NPR wants to bankrupt women's basketball

By Zachary Faria of The Washington Examiner.

"In the latest installment of economic illiteracy among journalists, NPR has taken up the issue of the supposed gender pay gap between the NBA and the WNBA. 

In other words, they want to bankrupt women’s basketball.

Phoenix Mercury star Brittney Griner, like many professional women’s basketball players, makes extra money by playing professionally in Russia. As a result of her detention in that country, liberal journalists and activists have decided to blame the “pay gap” between the men’s and women’s professional leagues.

Claiming that “the gender pay gap in America is nothing new” while predictably confusing wages with earnings, NPR’s Laurel Wamsley claims that “the disparity is especially acute” between the NBA and the WNBA. Wamsley notes that the top pick in the WNBA draft received a three-year contract worth just over $225,000, while the top pick in the NBA draft last year landed a four-year, $45.6 million deal.

Wamsley later stumbles into economic reality, noting the difference between revenue between the two leagues. Whoops!

Absurdly, she claims that the difference exists because the NBA had a “51-year head start” because the WNBA tipped off in 1997. But the NBA didn’t receive a national television contract until its ninth season. The WNBA received one the moment it was formed, yet it has not formed a fan base anywhere near as large.

The NBA generates more revenue because men are more athletic and therefore more fun to watch. You are more likely to see someone dunk a basketball in a random high school boys game than in an entire WNBA season.

And the revenue difference is indeed massive. The WNBA generates roughly $60 million in revenue, compared to the roughly $8 billion the NBA creates — more than a hundred times as much. Of course, revenue is not profit. Once the expenses are accounted for, the WNBA actually loses some $10 million a year according to NBA commissioner Adam Silver. In order to rectify this supposed pay gap, you would have to find owners willing and able to light billions of dollars on fire out of the goodness of their social-justicey hearts.

Wamsley then laments that New York Liberty owner Joe Tsai was punished for providing charter flights for his team, which are normal in the NBA but a violation of the WNBA’s collective bargaining agreement. Of course, this is in place because it provides an unfair advantage to woo free agents to their team. Perhaps if all WNBA teams were sold to a Chinese government mouthpiece, then they could all pay for charter flights.

Yes, there is a pay gap between the NBA and the WNBA — the same way there is a pay gap between the NBA and NPR. The NBA is in a different stratosphere financially than almost any other line of work outside professional men's sports. The WNBA is not comparable to it in any way other than the fact that both are basketball leagues.

These absurd comparisons won’t change a profit gap that is, for practical purposes, infinite, since only one of the two leagues makes money."