Friends, we begin our journey back in 2019, with Adam Silver telling the world that the WNBA loses $10 million dollars every year. This is important for a couple reasons. First, it is the root of all the vitriol you see from the mouth breathers on social media going on about how the WNBA doesn’t make any money. The league did that.
But more importantly for our purposes here, it exposes how truly awful everyone involved on the league side is. Dust off your calculators. We are going to use that $10 million dollar loss and do some maths. Now, I am starting this from a rocky place, because I don’t believe the original $10 million dollar loss story any more than any of the other lies that have come from the league, but we will proceed as if what Silver claimed was true, because it exposes how truly awful everyone on the league side of this is.
So, 2019, the league is losing $10 million dollars a year. That’s why they can’t afford to pay the players. We will note here that in 2019 the league sold 1.3 million tickets. Now let us fast forward to 2024 and the arrival of Caitlin Clark. Attendance explodes and the league sells 2.3 million tickets. Literally a million more tickets. That is an increase in revenue of ~$50 million. And that is not counting any additional brand partnerships, extra TV money, or that humongous pile of cash from all of those Clark jerseys. So, clearly, the WNBA is making a lot of money, right? No, the league still complains that they just don’t make any money.
As we move to 2025, it gets even better. 3.1 million tickets. That is like ~$90 million in extra revenue over when they were losing $10 million dollars a year. It’s like having Caitlin Clark has made the WNBA into a money printing machine. But no, the league still says they are losing money. That is why they have to be so cautious approaching this new CBA. And the bullshit really gets deep now.
The players, rather sensibly, want a cut of gross revenue, like the NBA players get. Which is a perfectly reasonable ask, considering that the NBA players have been getting ~50% of basketball related income for decades. From all the way back when they were generating less revenue than the WNBA will in 2026. The league makes a bunch of noise about how the players need to work with them to build a sustainable business model. Which the players do, offering a deal that gets them 30% of gross. And here is where it gets really stupid.
The league says, “Hold on! If we were to sign that deal, we would lose $700 million dollars over the course of this contract!” And if your bullshit detector didn’t spontaneously combust, you are either frighteningly gullible or a misogynist looking for any excuse to run down the players. Let’s do some maths!
We, of course, don’t have all the numbers. That is what is as the root of all of this. The league doesn’t want to share the actual numbers, because then they can’t just steal money from the players. But we have enough numbers to make some educated guesses. So, let’s go back to those 1.3 million tickets, the $10 million dollar loss, and what we know was a media deal of around $60 million dollars a year. We can work with that.
So, looking at 2026, we can safely assume the league is going to sell at least 3.1 million tickets. There is no reason to expect attendance to drop, and they will be adding two teams, so in all likelihood, 3.6 million is a reasonable guess. So we can deduce that there will be an increase of ~$100 million dollars in ticket sales over the horrible money losing season. Adding to that, we know that the media deal is going up from $60 million dollars a year to $200 million dollars a year. So there is another $140 million dollars over the losing $10 million dollars WNBA.
So let’s run with that. A 6 year CBA means that there will be an increase in revenue of at least $1.4 billion dollars. The players have asked for 30% of revenue, which equates to about $150 million dollars a year by most estimates. Or, $900 million dollars over the course of the agreement. That would leave a cool $500 million to cover the $10 million dollars a year that the league was previously losing, or $60 million over the course of the CBA. It sure seems like this means the league would be profiting in the 100s of millions of dollars under this plan. But oh no!
Remember, the league has said that with this deal they would lose $700 million dollars. So, let’s look at that. We can deduce that the league thinks the players are asking for $700 million dollars too much. The league would break even with the players at $200 million dollars for this agreement. Or $33 million dollars a year. That would put the salary cap at $2.2 million dollars for each team. Remember, the previous salary cap was $1.4 million dollars.
So, the message from the league is that they were losing $10 million dollars a year. And now that revenue has gone up by at least $240 million dollars a year, they can break even if they raise the salary cap by $800 thousand dollars a year, or $12 million dollars overall. It is so stupid you can hardly believe someone would say it. But it gets worse!
Because that is not even what the league is proposing. The $2.2 million dollar cap would have average player salary at $185 thousand dollars. But the league has proposed a deal where the salary cap would be $5.65 million dollars, or roughly $470 thousand dollars for average salary. If you are thinking none of this makes sense, it is because it can’t. Everything coming from the league is bullshit and lies. It is just made up propaganda meant to turn the fans against the players. They are purposely shit-talking their own product because they think it will allow them to steal more money from the players.
We also need to highlight here that those numbers from the league are also likely bullshit. We have now seen a proposal from the league that mentions projected salaries that could reach $2 million dollars a year. But this is the same bullshit scheme from the last CBA. If you recall in the previous CBA they also touted their new revenue sharing deal where players could make in excess of $500,000. Of course, the league gets to decide if you hit the goals, and the players never did. Now they are back with the new new revenue sharing model and players can make up to $2 million dollars, if the league says they hit the goals. You want to bet on that happening?
