Latest news with #AdamSilver
The Guardian
11 hours ago
- Business
- The Guardian
WNBA players say they're not paid what they're owed. Are they right?
Napheesa Collier was in record-breaking form on Saturday night as she set a new high for a WNBA All-Star Game, with 36 points. But much of the attention was focused on what happened before the game when players warmed up with shirts bearing the message 'Pay us what you owe us.' The move came after players and the league failed to reach a deal on a new collective bargaining agreement. Do they have a point though? Evaluating athlete pay is notoriously tricky because sports accounting always includes a certain amount of voodoo. That's especially true in the WNBA, whose fortunes – literally and figuratively – are tied up with the NBA's, for better or for worse. The relationship has evolved through the years, and many current WNBA teams have no direct ties with an NBA team, although some remain under NBA ownership. NBA commissioner Adam Silver refers to the two leagues as 'integrated,' and they have bundled their broadcast rights together in a massive 11-year deal. And Silver is the one who has faced pressure within the NBA over the WNBA's apparent losses, something that those who believe the likes of Collier and Caitlin Clark should be happy with their current salaries often use as a counter argument to demands for a pay hike. Silver said in 2018 that the WNBA's losses were roughly $10m a year. And reports last fall said the WNBA was due to lose $40m in 2024. Adjust the 2018 figures for inflation, and the WNBA is supposedly losing three times as much as it was a few years ago. That's a curious figure given other public statistics suggest the league's financial health has never been better. First, while WNBA attendance dropped from an overall average of more than 10,000 in the late 1990s to a little under 7,000 just after the pandemic, Clark and Co wiped out most of those losses in 2024 alone, pushing the league average close to 10,000 again, and the league is flirting with a new record in 2025. Second, the league's broadcast rights alone have ballooned from zero in 2002 to roughly $60m a year in the current deal, with that number set to go to $200m as part of the combined deal with the NBA. Third, total league revenue jumped from $102m in 2019 to the $180m-$200m range in 2023, Bloomberg reported. Some expenses have gone up, most notably a $25m per year commitment to fly teams by charter planes rather than on regular flights, as has been the case in the past. The WNBA salary cap has also risen incrementally from $622,000 in 2003 (inflation-adjusted to 2025: $1.1m) to $1.5m in 2025. The league has one fewer team now (13 instead of 14) than it did in 2003 (although expansion teams are on their way) so the total cost of player pay has gone from a maximum of $15.4m to $19.5m. But these expenses don't add up to a full counterweight to the reported rise in revenue or the well-publicized jump in broadcast rights. It's a good bet that Joe Lacob and Peter Guber, the owners of the WNBA's well-supported Golden State Valkyries and the NBA's Golden State Warriors, are taking a bigger risk by paying 37-year-old Stephen Curry nearly $60m a year than they are in paying the entire Valkyries roster barely $1m. The bottom line is that we don't know what's included in the bottom line. Reinvestment in the league? Facilities? Postgame meals catered by five-star restaurants? (Surely not the latter.) All we know is that it's not going to the players. Generally, the less a league makes, the lower the share of revenue its players get – 50% of $1bn is less of a chore to pay than 25% of $100m. But WNBA players are making less than 10%, a rather tiny figure for any professional organization. And in the land of voodoo accounting, sports teams have been adept at pleading penury when circumstances call for it. It's not just the WNBA either. Eight years ago, ESPN uncovered numbers showing nearly half of the NBA's teams didn't generate a profit on their own. Perhaps the best indicator of how well WNBA teams are actually doing – or are poised to do – is the price paid when teams are sold. The New York Liberty were sold in 2019 for somewhere in the $10m-$14m range. Six years later, based on a sale of a stake of the team, the the Liberty's value was calculated at around $450m. Little wonder WNBA players are noticing these figures and asking why their pay is still small enough that many of them are forced to spend their offseasons playing elsewhere. Players' 'Pay Us What You Owe Us' T-shirts at the All-Star Game weren't printed on a sudden whim. None of those players are suggesting that they should be paid the same as their counterparts in the NBA, where league revenues top $10bn a year. But they surely deserve more, considering the WNBA rookie minimum is just $66,000 compared to $1.27m in the NBA. And it's not just the per-player pay. It's the number of players who get paid at all. A typical NBA roster now has 15 full-time players and three 'two-way' players who are called up from the second-tier G-League. WNBA teams are limited to 12 players, and some may only carry 11. In a recent Golden State-Phoenix game, Phoenix only had eight players available. So job security is minimal, and those low paychecks sting a bit more when a player is a few bad games away from not receiving them at all. WNBA players may face a bit of opposition as they strive for improved salaries. Some NBA owners seem less enthusiastic than others about the whole venture, even if the most pessimistic reports of WNBA losses don't even add up to the salary of a Curry or a Jayson Tatum alone. Some corners of social media have reacted to the WNBA All-Stars T-shirts with the expected chortling and guffawing. But the post-Covid women's sports boom shows no sign of abating, and the numbers as we know them seem to be on the players' side. Public opinion is likely to follow.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Business
- Yahoo
WNBA players say they're not paid what they're owed. Are they right?
