What the conversation about Caitlin Clark’s pay gets wrong

Caitlin Clark, who became the leading scorer in NCAA history and the first pick in the WNBA draft, will make a $76,535 salary this year. The top NBA pick will make $10.5 million.

Caitlin Clark, who became the leading scorer in NCAA basketball history and the first pick in the WNBA draft this week, will make a $76,535 salary this year. The top NBA pick will make $10.5 million. Clark’s salary compared to top National Basketball Association players is drawing attention to Women’s National Basketball Association players’ pay and the often massive gender gap in professional sports salaries. The highest-paid WNBA player made a $242,000 salary, while the league minimum salary in the NBA is over a million dollars in 2023. Clark, who dominated at the University of Iowa, as well as other college stars who have turned pro like Louisiana State University’s Angel Reese, lifted women’s college basketball to heights it’s never seen before. Clark helped attract record-breaking TV audiences and sellout crowds in arenas around the country in her final collegiate season. But Clark is not simply the first pick in the draft. She is so popular that a ticket to her Final Four game in the NCAA tournament this year cost more than a ticket for a men’s Final Four game. The 22-year-old is the all-time scoring leader in men’s and women’s NCAA Division I history. The WNBA’s stars aren’t asking to be paid an equal dollar amount to NBA players, however. Not right now, anyway. They acknowledge the reality of being in a league with a smaller pool of revenue to go around, and one that is a lot younger — without 50 preceding years of contract negotiations and the subsequent hard-won worker protections and salaries that come with that longevity. What they want is more an issue of fairness, they say.