And you may think it can’t, but it does in fact get worse. In none of these discussions will the league ever mention that $800 million dollars they just collected in expansion fees. Think about that. If we believe that the league was a $10 million dollar a year cross to bear, we can expand that to the 29 years of the league and estimate the league lost $290 million dollars, even though we know that at the very least 2024 and 2025 made a ton of money. But let’s go ahead and give them the full $290 million dollar loss. That means that just from the expansion fees, the league is in the black better than $500 million dollars. The owners bided their time with their investment, and it paid off huge. But no, somehow the league seems to be under the impression that the $800 million dollars they were handed don’t count. They had an $800 million dollar expense of profits paid out to owners or something. Because that never factors in.
And, amazingly, it still gets worse! Because we haven’t talked about team valuations yet. Put quite simply, Caitlin Clark handed every one of these assholes a nine figure fortune. That may seem like hyperbole, but it is the absolute truth. Mark Davis bought the Aces in 2021 for $2 million dollars. Not 2001. Not 2011. 20 fucking 21! In 2025 they were worth $310 million dollars. Let’s say the $10 million dollar a year loss was true and each owner was losing close to a million a year. That means that if they had owned the team from jump street, they would have lost $29 million dollars. And today that team would be worth a minimum of $200 million (Atlanta) or as much as $400 million (New York). Worst case scenario, you paid $1 million dollars a year to maintain your asset that gained $200 million dollars in value. Or, put another way, you spent $1 million dollars and your asset gained $6.9 million dollars. Put more starkly. In the big picture, in 2021 the value of every team in the WNBA combined was less than $100 million dollars. Today they are worth over $3 billion dollars. And yeah, they have paid Clark $200,000.
All of these people that continue to cry poor could get out right now and take a nine figure profit. And just in case someone wants to cry that these are just “valuations” and not real. There are still two different groups fighting over who gets to pay $250 - $300 million to buy the Suns. So those numbers are solid.
And I know you were thinking it, can it still get worse? Indeed it can! Because after all this, we do still need to talk about the media deal, which is straight up theft. The WNBA should probably have another $6 billion dollars of that. The WNBA is, in effect, subsidizing the NBA by not getting its fair share of the media deal.
So, what is my point? Nobody should side with the league. They are all alwful greedy people. All of them. Even Sue Fucking Bird who has gone on her podcast multiple times to talk about how great it is that the league is making such a big offer. What she never mentions is that her stake in the Storm has gone up by over 100X since Caitlin Clark came to town. Every member of the media should be calling these people out for what they are doing. The narrative needs to change. The WNBA makes a ton of money, and the players deserve their cut.
But more importantly for our purposes here, it exposes how truly awful everyone involved on the league side is. Dust off your calculators. We are going to use that $10 million dollar loss and do some maths. Now, I am starting this from a rocky place, because I don’t believe the original $10 million dollar loss story any more than any of the other lies that have come from the league, but we will proceed as if what Silver claimed was true, because it exposes how truly awful everyone on the league side of this is.
So, 2019, the league is losing $10 million dollars a year. That’s why they can’t afford to pay the players. We will note here that in 2019 the league sold 1.3 million tickets. Now let us fast forward to 2024 and the arrival of Caitlin Clark. Attendance explodes and the league sells 2.3 million tickets. Literally a million more tickets. That is an increase in revenue of ~$50 million. And that is not counting any additional brand partnerships, extra TV money, or that humongous pile of cash from all of those Clark jerseys. So, clearly, the WNBA is making a lot of money, right? No, the league still complains that they just don’t make any money.
As we move to 2025, it gets even better. 3.1 million tickets. That is like ~$90 million in extra revenue over when they were losing $10 million dollars a year. It’s like having Caitlin Clark has made the WNBA into a money printing machine. But no, the league still says they are losing money. That is why they have to be so cautious approaching this new CBA. And the bullshit really gets deep now.
The players, rather sensibly, want a cut of gross revenue, like the NBA players get. Which is a perfectly reasonable ask, considering that the NBA players have been getting ~50% of basketball related income for decades. From all the way back when they were generating less revenue than the WNBA will in 2026. The league makes a bunch of noise about how the players need to work with them to build a sustainable business model. Which the players do, offering a deal that gets them 30% of gross. And here is where it gets really stupid.
The league says, “Hold on! If we were to sign that deal, we would lose $700 million dollars over the course of this contract!” And if your bullshit detector didn’t spontaneously combust, you are either frighteningly gullible or a misogynist looking for any excuse to run down the players. Let’s do some maths!
We, of course, don’t have all the numbers. That is what is as the root of all of this. The league doesn’t want to share the actual numbers, because then they can’t just steal money from the players. But we have enough numbers to make some educated guesses. So, let’s go back to those 1.3 million tickets, the $10 million dollar loss, and what we know was a media deal of around $60 million dollars a year. We can work with that.
