In 1969, the Nationwide Basketball Affiliation was a comparatively younger skilled basketball league preventing to determine itself. It was producing buzz. However the league was dealing with financial issues, and it was unclear how profitable it could be monetizing the sport’s enchantment to younger individuals.
On the time, Lew Alcindor, a three-time nationwide champion on the College of California, Los Angeles, was getting into the skilled ranks as a rising star, having dominated the faculty sport and captivated the general public’s curiosity. Determined for credibility (and preventing off a rival league additionally in search of to determine itself), the N.B.A. and the Milwaukee Bucks rose to the second and supplied Alcindor a multiyear $1.4 million contract. It was a staggering sum, particularly for a market like Milwaukee. Earlier than enjoying a single sport, Alcindor, who would go on to vary his identify to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, was among the many highest paid gamers within the league.
Right this moment, the Girls’s Nationwide Basketball Affiliation, established about 50 years after the N.B.A., finds itself at an identical crossroads. Because it ideas off its twenty eighth season, the W.N.B.A. is as well-liked because it has ever been. The league’s attendance and tv scores have grown considerably, and its future is brilliant because it expands to new markets.
This 12 months the W.N.B.A. is welcoming a generational expertise to its steady of stars: Caitlin Clark, who was chosen by the Indiana Fever after promoting out arenas across the nation in her remaining collegiate season. But, for causes that astound me, as each an N.B.A. historian and a professor who teaches labor relations, the W.N.B.A. has determined that Clark will probably be paid a wage of $76,535 in her first 12 months. The speed displays the utmost wage for a rookie beneath the league’s collective bargaining settlement. That call is each a alternative and a missed alternative.
The league’s choice has earned it unhealthy press and allegations of gender pay discrimination, tempering the thrill round Clark and her signature three-point shot, and the league’s ascendance extra broadly. Bumping up her wage — even now, after the season has began — would unquestionably be within the league’s curiosity.
Handing out eye-catching salaries to star gamers has been a longtime tactic by rising sports activities leagues in search of to determine themselves and their gamers. And it normally works. The American League, the American Basketball Affiliation, the American Soccer League, major-league Soccer and extra lately LIV Golf have all planted their flags by paying — and in some instances overpaying — for prime expertise.
These offers don’t simply assist new leagues compete with current ones or entice current gamers to shift allegiances. Additionally they function a robust message to the general public in regards to the high quality and funding of the league.
Even the W.N.B.A. has taken this tack up to now. When it negotiated its most up-to-date collective bargaining settlement in 2020, the league touted the massive will increase to participant salaries as proof of its arrival. Now the W.N.B.A. has the chance to completely elevate the league to its rightful stature. Main-league salaries suggest a significant league product.
The principle argument offered for Clark’s wage are the categorical phrases of the collective bargaining settlement between the W.N.B.A. and its gamers, which lays out the bottom pay price for gamers like her. However these phrases can, and in her case ought to, be ignored via settlement of the events. In labor relations, events recurrently negotiate exceptions or in any other case permit modifications to their agreements. For instance, the W.N.B.A. lately agreed to offer constitution journey to its gamers in extra of its contractual obligations.
Leagues have been very happy to sidestep wage restrictions and pay new gamers extra when it fits their pursuits. For example, in 2019 it was reported that Main League Baseball was keen to work round a few of its restrictive wage and contractual guidelines for incoming gamers to entice College of Oklahoma quarterback Kyler Murray to select skilled baseball over soccer.
The wage caps and rookie scales that pervade skilled sports activities are usually not handed down from God, nor are they goal assessments of participant values. Ought to the W.N.B.A. determine to double, triple or quadruple Clark’s (or another participant’s, of whom there are a lot of deserving ones) wage, the one theoretical celebration who would have standing to dispute that improve could be the union who represents W.N.B.A. gamers — which might haven’t any clear purpose to object. The league and the union may even comply with make this a one-off settlement, with out establishing a contractual precedent.
Some individuals have argued that Clark’s official wage is of little consequence on condition that she is all however sure to earn thousands and thousands via league incentive and advertising and marketing agreements and private endorsement offers. However specializing in Clark’s endorsement potential misses the chance to have a nationwide dialog about how the league must be paying its gamers.
For the W.N.B.A., permitting Clark to be paid extra, along with being the fitting factor to do, could be a sound funding in a league deserving of higher public consideration. There’s a cheap concern that different deserving gamers could be miffed to see a rookie obtain particular advantages, however the union would virtually actually be completely happy for not less than one in all its gamers to make more cash than their synthetic minimal.
Alcindor’s signing was a part of a transformational change in pay for N.B.A. gamers. With the W.N.B.A.’s collective bargaining negotiations on the horizon, such a rise for Clark or others may assist all gamers in negotiations.
However even when this have been solely about Caitlin Clark: She is already the largest star within the W.N.B.A., and she or he ought to have the wage to match it.
