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pilight
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Bob Lamm
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 Posted: 07/24/19 9:44 am ::: Re: Diana Taurasi: 'WNBA finds a way to mess it up' |
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| pilight wrote: |
https://www.espn.com/wnba/story/_/id/27208574/phoenix-mercury-diana-taurasi-wnba-finds-way-mess-up
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| They don't care. They don't care about that. Any league that talks about that -- they care about their players -- is lying. |
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Thanks for posting this great statement by Taurasi.
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ClayK
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| Posted: 07/24/19 10:07 am ::: |
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Long on criticism, short on solutions ...
DT's points are valid, but it's hard to see how the economics can support higher pay and more benefits.
One thing, though: Comparing the NBA to the WNBA makes little sense. The NBA is the most popular league in the world, and though basketball is a common denominator, the game the men play is much different, much more athletic, than the women's game.
A better comparison is MLS, which I know almost nothing about.
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pilight
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| Posted: 07/24/19 10:13 am ::: |
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| ClayK wrote: |
| One thing, though: Comparing the NBA to the WNBA makes little sense. The NBA is the most popular league in the world, and though basketball is a common denominator, the game the men play is much different, much more athletic, than the women's game. |
The NBA didn't make Larry Bird an icon based on his athleticism
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mavcarter
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| Posted: 07/24/19 10:16 am ::: |
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I’m slowly starting to think WNBA players are just willingly naive at this point.._________________
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| Or maybe said poster should quit being a nuisance when people don’t agree? |
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ClayK
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| Posted: 07/24/19 10:20 am ::: |
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| pilight wrote: |
| ClayK wrote: |
| One thing, though: Comparing the NBA to the WNBA makes little sense. The NBA is the most popular league in the world, and though basketball is a common denominator, the game the men play is much different, much more athletic, than the women's game. |
The NBA didn't make Larry Bird an icon based on his athleticism |
Larry Bird was an elite athlete, skilled and tough. He could easily dunk early in his career, and his hand-eye coordination was off the charts.
So in general, if you subtract six inches from a male basketball player's height, you get a female basketball player's height. So a 7-0 male is a 6-6 female; a 6-2 male is a 5-8 female. Not perfect but close ...
As I've said many times, dunking is not that important but it is an athletic expression and certainly, in specific circumstances, very exciting. Bird, at 6-9 could dunk; I know of only one female 6-3 or shorter who can dunk (Fran Belibi).
Of course, Bird's stardom was not based on his relative athleticism to the rest of the NBA -- but he was still a 99th percentile athlete, male or female.
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PUmatty
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| Posted: 07/24/19 10:42 am ::: |
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| ClayK wrote: |
As I've said many times, dunking is not that important but it is an athletic expression and certainly, in specific circumstances, very exciting. Bird, at 6-9 could dunk; I know of only one female 6-3 or shorter who can dunk (Fran Belibi). |
That's a weird comparison. At 6'9, Bird was six inches closer or more closer to the basket than players you are comparing him against.
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Davis4632
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| Posted: 07/24/19 11:00 am ::: |
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| pilight wrote: |
| ClayK wrote: |
| One thing, though: Comparing the NBA to the WNBA makes little sense. The NBA is the most popular league in the world, and though basketball is a common denominator, the game the men play is much different, much more athletic, than the women's game. |
The NBA didn't make Larry Bird an icon based on his athleticism |
What did the NBA use to make Larry Bird an icon?
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justintyme
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| Posted: 07/24/19 12:02 pm ::: |
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Come at this from the perspective of the player. She alludes to it that she is not sure how the league is able to make it work, what would need to be done, she just knows what is currently happening sucks. And yet she goes overseas and plays in places that have the same (or even worse) economic realities as the WNBA that somehow manage to actually pay the players. This tells them that it can be done, it's just not valued as much. Yes, there are fundamental differences, but a player isn't going to care about those.
The other thing is, we have to stop letting the NBA off the hook here. So many people use the whole "The NBA subsidizes the WNBA" thing like it is charity and something the league should be embarrassed about (it's a common refrain of the incel basement dweller populating WNBA comments/twitter near you). But it's not charity, it's not done for "social justice" (though they like to play up that angle because it makes them look like good corporate citizens of the world); no,the WNBA is an investment. Not just out of hope that the league will take off and become successful in it's own right (which is obviously a long term goal), but in the fact that traditionally sports has neglected slightly over 50% of the world's population. That is a huge potential fan base that the NBA would really like to pull into their product. And the more they normalize women playing basketball, the more it normalizes women as basketball fans.
