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The Today show’s Hoda Kotb was in a fine froth on Tuesday when she found out how much WNBA rookie Caitlin Clark will be making. Clark on Monday became the WNBA’s #1 overall draft pick, and immediately signed with the Indiana Fever for $338,000, which would be a low salary in the NBA for one year. But Clark’s contract was for four years, meaning that she will likely be the WNBA’s standout player until Old Joe Biden is 86 years old for the decidedly workaday sum of $76,535.
An enraged Kotb sputtered: “For somebody who is now the face of women’s basketball, it seemed kind of ridiculous.” And in comparison to what NBA players make, it is. Victor Wembanyama, who was the #1 pick in 2023’s NBA draft, signed a slightly more lucrative deal than Clark’s; Wembanyama will be pulling down a cool $55 million.
Kotb continued: “There’s just something about this that’s so disturbing. I mean, I picture all the little girls with signs that say, ‘Caitlin!’ but this is what her contract is worth?” Her cohost, Savannah Guthrie, held out hope for better days, saying wistfully: “Hopefully the payday is coming, too.”
Kotb returned to the subject later, on “Today with Hoda & Jenna,” where she said: “I was like, ‘Ah! What’s she gonna get paid?’ Because finally, you can get a real paycheck, and then I saw it, and I was like, ‘This can’t be right.’” According to the New York Post, Kotb “read Clark’s starting salary of $76,535 and asked, ‘So this is what the No. 1 player, who’s now at the WNBA, [is earning]?’”
Still incredulous, Kotb “acknowledged that Clark, 22, will earn more money from various endorsements, but she still does not understand how the athlete is making significantly less than Wembanyama, who cashed in $12.1 million for his first season with the San Antonio Spurs last year.” Her sidekick Jenna Bush Hager chimed in with this: “Honestly, the gap is so jarring. The discrepancy when we’re talking about equal pay? That ain’teven close!”
Indeed it isn’t. What Kotb, Guthrie and Hager apparently fail to understand is that these salaries aren’t set by some government tribunal that is endeavoring to impose and enforce “equity.” At least not yet. These three talking heads may be certain that Caitlin Clark and Victor Wembanyama do absolutely equal work at an equal level and so therefore should be entitled to absolutely equal pay, but the American public that actually watches basketball is not convinced.
In 2023, the WNBA happily announced that “WNBA attendance was up 16 percent for the 2023 season compared to last year. The average attendance of 6,615 fans per game was the highest since 2018. The WNBA had its highest total attendance in 13 years (1,587,488).” Meanwhile, the NBA drew 22,538,518, with an average game attendance of 18,324.
The “Today” women never considered the implications of those numbers. Instead, Kotb complained that the difference in pay between Clark and Wembanyama, and the NBA and the WNBA, was “like picking at an old scab for many women.” She complained about “sitting for many years next to co-anchors over the years and not knowing what anyone got paid and then discovering that you’re making like a tiny fraction of what the guy was making next to you.”
That’s a shame, if it’s true, but it’s not the same thing as the pay differential between the NBA and WNBA. People pay to watch NBA players more than they do to watch WNBA players quite simply because the quality of play is higher and the games are more interesting. It is the free market, not institutionalized sexism or any other leftist bogeyman, that has determined that the NBA’s number one draft pick can get a $55 million deal while his WNBA counterpart signs for only $338,000.
And it is the free market that will be destroyed if Kotb, Guthrie and Hager, and others like them, get their way. Kotb said: “I was imagining the little girls with the signs, who were filling the stadiums, who are now obsessed with basketball, with signs that say, ‘Caitlin,’ and society, I guess, is saying, ‘Well, this is what that’s worth right now. That’s worth $76,000.’” The implication was clear: What we need is a woke commissar who will decree that the WNBA is worth more, and that its players must be paid salaries identical to those paid to NBA players. And, as always happens when socialists impose controls, the whole thing will ultimately come crashing down: The female basketball players will be paid more than they bring in, and at some point the money will run out.
The end result of the feminist indignation over low WNBA salaries, then, will be the death of the WNBA. If it doesn’t get filled with men pretending to be women first.
How much does Kotb make? Whatever it is it’s way too much for someone to just sit and whine about everything under the sun! Crap, I’ve done that my WHOLE LIFE – and FOR FREE!!
Yeah, Hota Kotbtard needs to slurp another glass of strong wine on TV and STFU until she passes out. Nobody REALLY watches the WNBA except family members of the players and the stadiums are mostly empty during games.
