Dollars to donuts the same people posted comments on articles about trans athletes.
I still don’t understand why people watch any sports. I’ve been to basketball, baseball, hockey, rugby, even curling and its ultimately the same as watching the dvd logo bounce to me.
when you don’t have much of a personality, it’s easy to rent one (and “friends”!) by donning the right logos and pretending you’re part of it all by putting on a jersey.
it’s really very sad; every year billionaires compete against each other to see which one owns the most skilled workforce at playing children’s games. Because make no mistake, that’s what it’s all about, watching adults waste billions of dollars, day in, day out, hyper-fixated on watching sweaty, roided, aggro men run around on playfields (often in tight tight clothes). They take this shit seriously, gambling disgusting amounts of money, have heart attacks when their team loses, wasting their incomes on season tickets and other paraphernalia.
We could solve world hunger, or poverty, or aids, or cancer. But instead every year, we waste billions instead making rich people richer while the sportos justify it because they can’t find other ways to spend their lives.
Pro sports is a cancer on our species.
you can become invested in a team or athlete. you can learn about the sport and its play and thus see the competition happening in real time. you can see people battling, people struggling against each other or against themselves. you can see people making a fool of themself, embarrassing themselves for those in the know for years to come. it takes full dedication to one topic for years and decades to play on a high professional level, which is very admirable. once you understand the sport you can trace back the dedication from the resulting play. it may make you feel things.
competitive sport is a struggle, and struggles are tense and exciting when you understand them. the prerequisite is understanding though. movies also explain their struggles, and when you understand or assume is when you feel things.
it becomes easier if you watch a sport you can play and grasp the difference between yourself and a professional athlete. basketball is my favorite for this because i know my skills are excellent passing and almost nothing else. i know how much time i’ve spent in the lab working on jumpers, free throws, and layups to still not have a good touch on the ball. then i see a player pass, shoot, dribble, cut, all almost flawlessly, and i can understand the gap between myself and them as skilled athletes. it’s especially relevant to just go watch a shoot around. the worst three point shooter in the WNBA or NBA is a better three point shooter than anyone you’ve ever played against or with
You need to watch more sports anime and then you will get it. I recommend starting with high school male volleyball show haikyuu.
Is it enough that I watched yowamushi pedal? I already biked for my work commute but I can get behind naming and talking to my abs. I felt sick to my stomach when I went biking with friends and some of them started singing hime hime though.
The people who claim to want to “protect women’s sports” are also aggressively anti-union. This is one of their favorite intersections of things to hate.
WNBA is pretty hard to watch tbh.
Regardless of whether you like it, they still should be getting paid fairly.
In the WNBA, players reportedly only receive 9.3% of league revenue, per Market Watch. That single-digit percentage is much lower than what other athletes in professional sports leagues earn (NFL and NHL players also get roughly half of all revenue).
I agree with this comment at least in large part, but I don’t see how it in any way follows from your post, unless the post just assumes we all have some specific sports knowledge.
“Paid fairly”: of course yes. What I DONT know is when you say revenue if you are conflating that with profit. The share from profits should be comparable. If however revenue is much lower and operating costs about the same (for example you still gotta upkeep a stadium and pay custodians and workers and whatever) that split may not be guaranteed.
I think what sets people off is that they’re paid between 100k and 200k. They see that and the rumors that the WNBA isn’t profitable and conclude “they’re paid enough.” But is 200k really a lot in the context of the highest paid players in an intense sport which is likely to leave you with lifelong injuries? Most top tier athletes work to make sure they can afford a modest life after retiring and I don’t see how the median player could begin to approach that. I’ll be rooting for their union.
And the aspect that infuriates me is that this is an actual opportunity to advocate for women’s sports. People had meltdowns over Lia Thomas. People sent death threats to Imane Khalif. All in the name of “protecting women’s sports.”
But when it’s time to show up to games (maybe not even WNBA, but like high school?), to support women’s athletics, it’s mockery. It’s jokes. There were other comments about how the solution would be to have them play naked.
I worked with a former big WNBA star. Big enough that her name is “mainstream.” She’s working at a middle school.
i’ll never forget when one of the Washington Mystics took up coaching for the Wizards. what NBA player is taking on a second job to make ends meet?
Isn’t that irrelevant if the league isn’t making money though? People watch the NBA. They don’t watch the WNBA. The comparison you should be drawing for “enough” would be other niche sports nobody watches like bowling or whatever.
people are watching the WNBA though. the two best selling items in the basketball world are courtney clark’s ball in size 29.5 (traditionally referred to as the men’s size) and Sabrina Ionescu’s unisex shoes. men are hooping with a woman’s ball in a woman’s set of signature shoes. women are hooping with a men’s size ball in pickup games. any time i want to talk hoops with anyone we talk FIBA and WNBA because that’s what we’re all watching because we can access it and because it’s the style of hoops we’re playing.
the math the owners are saying that there’s no money to be made in womens basketball and the lived reality people are experiencing aren’t mathing. i’m not saying it rivals NBA basketball in finance and viewership, but i am saying the women are right to say the cash isn’t flowing how it should and someone’s lying about where all the money went.
The sales aren’t quite apples to apples. Very few WNBA players have the same marketability as a decent NBA player. Clark is a generational talent and the face of the league, but adding up the revenue of a bottom tier NBA roster dwarfs her. For reference, she brings in about 26% (!!!) of all WNBA’s $200M revenue, while the lowest revenue NBA team (the Pelicans) brings in $272M.
You are right that the compensation doesn’t match up however. Clark’s rookie contract is $80k/yr for her $52M contribution compared to (minimum) $1.1M/yr for those Pelicans players contributing $18M.
Unionizing seems like a great option.
No I don’t think that sounds like a lot of money, that said, unless there’s joint ownership between mens and women’s sports and some way to profit share and balance I’m not sure what the alternative is If the profit margin is small. Is there money for more pay? I have no idea I don’t watch any sportsball.
An unfortunate potential answer is that the profitability doesn’t offset the cost and up and coming women don’t have a pro sport to play because it just doesn’t pay enough to be a good career option.
All this to say “pay women more” sure. But there’s no way to guarantee you can sustainably match other sports unless you command the same profit margins.
Agreed.
Never realized the significant disparity.
Always assumed it was just because nobody watches it and nobody really goes to the games.
it’s televised on network TV, unlike the NBA and the women run plays you’d be familiar with unlike in the NBA. it’s much more like the game you play with your friends or that’s played in international 5 on 5 competitions. if you find it hard to watch i think you might just not be giving it a chance
I love the WNBA because it has the best crowds. The games are so fun to see live. It’s a party the entire time (at least in Seattle). I’m a sports fan pretty much across all major American sports and no crowds are as consistently fun as WNBA crowds. It’s not even close.
like Shane Gillis is someone you want on your side…
