The Today show’s Hoda Kotb was in a fine froth on Tuesday when she found out how much WNBA rookie Caitlin Clark will be making. Clark on Monday became the WNBA’s #1 overall draft pick, and immediately signed with the Indiana Fever for $338,000, which would be a low salary in the NBA for one year. But Clark’s contract was for four years, meaning that she will likely be the WNBA’s standout player until Old Joe Biden is 86 years old for the decidedly workaday sum of $76,535.
An enraged Kotb sputtered: “For somebody who is now the face of women’s basketball, it seemed kind of ridiculous.” And in comparison to what NBA players make, it is. Victor Wembanyama, who was the #1 pick in 2023’s NBA draft, signed a slightly more lucrative deal than Clark’s; Wembanyama will be pulling down a cool $55 million.
Kotb continued: “There’s just something about this that’s so disturbing. I mean, I picture all the little girls with signs that say, ‘Caitlin!’ but this is what her contract is worth?” Her cohost, Savannah Guthrie, held out hope for better days, saying wistfully: “Hopefully the payday is coming, too.”
Kotb returned to the subject later, on “Today with Hoda & Jenna,” where she said: “I was like, ‘Ah! What’s she gonna get paid?’ Because finally, you can get a real paycheck, and then I saw it, and I was like, ‘This can’t be right.'” According to the New York Post, Kotb “read Clark’s starting salary of $76,535 and asked, ‘So this is what the No. 1 player, who’s now at the WNBA, [is earning]?’”
Still incredulous, Kotb “acknowledged that Clark, 22, will earn more money from various endorsements, but she still does not understand how the athlete is making significantly less than Wembanyama, who cashed in $12.1 million for his first season with the San Antonio Spurs last year.” Her sidekick Jenna Bush Hager chimed in with this: “Honestly, the gap is so jarring. The discrepancy when we’re talking about equal pay? That ain’t even close!”
Indeed it isn’t. What Kotb, Guthrie and Hager apparently fail to understand is that these salaries aren’t set by some government tribunal that is endeavoring to impose and enforce “equity.” At least not yet. These three talking heads may be certain that Caitlin Clark and Victor Wembanyama do absolutely equal work at an equal level and so therefore should be entitled to absolutely equal pay, but the American public that actually watches basketball is not convinced.
In 2023, the WNBA happily announced that “WNBA attendance was up 16 percent for the 2023 season compared to last year. The average attendance of 6,615 fans per game was the highest since 2018. The WNBA had its highest total attendance in 13 years (1,587,488).” Meanwhile, the NBA drew 22,538,518, with an average game attendance of 18,324.
The “Today” women never considered the implications of those numbers. Instead, Kotb complained that the difference in pay between Clark and Wembanyama, and the NBA and the WNBA, was “like picking at an old scab for many women.” She complained about “sitting for many years next to co-anchors over the years and not knowing what anyone got paid and then discovering that you’re making like a tiny fraction of what the guy was making next to you.”
Related: Kamala Lies About NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament to Stoke More Division
That’s a shame, if it’s true, but it’s not the same thing as the pay differential between the NBA and WNBA. People pay to watch NBA players more than they do to watch WNBA players quite simply because the quality of play is higher and the games are more interesting. It is the free market, not institutionalized sexism or any other leftist bogeyman, that has determined that the NBA’s number one draft pick can get a $55 million deal while his WNBA counterpart signs for only $338,000.
And it is the free market that will be destroyed if Kotb, Guthrie and Hager, and others like them, get their way. Kotb said: “I was imagining the little girls with the signs, who were filling the stadiums, who are now obsessed with basketball, with signs that say, ‘Caitlin,’ and society, I guess, is saying, ‘Well, this is what that’s worth right now. That’s worth $76,000.'” The implication was clear: What we need is a woke commissar who will decree that the WNBA is worth more, and that its players must be paid salaries identical to those paid to NBA players. And, as always happens when socialists impose controls, the whole thing will ultimately come crashing down: The female basketball players will be paid more than they bring in, and at some point the money will run out.
The end result of the feminist indignation over low WNBA salaries, then, will be the death of the WNBA. If it doesn’t get filled with men pretending to be women first.