If you think about the WNBA as an investment by the NBA, and think about the fact that all their NBA contracts are guaranteed, consider the relative costs that these investments actually cost them. Just one "bad contract", one investment in a player that doesn't work out and the league can be on the hook for a hundred million. And that's just one. And yet the 12 million or so a year they float the WNBA as an investment is bad? Or that we shouldn't consider them perhaps stepping up their investment?
But no. We have this really weird American aversion to these sorts of things where we reflexively take the narrowest interpretation of some market force as if TV viewership and ticket sales actually were the be-all-end-all of the story.
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hyperetic
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| Posted: 07/24/19 12:46 pm ::: |
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| ClayK wrote: |
| pilight wrote: |
| ClayK wrote: |
| One thing, though: Comparing the NBA to the WNBA makes little sense. The NBA is the most popular league in the world, and though basketball is a common denominator, the game the men play is much different, much more athletic, than the women's game. |
The NBA didn't make Larry Bird an icon based on his athleticism |
Larry Bird was an elite athlete, skilled and tough. He could easily dunk early in his career, and his hand-eye coordination was off the charts.
So in general, if you subtract six inches from a male basketball player's height, you get a female basketball player's height. So a 7-0 male is a 6-6 female; a 6-2 male is a 5-8 female. Not perfect but close ...
As I've said many times, dunking is not that important but it is an athletic expression and certainly, in specific circumstances, very exciting. Bird, at 6-9 could dunk; I know of only one female 6-3 or shorter who can dunk (Fran Belibi).
Of course, Bird's stardom was not based on his relative athleticism to the rest of the NBA -- but he was still a 99th percentile athlete, male or female. |
Excluding the dunk, is the premise that there are no women's players who are elite athletes, skilled and tough, with great eye hand coordination? Or that if there is not a significant amount of dunking that the sport is not athletic enough? I am not trying to pick a fight. I am trying to understand the point you are trying to make. |
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miller40
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| Posted: 07/24/19 12:47 pm ::: |
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| justintyme wrote: |
Come at this from the perspective of the player. She alludes to it that she is not sure how the league is able to make it work, what would need to be done, she just knows what is currently happening sucks. And yet she goes overseas and plays in places that have the same (or even worse) economic realities as the WNBA that somehow manage to actually pay the players. This tells them that it can be done, it's just not valued as much. Yes, there are fundamental differences, but a player isn't going to care about those.
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Except the vast majority of women aren't playing for UMMC and Kursk. The majority of European clubs aren't run by oligarchs engaged in a pissing contest. In the same domestic league that paid Taurasi millions, you have teams with basically walk-on teenagers getting paid little or nothing. And of course sometimes the teams don't actually pay the foreign players either, which seems to happen in Turkey every season.
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hyperetic
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| Posted: 07/24/19 12:58 pm ::: |
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| Something I want to point out is whenever there is a soundbite about W players wanting more money, the prevailing assumption seems to be that they want way beyond the means of the league. How do we know this? Is there a website that list they're exact demands? |
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justintyme
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| Posted: 07/24/19 1:02 pm ::: |
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| miller40 wrote: |
| justintyme wrote: |
Come at this from the perspective of the player. She alludes to it that she is not sure how the league is able to make it work, what would need to be done, she just knows what is currently happening sucks. And yet she goes overseas and plays in places that have the same (or even worse) economic realities as the WNBA that somehow manage to actually pay the players. This tells them that it can be done, it's just not valued as much. Yes, there are fundamental differences, but a player isn't going to care about those.
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Except the vast majority of women aren't playing for UMMC and Kursk. The majority of European clubs aren't run by oligarchs engaged in a pissing contest. In the same domestic league that paid Taurasi millions, you have teams with basically walk-on teenagers getting paid little or nothing. And of course sometimes the teams don't actually pay the foreign players either, which seems to happen in Turkey every season. |
The WNBA players, whose POV we are talking about here, are getting paid overseas. Yes there were a few cases of failure to get paid, but they would not be going overseas if they weren't making money.
Again, the point is that the players are not taking an unreasonable position here. They are being used as a long term investment, and they feel they are worth more. Obviously the NBA and other investors can decline or disagree, but that doesn't mean the position is inherently wrong. Too many discount it out of hand thinking that pay should only be based upon relative immediate profitability, when that is not the way business actually works--especially when that business is still attempting to build marketshare (both for itself and the overall product) and investors understand what they are buying into.
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MuneravenMN
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| Posted: 07/24/19 1:09 pm ::: I Get It |
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Yeah having to play overseas sucks. Being underpaid sucks. Flying coach sucks. All true.
Yeah the WNBA has been lousy at promotion. Yeah they don't put players first.
