In response to Caitlin Clark contract controversy, Daily Wire host says the WNBA “shouldn't exist” and “nobody watches” it
Matt Walsh: “These women are getting paid salaries to play for a league that, economically speaking, shouldn't exist. ... The actual fair share is nothing. Zero.”
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Top WNBA draft pick and basketball phenom Caitlin Clark's contract has drawn controversy in recent days:
Fans were shocked to learn that Caitlin Clark, one of the best college basketball players of all time, would potentially earn less than $80,000 in a WNBA rookie contract as the top pick. Despite this, fans are quick to point out that her jersey sales alone will most likely bring in millions for the professional team she joins.
Daily Wire host Matt Walsh, however, used his show to attack the very idea of a professional women's basketball league.
Citation From the April 17, 2024, edition of The Daily Wire's The Matt Walsh Show
MATT WALSH (HOST): In fact, WNBA players are not underpaid at all. They are, if anything, vastly overpaid. By all rights, as a simple economic matter, WNBA players should not be getting paid anything. If they're getting paid anything above zero, they are overpaid.
So here are some basic facts to flesh this out. First of all, the WNBA has existed for nearly 30 years. It has never once turned a profit. According to WSN.com, a sports betting site, the WNBA generates about $60 million dollars in revenue. For the record, an article in Vox claims that the revenue is in the $100-200 million dollar range, which I find dubious. But either way, the NBA, by contrast, brings in $10 billion of revenue with something like three billion in profits. So that means that the NBA generates more than 150 times the revenue of the WNBA. And if you're going with the, I think, quite generous a $100 million dollar estimate for the WNBA, then the NBA makes only, only 100 times that amount. So do the math here, by the way, and you'll see that pound-for-pound WNBA rookies actually make about the same as NBA rookies. You know, 70,000 times a 150 is 10.5 million. But even then, they're still overpaid because although the WNBA generates 60 million in revenue or even if it's a 100 million, let's say, it makes no profit.
These women are getting paid salaries to play for a league that, economically speaking, shouldn't exist. You don't have to be a financial whiz to understand that losing money for 30 years is usually a recipe for bankruptcy. The only reason the women's league stays open is that the NBA subsidizes it. Every year, the men's league hands millions of dollars to the women. The men keep the women's league afloat. So that — and why do they do that? Well, so that everyone can feel good about the fact that a women's league exists.
You're probably familiar with those charities where you can metaphorically adopt somebody from the Third World by sending money to a charity that supposedly then goes to, you know, that family. Well, that's basically what the NBA is to the WNBA. They have adopted it like a Third World child. Now, what does this mean? It means that, again, nobody watches the WNBA. The leftists on Twitter and in the media complaining about WNBA salaries have never watched a game in their lives. They've never sat down to watch a women's game on TV, much less how they purchased tickets to watch it at the arena. They'll support the league by whining on its behalf on social media, but they won't support it by actually supporting it.
Last year, the WNBA had its most-watched regular season in 20 years. So this was a record, you know, audience. And during that record season, the average audience for each game was 500,000 viewers. Now, to put that into perspective, 500,000 is about the viewership of CNN's weekly 10 PM show with Charles Barkley and Gayle King, and that show was just canceled after six months because the audience was so low that it wasn't sustainable. 500,000 for a professional sports league that airs on network television is an even more catastrophic embarrassment and would be even less sustainable if not for the fact that the WNBA doesn't have to sustain itself, which is fortunate for the league because it would be out of business in a month if it did have to sustain itself.
Now, Joe Biden wants these women to get their fair share. Well, I ask you this — what is a fair share of zero dollars in profit? That's a math problem so easy that even our vegetable of a president should be able to do it. The fair share, the actual fair share is nothing. Zero. That's what you deserve to get paid when you put a product on the airways that nobody cares to watch.