One of the biggest problems for a woman to pursue a basketball career in the United States is that the job is not as lucrative as it is for men to aim for that profession. Current WNBA players believe that they are not getting an adequate share of the league's revenue, even though it has never reported a profit since its inception.
Gilbert Arenas, the former NBA player, believes he has a potential solution to this problem for the WNBA players. On Joy Taylor's most recent podcast episode, Arenas and Taylor discussed how the WNBA is in their Magic Johnson and Larry Bird phase at the moment and how to solve the pay problem presently.
“I think the problem here is this. Stop asking for a revenue split. [Say] I want real money. Take the cap off. Let our owner pay us what he wants to pay us. Here’s why."
“Okay, so look, when you're talking about a revenue split, it's no different than business, right? We can split our revenue 50/50. Then what does the person who has the business do? Ah, there's no profit. I've got all these bills to pay. So there's no revenue.”
“So that's a pointless thing to do, right? Because they're going to offset how much they lost. So they’re like, "Oh, you want revenues, but we lost $40 million, so how are we going to give you [when we have] no money?"
“What you want is to take off the hard cap. Let the billionaires' egos kick in because one thing somebody with money doesn't want to do is be on the same playing field with someone who's brokered. So if I make 11 billion and he makes 500 million, I don't want to be on the same playing field; this is business. I want to buy his players out.
“Yes. I want to be able, like if I owned a business, I wouldn't be able to spend what I want to spend on my players. And if you can't afford your players, I'm going to get them from you. And if you can't afford them, go get a new investor. And that's the model that they need to be following."
“If Vegas can get their private plane, let them. What happens? All the girls start talking... And what happens is everybody wants to travel there.”
“What ends up happening to the bottom half is that they go get new investors. Stop trying to be greedy. You want to own 100% of everything with f***ing 200 million. No. Go get someone who can invest, and you lose 75% of your business. You got 25. But that's 11 billion, man right there. Let's go.”
“Everybody wants to hold on to 100% of nothing. And that becomes a problem. That's not the women's problem. They're playing the game. They have a buzz. They want to get paid for doing their job. “
The justification usually given for a salary cap is that it leads to equitable gameplay and a fair chance for everyone to compete. But if the hard cap is handcuffing teams from paying their players, isn't it time to break those shackles?
Analysing Gilbert Arenas' Potential Solution To The WNBA Pay Problem
Taylor argued that since the WNBA is not as old as the NBA, they are in that expansion phase where the men's league was during the Magic Johnson vs Larry Bird era in the '80s. But Arenas offered an alternative solution that could fast-track the process of getting WNBA players paid, and in my opinion, it makes a lot of sense.
Taylor is not wrong to compare the WNBA's current phase to where the NBA was over four decades ago. Moreover, they recently signed a major TV rights deal and saw a franchise valuation cross $300 million for the first time in the Connecticut Sun's record-breaking sale.
Several sources also anticipate that by the next decade, midway through the 2030s, the WNBA could see its first $1 billion franchise valuation with the New York Liberty.
Seeing these optimistic updates for the league's future, WNBA players felt that they had earned the right to ask for a bigger piece of the cake. Through a silent demonstration at the 2025 All-Star Game, they made their collective feelings public that they feel they are not paid what they are owed.
But if the WNBA picks up the MLB model of doing business, then the league could become a lot more competitive and give players a solid livelihood so that they are not forced to go overseas to earn money like Diana Taurasi and several other WNBA players have been in the past.
Playing to a rich man's ego is the easiest way to make money. Arenas' solution would allow players to command more money now instead of waiting for decades to reach the NBA's level conventionally.
Taking an unconventional route could be the only option here for the WNBA as the players face an October 31st deadline to come up with a Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) or risk a total work stoppage.
According to the current CBA, the WNBA players get only a 9.3% share of the league's revenue. Since they have rejected the renewal of the same CBA, there will be extensive negotiations to come up with a new CBA.
Instead of demanding a bigger share of the revenue, if the players manage to convince the league to alter this structure and remove the hard cap, the WNBA's pay problem could be resolved.
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