So, looking at 2026, we can safely assume the league is going to sell at least 3.1 million tickets. There is no reason to expect attendance to drop, and they will be adding two teams, so in all likelihood, 3.6 million is a reasonable guess. So we can deduce that there will be an increase of ~$100 million dollars in ticket sales over the horrible money losing season. Adding to that, we know that the media deal is going up from $60 million dollars a year to $200 million dollars a year. So there is another $140 million dollars over the losing $10 million dollars WNBA.
So let’s run with that. A 6 year CBA means that there will be an increase in revenue of at least $1.4 billion dollars. The players have asked for 30% of revenue, which equates to about $150 million dollars a year by most estimates. Or, $900 million dollars over the course of the agreement. That would leave a cool $500 million to cover the $10 million dollars a year that the league was previously losing, or $60 million over the course of the CBA. It sure seems like this means the league would be profiting in the 100s of millions of dollars under this plan. But oh no!
Remember, the league has said that with this deal they would lose $700 million dollars. So, let’s look at that. We can deduce that the league thinks the players are asking for $700 million dollars too much. The league would break even with the players at $200 million dollars for this agreement. Or $33 million dollars a year. That would put the salary cap at $2.2 million dollars for each team. Remember, the previous salary cap was $1.4 million dollars.
So, the message from the league is that they were losing $10 million dollars a year. And now that revenue has gone up by at least $240 million dollars a year, they can break even if they raise the salary cap by $800 thousand dollars a year, or $12 million dollars overall. It is so stupid you can hardly believe someone would say it. But it gets worse!
Because that is not even what the league is proposing. The $2.2 million dollar cap would have average player salary at $185 thousand dollars. But the league has proposed a deal where the salary cap would be $5.65 million dollars, or roughly $470 thousand dollars for average salary. If you are thinking none of this makes sense, it is because it can’t. Everything coming from the league is bullshit and lies. It is just made up propaganda meant to turn the fans against the players. They are purposely shit-talking their own product because they think it will allow them to steal more money from the players.
We also need to highlight here that those numbers from the league are also likely bullshit. We have now seen a proposal from the league that mentions projected salaries that could reach $2 million dollars a year. But this is the same bullshit scheme from the last CBA. If you recall in the previous CBA they also touted their new revenue sharing deal where players could make in excess of $500,000. Of course, the league gets to decide if you hit the goals, and the players never did. Now they are back with the new new revenue sharing model and players can make up to $2 million dollars, if the league says they hit the goals. You want to bet on that happening?
And you may think it can’t, but it does in fact get worse. In none of these discussions will the league ever mention that $800 million dollars they just collected in expansion fees. Think about that. If we believe that the league was a $10 million dollar a year cross to bear, we can expand that to the 29 years of the league and estimate the league lost $290 million dollars, even though we know that at the very least 2024 and 2025 made a ton of money. But let’s go ahead and give them the full $290 million dollar loss. That means that just from the expansion fees, the league is in the black better than $500 million dollars. The owners bided their time with their investment, and it paid off huge. But no, somehow the league seems to be under the impression that the $800 million dollars they were handed don’t count. They had an $800 million dollar expense of profits paid out to owners or something. Because that never factors in.
And, amazingly, it still gets worse! Because we haven’t talked about team valuations yet. Put quite simply, Caitlin Clark handed every one of these assholes a nine figure fortune. That may seem like hyperbole, but it is the absolute truth. Mark Davis bought the Aces in 2021 for $2 million dollars. Not 2001. Not 2011. 20 fucking 21! In 2025 they were worth $310 million dollars. Let’s say the $10 million dollar a year loss was true and each owner was losing close to a million a year. That means that if they had owned the team from jump street, they would have lost $29 million dollars. And today that team would be worth a minimum of $200 million (Atlanta) or as much as $400 million (New York). Worst case scenario, you paid $1 million dollars a year to maintain your asset that gained $200 million dollars in value. Or, put another way, you spent $1 million dollars and your asset gained $6.9 million dollars. Put more starkly. In the big picture, in 2021 the value of every team in the WNBA combined was less than $100 million dollars. Today they are worth over $3 billion dollars. And yeah, they have paid Clark $200,000.
All of these people that continue to cry poor could get out right now and take a nine figure profit. And just in case someone wants to cry that these are just “valuations” and not real. There are still two different groups fighting over who gets to pay $250 - $300 million to buy the Suns. So those numbers are solid.
And I know you were thinking it, can it still get worse? Indeed it can! Because after all this, we do still need to talk about the media deal, which is straight up theft. The WNBA should probably have another $6 billion dollars of that. The WNBA is, in effect, subsidizing the NBA by not getting its fair share of the media deal.
So, what is my point? Nobody should side with the league. They are all alwful greedy people. All of them. Even Sue Fucking Bird who has gone on her podcast multiple times to talk about how great it is that the league is making such a big offer. What she never mentions is that her stake in the Storm has gone up by over 100X since Caitlin Clark came to town. Every member of the media should be calling these people out for what they are doing. The narrative needs to change. The WNBA makes a ton of money, and the players deserve their cut.