Rachel Brewster wrote something about this in Mamamia in late 2021:

https://www.mamamia.com.au/women-in-sport-disparities/

I'm sympathetic - female athletes do sacrifice a lot to be able play at the highest levels of the game in Australia and it's not particularly profitable if you're not a top player. Rachel should do what she thinks is best for her obviously and it's unfortunate women's basketball in Australia can't support its players better financially.

Saw this last year, trust me for 6 months it's good pay for level of competition.
Reduce contracts to 10 I say, the 11th is not needed, keep it at 3 DPs. Slightly raise the cap, maybe 450k, avg wage 40k

Those that play both wnba and wnbl are getting around 120-220k per year.
Those that are 9-10-11th women are getting 25-30k + working part time + 5/6 month ft, the avg persons wage of around 65-75k per year.
To expect a minimum of 60k per season as a wnbl player I think is ridiculous, not because they don't deserve it as hardworking athletes but because how much money the brand makes.

Obviously wnbl only makes how much it makes so it's not conducive to a full time athlete unless they’re good enough to play wnba or Europe or somewhere else paying decent as well.

Can’t invent money that people are willing to pay.

AFLW is unique in that there’s a lot of strong arguments for the AFL to help pay the players more. The league is the sport in all reality, when the sport benefits, AFL benefit. A strong AFLW can broaden demographic a little and equate to stronger AFL support and synergy is there for sponsors that want to go more diverse than just men’s sport.

So, there could be business sense using it as a loss-leader. Add to the fact there’s high injury risk, an incredibly tough sport - you want full time players to mitigate the injury risk and improve quality of play (and entertainment for viewers).

I suspect AFLW willl eventually move that way - higher wages, more fulltime/dedicated roles with complimenting factors: community engagement, ambassador roles, more sponsor representation etc.

They need to keep it real simple and open across the board
Under good management, In the next 3-5 years, I don't see why they can’t aim for something like

Salary cap $555k (Currently $430k, more for 23/24)

Player
1>75k
2>70k
3>65k
4>60k (About the current wnba minimum and euro mid tier)
5>55k
6>50k
7>45k
8>40k
9>35k
10>30k (twice the current minimum wnbl salary)

11 DP>10k
12 DP>10k
13 DP>10k
(All available for home games, 1 available for away games or multiple if injuries)

Improvement in any women's professional sport needs men and often male decision-makers to prioritise it and in most cases it requires a level of redistributing of resources (known as sacrifice).

Progress is slow in this respect.

These WNBL players would easily command $10-15k for a season in NBL1 sometimes more. During that offseason the commitments are relatively low and could easily work a part time job or do individuals/coaching to supplement income.

I think after playing D1 college, especially on full ride scholarships, players are used to being full time basketballers without the thought of having to work. If you're a fringe player and you have to work 10-15 hours a week part time to continue to live your dream that's not the end of the world. Certainly beats working a full time job you hate that pays better.

Don't get me wrong I still think they should be paid more. If they don't figure that out there will be a mass exodus to AFLW solely due to the pay differential.

The WNBL benefited in the past from being one of the few places elite female athletes had a pathway that allowed them to be anything close to professional. AFLW meant that took an immediate hit, and I suspect its going to continue to take good athletes away from other sports as the wages rise.

There's not a lot that can be done beyond what they're already trying to do which is grow the league, get more people in etc to make it a more attractive product for TV and advertisers. BA/WNBL certainly cant compete with the AFL.

The point is that they want to be full time basketballers rather than having to squeeze in training, recovery, gym, shooting sessions, etc. around "real jobs" but it's not possible for most bench level players, and that also makes it hard for them to improve.
The average salary is virtually meaningless due to the disparity between top and bottom paid players. The minimum salary is the relevant number here, and it's simply not enough to live on.
(Mind you, it's still better than it used to be 5 years ago)

There's no easy solutions atm, but it's a shame that the development of non-rotation players is being compromised by this. And of course it also means more players simply leave the sport of basketball.

$550-650 a week as the 10th/11th woman is not good, like I said getting that minimum to around $1000 in the next 5 years is possibly and we should no longer see women leaving. Just unfortunate for the bench players atm.
Top players should be capped at 75, anything over should $$ benefit other clubs.

whatever competition - it will only survive if it's budget is within it's means. Some may look like big money at present but how long ? they could fall out of favour as quick as they became. It's about the viability of the sport in the community. Sure we all want maximum return - but I only spend what I have - doesn't mean I won't earn more but I don't compare too much = world of pain.

Yeah look, AFL has the capacity to fund AFLW better, and no doubt imagine they will soon subject to CBA type restraints.

I'd imagine it would snag a lot of basketball in the process.