Napheesa Collier was in record-breaking form on Saturday night as she set a new high for a WNBA All-Star Game, with 36 points. But much of the attention was focused on what happened before the game when players warmed up with shirts bearing the message 'Pay us what you owe us.' The move came after players and the league failed to reach a deal on a new collective bargaining agreement. Do they have a point though? Evaluating athlete pay is notoriously tricky because sports accounting always includes a certain amount of voodoo. Related: 'Pay us what you owe us': WNBA All-Stars make statement with warmup shirts That's especially true in the WNBA, whose fortunes – literally and figuratively – are tied up with the NBA's, for better or for worse. The relationship has evolved through the years, and many current WNBA teams have no direct ties with an NBA team, although some remain under NBA ownership. NBA commissioner Adam Silver refers to the two leagues as 'integrated,' and they have bundled their broadcast rights together in a massive 11-year deal. And Silver is the one who has faced pressure within the NBA over the WNBA's apparent losses, something that those who believe the likes of Collier and Caitlin Clark should be happy with their current salaries often use as a counter argument to demands for a pay hike. Silver said in 2018 that the WNBA's losses were roughly $10m a year. And reports last fall said the WNBA was due to lose $40m in 2024. Adjust the 2018 figures for inflation, and the WNBA is supposedly losing three times as much as it was a few years ago. That's a curious figure given other public statistics suggest the league's financial health has never been better. First, while WNBA attendance dropped from an overall average of more than 10,000 in the late 1990s to a little under 7,000 just after the pandemic, Clark and Co wiped out most of those losses in 2024 alone, pushing the league average close to 10,000 again, and the league is flirting with a new record in 2025. Second, the league's broadcast rights alone have ballooned from zero in 2002 to roughly $60m a year in the current deal, with that number set to go to $200m as part of the combined deal with the NBA. Third, total league revenue jumped from $102m in 2019 to the $180m-$200m range in 2023, Bloomberg reported. Some expenses have gone up, most notably a $25m per year commitment to fly teams by charter planes rather than on regular flights, as has been the case in the past. The WNBA salary cap has also risen incrementally from $622,000 in 2003 (inflation-adjusted to 2025: $1.1m) to $1.5m in 2025. The league has one fewer team now (13 instead of 14) than it did in 2003 (although expansion teams are on their way) so the total cost of player pay has gone from a maximum of $15.4m to $19.5m. But these expenses don't add up to a full counterweight to the reported rise in revenue or the well-publicized jump in broadcast rights. It's a good bet that Joe Lacob and Peter Guber, the owners of the WNBA's well-supported Golden State Valkyries and the NBA's Golden State Warriors, are taking a bigger risk by paying 37-year-old Stephen Curry nearly $60m a year than they are in paying the entire Valkyries roster barely $1m. The bottom line is that we don't know what's included in the bottom line. Reinvestment in the league? Facilities? Postgame meals catered by five-star restaurants? (Surely not the latter.) All we know is that it's not going to the players. Generally, the less a league makes, the lower the share of revenue its players get – 50% of $1bn is less of a chore to pay than 25% of $100m. But WNBA players are making less than 10%, a rather tiny figure for any professional organization. And in the land of voodoo accounting, sports teams have been adept at pleading penury when circumstances call for it. It's not just the WNBA either. Eight years ago, ESPN uncovered numbers showing nearly half of the NBA's teams