an opt out in their CBA. Of course they took it. It's all about leverage in re-negotiations and for the 1st time in history of the league players have power.
'The players make virtually nothing while the entire league explodes. Of course they deserve more money.'
What will it mean if no agreement is reached?
With the first round of talks going almost nowhere, the threat of a potential player lockout remains real.
The players union has said it's preparing for a work stoppage when the current CBA expires Oct. 31.
WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert said she has 'confidence' a deal can be struck before the Halloween deadline, but also said she's 'not going to put an exact date on it.
'We're in a good place and we're going back and forth,' she said.
If no agreement is reached, the players will effectively not turn up to work until a deal is struck which could then have an impact on the upcoming expansion drafts in December.
Free agency, which usually starts in late January, and potentially the April draft would also be on hold as long as a deal remains unfinalised.
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Sam Hawley: For so long, the tech bros of Silicon Valley have dominated the AI race. Now there's a boom underway in China, giving them a run for their money and Donald Trump doesn't like it. Today, Kyle Chan from the global policy think tank, the Rand Corporation, on why the president is so desperate for the US to beat Beijing. I'm Sam Hawley on Gadigal land in Sydney. This is ABC News Daily. Sam Hawley: Kyle, there's a global race going on right now to be the world leader in AI. This is a race basically to make technologies that rival the human brain, right? Kyle Chan: Yeah. So there really is this global race. And in particular, you have the US and China with many of the world's best AI models. And it's quite impressive to see almost every day, it feels like a new model coming out with new advanced capabilities. So, yes,getting close, if not even beating what we can do ourselves. Sam Hawley: Yeah, it's fascinating to watch how quickly this is moving. Donald Trump, US President: I don't like the name artificial anything because it's not artificial. It's genius. It's pure genius. Sam Hawley: Donald Trump, of course, wants to make sure that America wins this race. Donald Trump, US President: America is the country that started the AI race. And as president of the United States, I'm here today to declare that America is going to win it. We're going to work hard. We're going to win it. Sam Hawley: He even gave a speech with that title, winning the AI race. Donald Trump, US President: Because we will not allow any foreign nation to beat us. Our children will not live on a planet controlled by the algorithms of the adversaries advancing values and interests contrary to our own. Sam Hawley: He's pretty invested in this, isn't he? Kyle Chan: That's right. Yeah, this has been a big topic throughout his administration so far. I think a lot of what US policy is focused on, including the current Trump administration, is on winning the race to AGI. I think there's a strong sense that this could be a pivotal turning point. Sam Hawley: Remind me, what is AGI? Kyle Chan: So artificial general intelligence. There's this idea that perhaps one day it could reach a point where it could replicate or even exceed the abilities of humans to do, say, certain kinds of office work or certain kinds of research. This could even extend into areas like military capabilities, like autonomous weapon systems, for example. Reaching this stage where AI is as good as, if not better than, human reasoning. Sam Hawley: So we might not be needed actually anymore. We won't need to think anymore, right? Kyle Chan: We'll see. Sam Hawley: Exactly. All right. Well, Kyle, of course, up until now, the US has really dominated this market. All the big tech giants who've developed AI, things like ChatGPT, they're sitting there in Silicon Valley. Kyle Chan: Oh, yeah. So you have OpenAI, currently led by Sam Altman. You have Google, which has been coming out with a number of various sort of cutting edge models with its Gemini series. You have Claude, which is very well known from Anthropic, well known for its coding capabilities. You have Meta as well as xAI. So there's actually quite a quite a large roster of strong American AI companies. Sam Hawley: So for many, many years, America's really led the world when it comes to AI development. But as you say, China has been creeping up on it. And that has the US administration a bit worried. It even tried to stop Beijing's advancement in this space, didn't it? By banning Nvidia from selling advanced chips to China. Just remind me what happened then. Kyle Chan: Yes, that's right. So this was actually in the Biden administration. You had very strong export controls placed on especially Nvidia's more advanced chips. And so here you actually have several rounds of downgrading of what kinds of Nvidia chips could be exported in China. Sam Hawley: So the US, in part, was saying that it was deeply concerned that AI could be used by the Chinese for military purposes. Kyle Chan: That's right. Yeah. And, you know, to be sure, it was also part of this broader idea that advanced semiconductors in general can be used for a whole range of important applications. So in addition to AI, there are also more direct military implications for this ban. Sam Hawley: All right. So Biden brought in this ban to stop these really advanced chips from being exported from the United States to China. But intriguingly, Trump just recently has now removed that ban. Do we know why he did that and how significant is that decision? Kyle Chan: Yes. What's interesting is I think whereas before people expected maybe a continuous ratcheting up of these export controls, Trump has reversed the ban on the H20 chips. 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There really is a boom going on there right now, isn't there? Kyle Chan: Absolutely. Yeah. So, I mean, everyone now knows about DeepSeek and the DeepSeek moment. News report: The release of a high performing Chinese rival to chat GPT has sent shockwaves through the global tech sector and caused US tech stocks to fall. Kyle Chan: A Chinese AI model for the first time seemed to be almost on par with the US leading models. And this was done at a fraction of the cost in terms of compute. And this was done sort of in defiance of US efforts to put on export controls and to restrict Chinese compute capacity. But DeepSeek is really the tip of the iceberg. So there's a whole set of very competitive Chinese AI models. You think about Alibaba's Qwen, you think about Tencent, ByteDance. There's Moonshot, a whole host of startups as well. 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So there's a question right now within the Chinese tech community, Chinese AI policy about how hard to push for this domestic alternative versus to continue to rely on what are otherwise better performing Nvidia chips. Sam Hawley: All right. Well, Kyle, just unpack for me now. What's actually driving this AI boom in China? Because it has a lot to do with the Communist Party's backing of this, doesn't it, of the government's funding of it. Kyle Chan: That's right. So what's interesting is that Beijing is pouring resources into the entire, what I call the entire AI tech stack. So they're investing in not only chips, as we mentioned earlier, but in the rollout of data centres, often tied to renewable energy. They are investing in the development of foundation models. They have special local government AI labs. And then all the way to applications, especially in so-called hard tech areas like robotics and industrial automation. So you can see sort of this full range of support. And of course, at the very heart of this, I think is ultimately the emphasis on talent development and basic research. So a lot of the universities in China, many of them are producing really world class AI developers. Sam Hawley: And we've seen this before, haven't we? From the Chinese government when it wanted to boost the EV market. It did the same thing. It did the same thing with solar and it works. Kyle Chan: Yeah, that's right. They've tried this playbook before and they're going to try it again. But the funny thing is, yeah, AI is sort of a different beast. And so, you know, for example, just in the past year, we have this shift towards reason models. And that already has thrown a bit of a wrench into some of the industrial policy efforts that China has made in AI. So some of the data centre build out that was government backed. You know, there's a question now about whether that is fit for purpose with the shift towards this sort of new AI paradigm. And it could change again. 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