But what sucks the most is this: The WNBA doesn't have the audience it needs to be successful. And the league can't change that with promotion.
I could list the reasons I think the WNBA doesn't draw a large enough audience, but why bother? I mean, mostly its because the world is at least half-stupid and most people are attracted to the biggest and the fastest and the loudest.
Maybe before I die of old age we will have women's pro leagues for soccer, basketball, softball, rugby, hockey, and other sports and those women will get paid well and be on TV and it will be very cool. But right now? In this cultural environment full of hatred of women? I don't think so.
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mercfan3
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| Posted: 07/24/19 1:34 pm ::: Re: I Get It |
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What is always interesting about these economic based arguments is that they are only ever applied to women.
The USA women’s team had to fight for pay equality despite making 4x as much money as the men’s. We then celebrated the equal pay. If economics truly determines pay, why isn’t the women’s team being paid 4X more.
Likewise, the WNBA averages almost double the amount of viewers as the MLS and NHL averages about the same (around 400,00 viewers to the MLS 200,000)
Yet espn gave the NHL a 200 million
The MLS 75 million
The WNBA 25 million
Why is a men’s league that averages almost half of the viewers getting 3X as much a deal? Why is a men’s league that averages the same amount of viewers 8X as much as the WNBA?
So, we tend to want to rationalize women’s pay by the numbers, yet the numbers for their pay doesn’t make sense.
Salaries..
The top for NHL is 8.7 million
The top for MLS 4.5 million
The top for WNBA 100K
Economically it actually doesn’t make sense for women to make so little. Solution? I’d start with a better tv deal. But other smaller leagues seem to find ways to pay their male athletes more.
It’s just interesting.
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pilight
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| Posted: 07/24/19 1:45 pm ::: |
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| What are the odds that Diana actually used the word "mess" in the title quote?
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justintyme
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pilight
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mercfan3
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toad455
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| Posted: 07/24/19 2:22 pm ::: |
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| It's interesting that she used this as a bitching post and doesn't provide any kind of solutions. I'd rather them interview Nneka Ogwumike.
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MuneravenMN
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| Posted: 07/24/19 2:49 pm ::: Re: I Get It |
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| mercfan3 wrote: |
What is always interesting about these economic based arguments is that they are only ever applied to women.
The USA women’s team had to fight for pay equality despite making 4x as much money as the men’s. We then celebrated the equal pay. If economics truly determines pay, why isn’t the women’s team being paid 4X more.
Likewise, the WNBA averages almost double the amount of viewers as the MLS and NHL averages about the same (around 400,00 viewers to the MLS 200,000)
Yet espn gave the NHL a 200 million
The MLS 75 million
The WNBA 25 million
Why is a men’s league that averages almost half of the viewers getting 3X as much a deal? Why is a men’s league that averages the same amount of viewers 8X as much as the WNBA?
So, we tend to want to rationalize women’s pay by the numbers, yet the numbers for their pay doesn’t make sense.
Salaries..
The top for NHL is 8.7 million
The top for MLS 4.5 million
The top for WNBA 100K
Economically it actually doesn’t make sense for women to make so little. Solution? I’d start with a better tv deal. But other smaller leagues seem to find ways to pay their male athletes more.
It’s just interesting. |
Or maybe it doesn't make sense for the men to get paid so much. Probably the truth is somewhere in-between.
I wonder if part of the problem is that many NHL owners get stadium deals, as do MLS owners. I know Minnesota built new places for both of those, but the Lynx play where the Timberwolves play . . .no sweet taxpayer funded deals.
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justintyme
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Davis4632
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| Posted: 07/24/19 3:11 pm ::: |
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| hyperetic wrote: |
| ClayK wrote: |
| pilight wrote: |
| ClayK wrote: |
| One thing, though: Comparing the NBA to the WNBA makes little sense. The NBA is the most popular league in the world, and though basketball is a common denominator, the game the men play is much different, much more athletic, than the women's game. |
The NBA didn't make Larry Bird an icon based on his athleticism |
Larry Bird was an elite athlete, skilled and tough. He could easily dunk early in his career, and his hand-eye coordination was off the charts.
So in general, if you subtract six inches from a male basketball player's height, you get a female basketball player's height. So a 7-0 male is a 6-6 female; a 6-2 male is a 5-8 female. Not perfect but close ...
As I've said many times, dunking is not that important but it is an athletic expression and certainly, in specific circumstances, very exciting. Bird, at 6-9 could dunk; I know of only one female 6-3 or shorter who can dunk (Fran Belibi).