didn't generate a profit on their own. Perhaps the best indicator of how well WNBA teams are actually doing – or are poised to do – is the price paid when teams are sold. The New York Liberty were sold in 2019 for somewhere in the $10m-$14m range. Six years later, based on a sale of a stake of the team, the the Liberty's value was calculated at around $450m. Little wonder WNBA players are noticing these figures and asking why their pay is still small enough that many of them are forced to spend their offseasons playing elsewhere. Players' 'Pay Us What You Owe Us' T-shirts at the All-Star Game weren't printed on a sudden whim. None of those players are suggesting that they should be paid the same as their counterparts in the NBA, where league revenues top $10bn a year. But they surely deserve more, considering the WNBA rookie minimum is just $66,000 compared to $1.27m in the NBA. And it's not just the per-player pay. It's the number of players who get paid at all. A typical NBA roster now has 15 full-time players and three 'two-way' players who are called up from the second-tier G-League. WNBA teams are limited to 12 players, and some may only carry 11. In a recent Golden State-Phoenix game, Phoenix only had eight players available. So job security is minimal, and those low paychecks sting a bit more when a player is a few bad games away from not receiving them at all. WNBA players may face a bit of opposition as they strive for improved salaries. Some NBA owners seem less enthusiastic than others about the whole venture, even if the most pessimistic reports of WNBA losses don't even add up to the salary of a Curry or a Jayson Tatum alone. Some corners of social media have reacted to the WNBA All-Stars T-shirts with the expected chortling and guffawing. But the post-Covid women's sports boom shows no sign of abating, and the numbers as we know them seem to be on the players' side. Public opinion is likely to follow.
The Guardian
a day ago
- Business
- The Guardian
WNBA players say they're not paid what they're owed. Are they right?
Napheesa Collier was in record-breaking form on Saturday night as she set a new high for a WNBA All-Star Game, with 36 points. But much of the attention was focused on what happened before the game when players warmed up with shirts bearing the message 'Pay us what you owe us.' The move came after players and the league failed to reach a deal on a new collective bargaining agreement. Do they have a point though? Evaluating athlete pay is notoriously tricky because sports accounting always includes a certain amount of voodoo. That's especially true in the WNBA, whose fortunes – literally and figuratively – are tied up with the NBA's, for better or for worse. The relationship has evolved through the years, and many current WNBA teams have no direct ties with an NBA team, although some remain under NBA ownership. NBA commissioner Adam Silver refers to the two leagues as 'integrated,' and they have bundled their broadcast rights together in a massive 11-year deal. And Silver is the one who has faced pressure within the NBA over the WNBA's apparent losses, something that those who believe the likes of Collier and Caitlin Clark should be happy with their current salaries often use as a counter argument to demands for a pay hike. Silver said in 2018 that the WNBA's losses were roughly $10m a year. And reports last fall said the WNBA was due to lose $40m in 2024. Adjust the 2018 figures for inflation, and the WNBA is supposedly losing three times as much as it was a few years ago. That's a curious figure given other public statistics suggest the league's financial health has never been better. First, while WNBA attendance dropped from an overall average of more than 10,000 in the late 1990s to a little under 7,000 just after the pandemic, Clark and Co wiped out most of those losses in 2024 alone, pushing the league average close to 10,000 