The Basketball Bargaining Battle That Will Shrink the Gender Pay Gap

Among the world’s 100 top paid athletes, there are no women.

However, the sports pay gap might get smaller.

The Sports Gender Pay Gap

The top 100 earners range from a list topped by Cristiano Ronaldo’s $260 million and then Stephen Curry’s $153.8 million to Daniel Jones at #100, with $37.5 million. The #1 female earner, Coco Gauff’s $30.4 million would have given her #125:

The Men:

The  Women:

But perhaps the following table says it all. Most of the top earning men are in team sports while the women are not:

For the NBA and NFL, bigger TV deals fueled the men’s salaries. At 77%, their salaries and prize money occupied a whopping slice of their earnings pie. By contrast, for the female top earners, sponsorships made the difference:

Our Bottom Line: Expectations Bias

Now, with the WNBA players opting out of their 2020 contract, a new deal could transform what the women earn. A behavioral economist might say that our expectations bias has changed. Similar to a self-fulfilling prophecy, with an expectations bias, what we expect can shape what we get.

Until now, the men earned so much more because they negotiated a 50% cut of their League’s $10 billion total revenue. At $200 million, not only is the WNBA’s revenue much less, but the women have been subject to caps that resulted in the highest paid player getting no more than $241.984. Furthermore, rather than a slice of the League’s revenue, their deal is incremental. The women get their dollars only after the League meets a revenue target.

But now, with Caitlin Clark’s star appeal, a most-viewed finals game between the Minnesota Lynx and New York Liberty, and average viewership skyrocketing from 205,000 to 1.2 million, the women have star appeal. Reflecting its newfound popularity, the League has a $2.2 billion broadcasting deal with Disney, Amazon Prime Video and NBCUniversal for the next 11 seasons.

For the WNBA, the expectations have soared.

My sources and more: On February 12, 2025, with some analysis, Sportico told us 2024’s highest paid male and female athletes. As for the WNBA negotiations, a Miami Business Law Review article, ESPN, and Axios had the details.