Of course, Bird's stardom was not based on his relative athleticism to the rest of the NBA -- but he was still a 99th percentile athlete, male or female. |
Excluding the dunk, is the premise that there are no women's players who are elite athletes, skilled and tough, with great eye hand coordination? Or that if there is not a significant amount of dunking that the sport is not athletic enough? I am not trying to pick a fight. I am trying to understand the point you are trying to make. |
I got this from another forum that was discussing the WNBA and athleticism in comparison to the NBA and other female sports. This is not my opinion.
NBA does NOT get the best athletes. Why? Because the average height is 6'7" putting you in the 99th percentile among American men. You get the best TALL athletes (that aren't heavy/strongman types).
Women's hoops is the same way but more glaring. While men can maintain a high degree of coordination and explosive athletic ability while being both tall and heavy (think Zion or young Shaq), women just aren't built that way. The best female athletes are gymnasts, track & field, tennis players and soccer players. That's why we watch them more than basketball. Female tennis is actually a bit more entertaining than the men tbh.
Basketball ladies are very skilled but don't seem as physically gifted. They don't have the transcendent athletic ability (relative to other women) than makes you watch. The soccer ladies, gymnasts etc. do shit that most dudes are like woah.
Avg WNBA player is 6'0"......its rare af to see a 6'0" broad that isn't super heavy or model skinny. Now if we had 6'0" broads that had the raw athletic ability of a Simone Biles but could handle the ball with WNBA fundamentals
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TigerVol
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| Posted: 07/24/19 3:16 pm ::: |
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The realistic pool of fans is niche for wnba vs NBA. That isn't all marketing.
There are only a handful of wcbb teams that draw well relative to the men's team and typically those are the teams winning championships.
At one point the wnba could serve as the summer fix for bball fans but that is no longer the case.
With all the other NBA related games and even the 3x3 leagues that fix is there.
The real pool of people are fans of women's bball. That pool is, imo, much lower than the pool of NBA fans back in the Larry Bird days pre NBA marketing days. Plus there were far fewer sports and activities competing for attention back then so it was easier to get traction.
I have no idea what the profitability really is with the league. I'm sure the league makes that difficult to know just like any league.
But I also don't see all arenas busting at the seams for every game. Not sure what merchandising generates.
I'd love to see an operating model and salary comparison with other leagues. We know the top pay came from the wealthy folks where it is a hobby.
What about the others though? How do they generate revenue and how are the costs managed? Gate sales? Other club revenue? Merchandising? Non salary costs are the same or lower because? If the same gate sales were achieved for the wnba would that improve profitability?
Seems there are two options a) improve salaries and conditions through a broader subsidies or underwriting regardless of profitability (eg more "just because" funding from NBA or wealthy owners or richer tv deals incentivised by other ties.
Or
Salaries exist relative to overall profitability (revenues from all sources less operating costs - whatever that actually is).
If the later perhaps the entire model must change to ensure greater profitability and in turn adequate pay.
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mercfan3
Joined: 23 Nov 2004
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| Posted: 07/24/19 3:27 pm ::: Re: I Get It |
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| MuneravenMN wrote: |
| mercfan3 wrote: |
What is always interesting about these economic based arguments is that they are only ever applied to women.
The USA women’s team had to fight for pay equality despite making 4x as much money as the men’s. We then celebrated the equal pay. If economics truly determines pay, why isn’t the women’s team being paid 4X more.
Likewise, the WNBA averages almost double the amount of viewers as the MLS and NHL averages about the same (around 400,00 viewers to the MLS 200,000)
Yet espn gave the NHL a 200 million
The MLS 75 million
The WNBA 25 million
Why is a men’s league that averages almost half of the viewers getting 3X as much a deal? Why is a men’s league that averages the same amount of viewers 8X as much as the WNBA?
So, we tend to want to rationalize women’s pay by the numbers, yet the numbers for their pay doesn’t make sense.
Salaries..
The top for NHL is 8.7 million
The top for MLS 4.5 million
The top for WNBA 100K
Economically it actually doesn’t make sense for women to make so little. Solution? I’d start with a better tv deal. But other smaller leagues seem to find ways to pay their male athletes more.
It’s just interesting. |
Or maybe it doesn't make sense for the men to get paid so much. Probably the truth is somewhere in-between.
I wonder if part of the problem is that many NHL owners get stadium deals, as do MLS owners. I know Minnesota built new places for both of those, but the Lynx play where the Timberwolves play . . .no sweet taxpayer funded deals. |
Probably, but my point is..why only go straight to the "well..you shouldn't get paid this much because you don't make enough money for it" argument with female athletes. For some reason, the money is usually found for men.
I think a majority of the difference in pay is through the tv deals. Get a bigger deal, give them a higher revenue share. There's no reason they aren't paid at least as much as MLS players.
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