• li10@feddit.uk
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    1 month ago

    tbf, Caitlin Clark is the only WNBA player that’s profitable, and she’s kinda limited salary wise by the fact that the women’s league in general is not profitable and heavily subsidised by the NBA.

    People will bitch about how the men’s league gets paid so much in comparison, then proceed to not watch the women’s league…

    If you want it to make money YOU need to support it 🫵

    • Delphia@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      This has always been my stance, Women make up approximately 50% of the population and the WNBA generates 2% of the revenue that the NBA does…

      My wife and her friends go to some restaraunt once a month and they buy brand name workout clothes. Go to a game, buy a jersey, take your daughter and make it a thing.

      • Todd Bonzalez@lemm.ee
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        1 month ago

        So basically, “gender pay-gaps are fine, because the value of a woman is decided by the free market.”? Fuck that capitalist drivel…

        Tear down the entire sexist gender-segregated professional sports industry for illegal/unconstitutional gender discrimination and require professional for-profit sports be co-ed like every other industry in this country is mandated to be.

        The fact that the NBA doesn’t admit women should be grounds for dissolving the NBA as an illegal organization. The fact that the NBA and WNBA operate in-tandem while maintaining such an egregious gender pay-gap is proof of a conspiracy to discriminate against women.

        Fuck the centuries of sexist tradition around sports. Just because it’s the way things have been, doesn’t mean it’s the way it ought to be. I’m sick and tired of the sexism and sexist apologia. If you think women deserve less, I don’t care what your excuse is, especially if your excuse is “the free market”. smh…

        • agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works
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          1 month ago

          The fact that the NBA doesn’t admit women should be grounds for dissolving the NBA as an illegal organization

          The NBA, like most pro sports leagues, has no rule preventing women from trying out. They’re already co-ed. The NBA doesn’t admit women because they don’t beat men in try-outs.

        • li10@feddit.uk
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          1 month ago

          If people don’t watch, then there’s fundamentally no money to be given to the players. If you want money to be given to the player, you need to watch.

          That’s how it works for women’s sports, and that’s how it works for men’s sports as well.

          Pay for all athletes is dictated by the viewership they bring in, not their performance. WNBA players actually make disproportionately more relative to viewership.

          You honestly talk like someone who’s never watched a sport in their life.

    • Empricorn@feddit.nl
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      1 month ago

      This is a great response. If you want to support them, great! Donate, volunteer, watch their games, whatever. For the rest of us, it’s an entertainment product. I don’t watch WNBA because I don’t watch NBA, or any sports. But if you like basketball, yet draw the line at the players’ genitals, that’s weird.

      • MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca
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        1 month ago

        I would think that the kind of people who watch NBA, would want to watch the WNBA.

        It’s the same concepts, but with women. I would think the mostly straight/male sports audience would want to watch their favorite sport where the players are also the gender they like to stare at.

        Yet, here we are.

        • calcopiritus@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          The point of WNBA is not to look pretty. They are there because they are good.

          If straight men want to look at women there’s plenty of environments where the point is that the women are pretty.

    • Tom_Hanx_the_Actor@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      It’s totally unfair to use Caitlin Clark as an example of the pay disparity as well. She’s a rookie on a pay scale. Her salary is less than half the average wnba salary. What’s really crazy to me is that the average salary is about 150k with only one woman making over 250k. For the salaries to be that flat seems odd compared to other pro sports but it’s just a part of the W having less revenue. Athletes have very strong unions also.

    • callouscomic@lemm.ee
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      1 month ago

      I’m gonna bet that corporate executives are bigoted assholes and increases in profits won’t substantially go to the women players.

    • driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br
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      1 month ago

      In Brazil, is even more common now to people gather to watch the women football national team, not at the level of the men one, but there’s even companies where they close up when any of the two teams play, to give people opportunity to see the game.

    • RecallMadness@lemmy.nz
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      1 month ago

      Why does nobody watch the women’s leagues? Is it because nobody else does? can’t have all the social aspects of sports if nobody else is doing it.

      Imo, they need to stop the segregation. Ditch the women’s leagues, but keep the games and teams. Have both teams play in one league, and contribute to the overall score of the team.

      It’ll add new strategy to the seasons. Spend all of your budget on the dudes and hope they keep winning despite the ladies; build a strong women’s team to carry your b-tier men’s team; or something in between.

    • Todd Bonzalez@lemm.ee
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      1 month ago

      They built a gender segregated system where all of the marketing and airtime goes to the men’s side. It’s an industry where women get less than 1% of the pay that the men did for the same job.

      This system is so deeply ingrained, it is a fundamental part of our higher education system, where it benefits men 100x more than women.

      But it’s my fault for not watching?

      The corporate overlords thank you for redirecting the blame away from them.

      • EatATaco@lemm.ee
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        1 month ago

        There is no rule stopping women from joining the NBA. It’s just that no woman currently is able to compete at the highest level when men are included; the whole point of the WNBA is that, without it, there are no professional women in the sport.

        In other words, it’s not the same job: one is an NBA player, the other a WNBA player. The WNBA exists precisely because women can’t do “the same job” but there is a market for watching women do the job. It’s just not as big as the market for people playing at the highest level of competition.

        The reality is that if the market were bigger, they’d make more money. Help make the market bigger. Be the change you want to see in the world.

      • Somethingcheezie@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        Are you suggesting they make a coed league where only the best get to play. How many female players will make the league.

      • Tom_Hanx_the_Actor@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        You do know that professional sports is considered part of the entertainment industry, right? This is like you insisting that Margot Robbie and Christian Slater should be paid the same because they do the same job.

  • magic_smoke@links.hackliberty.org
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    1 month ago

    Part of me says the real solution is to stop paying people $12m a year to throw balls around, but then again compared to the amount the people who own the teams and league get, shits chump change.

      • GrammarPolice@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        Yet you wouldn’t say the same thing if one of your kids gets into sports and gets paid the big bucks🤑. Marxists drive me nuts sometimes

        • orcrist@lemm.ee
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          1 month ago

          You have no idea what our financial situations are. Whatever you think that we wouldn’t do, remember that there’s a lot of us out here.

          It takes a particularly narcissistic individual to believe that whatever selfish action they would take is definitely the same action that everyone else in the world would take.

  • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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    1 month ago

    This is the real reason why I think trans women should be able to play women’s sports: Nobody really gives a fuck about women’s sports.

    • Miaou@jlai.lu
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      1 month ago

      Except maybe women, but they don’t really count as people, right?

    • AFaithfulNihilist@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      Let’s drop the state sponsorship of professional men’s sports and sporting arenas down to the level that we give to the women’s teams and see how those salaries look in a couple of years…

      • seejur@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        The wnba Is literally supported by the NBA, if you want to talk about subsidies

        • AFaithfulNihilist@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          …and the NBA is supported by the taxpayer.

          The entire business model of professional sports requires socializing the cost of infrastructure through subsidizing the transportation, location, and logistics and exempting every one of these monopoly wealth getting schemes from labor laws, antitrust, and public review.

          The NBA, NFL, MLB, etc are a scam And they need to learn how to pay their own bills.