again, and the league is flirting with a new record in 2025. Second, the league's broadcast rights alone have ballooned from zero in 2002 to roughly $60m a year in the current deal, with that number set to go to $200m as part of the combined deal with the NBA. Third, total league revenue jumped from $102m in 2019 to the $180m-$200m range in 2023, Bloomberg reported. Some expenses have gone up, most notably a $25m per year commitment to fly teams by charter planes rather than on regular flights, as has been the case in the past. The WNBA salary cap has also risen incrementally from $622,000 in 2003 (inflation-adjusted to 2025: $1.1m) to $1.5m in 2025. The league has one fewer team now (13 instead of 14) than it did in 2003 (although expansion teams are on their way) so the total cost of player pay has gone from a maximum of $15.4m to $19.5m. But these expenses don't add up to a full counterweight to the reported rise in revenue or the well-publicized jump in broadcast rights. It's a good bet that Joe Lacob and Peter Guber, the owners of the WNBA's well-supported Golden State Valkyries and the NBA's Golden State Warriors, are taking a bigger risk by paying 37-year-old Stephen Curry nearly $60m a year than they are in paying the entire Valkyries roster barely $1m. The bottom line is that we don't know what's included in the bottom line. Reinvestment in the league? Facilities? Postgame meals catered by five-star restaurants? (Surely not the latter.) All we know is that it's not going to the players. Generally, the less a league makes, the lower the share of revenue its players get – 50% of $1bn is less of a chore to pay than 25% of $100m. But WNBA players are making less than 10%, a rather tiny figure for any professional organization. And in the land of voodoo accounting, sports teams have been adept at pleading penury when circumstances call for it. It's not just the WNBA either. Eight years ago, ESPN uncovered numbers showing nearly half of the NBA's teams didn't generate a profit on their own. Perhaps the best indicator of how well WNBA teams are actually doing – or are poised to do – is the price paid when teams are sold. The New York Liberty were sold in 2019 for somewhere in the $10m-$14m range. Six years later, based on a sale of a stake of the team, the the Liberty's value was calculated at around $450m. Little wonder WNBA players are noticing these figures and asking why their pay is still small enough that many of them are forced to spend their offseasons playing elsewhere. Players' 'Pay Us What You Owe Us' T-shirts at the All-Star Game weren't printed on a sudden whim. None of those players are suggesting that they should be paid the same as their counterparts in the NBA, where league revenues top $10bn a year. But they surely deserve more, considering the WNBA rookie minimum is just $66,000 compared to $1.27m in the NBA. And it's not just the per-player pay. It's the number of players who get paid at all. A typical NBA roster now has 15 full-time players and three 'two-way' players who are called up from the second-tier G-League. WNBA teams are limited to 12 players, and some may only carry 11. In a recent Golden State-Phoenix game, Phoenix only had eight players available. So job security is minimal, and those low paychecks sting a bit more when a player is a few bad games away from not receiving them at all. WNBA players may face a bit of opposition as they strive for improved salaries. Some NBA owners seem less enthusiastic than others about the whole venture, even if the most pessimistic reports of WNBA losses don't even add up to the salary of a Curry or a Jayson Tatum alone. Some corners of social media have reacted to the WNBA All-Stars T-shirts with the expected chortling and guffawing. But the post-Covid women's sports boom shows no sign of abating, and the numbers as we know them seem to be on the players' side. Public opinion is likely to follow.