People DO watch women’s tennis, despite the fact that some half drunk guy in the men’s league who was ranked below 300th, if I remember correctly, easily DESTROYED Serena Williams in a game. Female players are actually paid more than the MUCH better men when you consider they only play three sets in the Grand Slams while the men have to play five, rain or shine.
So pick up a tennis racket, Hota. That seems more your country club style than basketball. Although I do give you credit for not going on a hate filled, racist rant against Caitlin Clark because she’s a white chick who dominates a sport formerly dominated by black ones. The black supremacists and white lefties are gnashing their teeth in impotent fury over Clark. Aww, she didn’t get arrested on drug charges in Russia or have a body covered in butt ugly tattoos? Too bad for you scumbags.
Name the winner of any WNBA Dunk Contest.
When the USWNT (soccer) played an under-15 Boys Select Team from Dallas it lost 5-2. The ignorant women on that team who kneeled during the playing of the national anthem were too clueless to realize the reason the team used to dominate at the world level was because of how good women in the U.S. had it compared to women elsewhere.
While visiting my daughter in SLC, this former D-I soccer player, and D-I and D-III coach, attended a women’s professional league game. I know the players “work hard” but you don’t get paid for working hard but instead for producing value. I would not attend another women’s professional league game if the tickets were free of charge.
Caitlin is a great player who may help the WNBA with attendance and TV viewers, but they have a lot of ground to make up. If anything, the NBA players are paid too much, but at least the NBA is solvent. Without regular bailouts from the NBA, the WNBA would have gone under long ago. While NBA play is fast and high, the WNBA play is slow and low.
I seriously doubt NBA players are paid too much. The same salary criteria applies to them as it does WNBA players. And even if they were paid less, what would that do.? Would the money saved get handed to the fans? No, it would go back in the pockets of the owners.
If the NBA players are “paid too much,” how much should they be paid. I rarely watch the NBA but obviously many people do. The players help the teams generate the revenue needed to pay them so much. Some clearly get paid much more than others because they generate more revenue than others.
I’m not so sure how much even the men’s teams make, as a profitable business, as many seem to be the play things of billionaires like Mark Cuban. Become a billionaire, buy a big mansion, a big yacht, at least a Gulfsteam 5 (as a private jet), but the biggest status symbol is owning a major league sports team.
I may be hated for this but they are also the recipients of a lot of corporate welfare, how many sports teams actually own their own arena/stadium, verses how many are paid for by taxpayers? Then there is the monopoly aspect, the big leagues are allowed to crush any newcomers, and limit how many teams can belong to their league. They have anti trust exemptions for some stupid reason, these should be done away with, but this may be the reason the WNBA is being propped up financially by the NBA, a quid pro quo as it were.
The Today show is NBC. NBC has local stations where people are paid a lot less, but they have a much smaller audience.
Money should be taken from the Today show in order to pay more money to the people who work at the local stations.
Making more money a game playing ball then the average Truck Driver and Office Worker dose in one Year
If I heard right, the WNBA season is 30 games and as mentioned above is subsidized by the NBA. In their 30 year existence that have never turned a profit.
With product endorsements, she’ll make a very comfortable living. Kotb should just shut up.
Supply and demand. There isn’t a demand for professional women’s basketball, therefore the price and cost are very low.
Fill the stands and we can talk about some raises, ladies.
Caitlyn should’ve stayed in college and made some millions off NIL deals
If I had a pile of rocks I wanted busted into pebbles and I hired one man and one woman to do the job, do I pay the woman the same for turning out one wheel barrow load of pebbles while the man turns out 10? Perhaps not the perfect analogy but it sounds like these TV women want the women players to be paid for being women and not for what they produce.
As I enjoy teaching my students, you don’t get paid for working hard, you get paid for producing value. If I teach with a 40 pound pack on my back my work would be harder but I shouldn’t get paid more.
Caitlin doesn’t need as much money as your typical NBA player. She doesn’t have to support nine kids with seven different babymama.
I don’t even follow sports but it seemed I had Caitlin Clark shoved down my thrown in recent months every time I turned on the TV, so much there was no way it was a result of viewer demand.
I wonder if any of them have ever bought WNBA tickets? There are plenty of women in this country that could fill arenas if they wanted. But then again, these are the same women who are ok with males dominating women’s sports and leaving those same little girls without a roster spot, knocked off the podium, or injured.