Reuters
2 days ago
- Sport
- Reuters
Former Sonics star Haywood optimistic about NBA's return to Seattle, Las Vegas
LOS ANGELES, July 19 (Reuters) - NBA Hall of Famer Spencer Haywood says excitement is building in both Seattle and Las Vegas as the league considers expansion, with recent meetings fueling speculation that both cities could soon be home to new franchises. "They just had the meetings yesterday. Adam and everyone - Seattle, and Las Vegas. So that's pretty exciting," Haywood told Reuters at ESPYs on Wednesday, referring to discussions involving NBA Commissioner Adam Silver and the NBA Board of Governors in Las Vegas this week. Seattle has been without an NBA team since the SuperSonics relocated and became the Oklahoma City Thunder in 2008. Las Vegas, which has never hosted an NBA franchise, has emerged as a prominent sports destination in recent years, buoyed by the success of the WNBA's Aces and the NHL's Golden Knights. "I live in Las Vegas and I was just up in Seattle. We just put up a statue for Lenny Wilkins. We're getting ready." Haywood, who starred for the Sonics alongside fellow Hall of Famer Wilkins, suggested a return of the team could come within the next three years. "All my stuff, Lenny Wilkins' stuff, and Gary Payton's stuff is in storage at the Hall of Fame for when they come back," he said with a smile. The former Olympian noted the passionate support for basketball in Seattle, where fans turned out in large numbers to honor Wilkins despite the absence of a team. "The fans are hungry. We had thousands of people who came out for a statue unveil of Lenny Wilkins, with no team," Haywood said. Las Vegas, where construction on a new stadium for Major League Baseball's Athletics recently got underway, is also poised for NBA action, according to Haywood. "Same thing with Las Vegas. We have seen it with the Aces, they've won championships. Same thing for the Golden Knights," he said. "Sports is a good thing." Commissioner Silver has previously expressed interest in expanding the 30-team league - with Seattle and Las Vegas considered the front-runners - though no official announcement has been made. Silver said after the Board of Governors' meetings that committees at the league have been tasked with further evaluating potential expansion. For Haywood and fans in Seattle and Las Vegas, the prospect of NBA basketball appears closer than ever.
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Adam Silver reflects on the fading presence of NBA dynasties: "I'm sure Sam Presti isn't ready to hear that"
Adam Silver reflects on the fading presence of NBA dynasties: "I'm sure Sam Presti isn't ready to hear that" originally appeared on Basketball Network. NBA Commissioner Adam Silver recently addressed the state of the league. After Tuesday's Board of Governors meeting in Las Vegas, he discussed one key topic: NBA team dynasties — or rather, their absence in recent years. While the prevailing circumstances pointed in a clear direction, Silver took a measured approach on the matter. The double-edged nature of NBA dynasties When NBA fans reflect on the league's rich history, the word 'dynasty' inevitably comes to mind. Think of the Boston Celtics' relentless dominance in the 1960s, the flashy Showtime Lakers of the 1980s, or the Chicago Bulls' unforgettable three-peats in the 1990s. But dynasties are a double-edged sword. On one hand, they represent legendary dominance — teams that didn't just win but defined entire eras by repeatedly crushing the competition and standing strong when everyone was gunning for them. That dynamic created countless legends and icons — including Bill Russell, Magic Johnson, and Michael Jordan — now celebrated in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. On the other hand, dynasties reveal a more troubling side. When one team racks up multiple titles over a short span, it suggests an unbalanced league lacking true parity and fair talent distribution. This hurts competition, lowers TV ratings, damages the NBA's overall image, and makes tanking even more tempting. To address this, the NBA introduced its collective bargaining agreement (CBA)—a negotiated contract, most recently ratified in April 2023, between the league and the players' union that sets the rules for salary caps, player movement, drafts, and revenue sharing. What's next for the NBA? The CBA can be summed up simply: it aims to level the playing field, giving any well-run franchise a real shot at success. That mission seems to be working better than ever. After all, the Oklahoma City Thunder's recent victory in the 2025 NBA Finals over the Indiana Pacers marked a remarkable milestone: the league's seventh different champion in as many seasons, dating back to 2019. Meanwhile, if we go back just a handful of years, the NBA landscape was dominated by a few teams, mainly the Los Angeles Lakers and San Antonio Spurs. These two historic franchises combined to win eight of the first 11 championships of the 2000s. The trend is hard to ignore, raising the question of whether NBA fans have seen the end of dominant dynasties. The commissioner isn't so sure. Silver said he would be 'perfectly comfortable' if the league returned to one team dominating repeatedly, while also appreciating the current era's competitive parity. 'I like what we're seeing right now,' he remarked. Ultimately, no one — not even Silver himself — can settle the dynasty debate for good. 'I'm not ready to declare that we won't have dynasties,' the 63-year-old said, before delivering a lighthearted quip. The Thunder, led by stellar General Manager Sam Presti, are tipped to become the league's next dynasty if any team can break the mold. With that in mind, Silver added, 'I'm sure Sam Presti isn't ready to hear that.'This story was originally reported by Basketball Network on Jul 16, 2025, where it first appeared.