The problem for the WNBL is the reality that they only have x amount or BA only has x amount. That means they can’t increase salaries and survive, at least not to a meaningful extent.

The solution is really LK. If BA/WNBL were willing to cease control (they probably aren’t), and if LK had the will to take on another project in addition or as an extension to the NBL (he may not).

But, if it managed to happen - LK knows what it’s like to build up a league and basketball, he has the capital and networking that’s an automatic unlock to extra marketing, confidence and investment by others. He puts his money in it’s a signal to others they can confidently put some of their money in (sponsors and team investors).

De-duplication of staffing/administration plus utilising his many businesses would reduce costs.

Take advantage of the broadened demographic and synergy - be able to offer sponsors options across both leagues etc.

That’s how you’d go about building reach, engagement, revenue streams and find a way to afford to pay players more.

Otherwise, tough ask!

"Improvement in any women's professional sport needs men and often male decision-makers to prioritise it and in most cases it requires a level of redistributing of resources (known as sacrifice).

Progress is slow in this respect."

That's the way to endear people.

Those that are subsidising you, demand they subsidise you even more.....

That's called business and lobbying lol

If BA were smart
Aim before 2030.

NBL / WNBL

Adelaide / Adelaide
Auckland / Auckland*
Brisbane / Brisbane*
Canberra* / Canberra - new stadium or refurb likely under act government
Cairns / Cairns*
Illawarra / Illawarra*
Melbourne / Melbourne
Perth / Perth
South East / South East
Sydney / Sydney
Tasmania / Tasmania
Townsville* / Townsville - refurbish TEC stadium needed

*new teams
2 NBL / 4 WNBL

Roster contracted spots
12 NBL / 10 WNBL

DP
4 NBL / 3 WNBL

Salary cap
2.2-2.5 mill / 550-600k

Cut Bendigo, move license to Tassie.

Those that are subsidising you, demand they subsidise you even more.....

Adelaide / Adelaide
Auckland / Auckland*
Brisbane / Brisbane*
Canberra* / Canberra - new stadium or refurb likely under act government
Cairns / Cairns*
Illawarra / Illawarra*
Melbourne / Melbourne
Perth / Perth
South East / South East
Sydney / Sydney
Tasmania / Tasmania
Townsville* / Townsville - refurbish TEC stadium needed

"Literally how every business works."

Every company is a beneficiary .....

I think you need to recalibrate that to "that's how every business wants to work."

There has to be a benefactor for someone or something to be a beneficiary.
No benefactor is compelled to cede to every demand.

The WNBL should strive to earn it's own money, and when they do, they should hold their head up high and feel liberated.

This is what equality feels like.

Equality McBlurter? Not too many male sporting teams/leagues make a profit & when they do it's after a significant period of losing money.

It seems that equality would look more like people with money investing in women just for the fun of it, prepared to lose money initially & if you spend enough & make the product great, maybe then it will turn a profit.

Across the board people/companies invest more money (be that membership/sponsorship etc) in higher level sport, so it's always going to be hard for products that are significantly inferior in standard to attract as much money for the players. This has been true for NBA/CBA, NBL/SEABL, AFL/VFL and many other examples. It's also true for NBL/WNBL.

"Equality McBlurter? Not too many male sporting teams/leagues make a profit & when they do it's after a significant period of losing money."

Virtually every single high profile male sport has been flush with cash for a long time. If entities are making tax losses, it's for a reason, not because there is a perpetual deficit of funds.

"It seems that equality would look more like people with money investing in women just for the fun of it,"

OK, then find those people.

"prepared to lose money initially & if you spend enough & make the product great, maybe then it will turn a profit."

And be prepared to have lower wages during that time.

But as it stands, the WNBL is not equal to the NBL. That it turns means why is is justified, and fair, WNBL wages are lower.

They are an entertainment product, and the NBL attracts greater revenue. That is the be all and end all of why they get paid more.

It is ludicrous to say they deserve to be paid the same because "they are doing the same job"

Does Adele have to subsidise Guy Sebastion because she makes millions more than him and they 'do the same job'?

Or does Adele deserve to earn more because she sells more tickets, albums, etc, etc,

In the same way the NBL players get paid more because they sell more tickets, merch, sponsorships than the WNBL does

Sure they all probably do work as hard as each other, but its just business the people that earn more sales/revenue ultimately earn more.

Those who want the WNBL players to earn more then buy as many tickets, merch, etc as you can and help it grow.

What did the Hawks average in terms of crowds this year? Do you think that has any impact on what their players are making? Do you honestly believe they made a profit? What about Brisbane? What about Adelaide? And with Adelaide remember that they've been paying out 2 former coaches.

The NBL was dead & LK saved it & has put a lot of money in & turned it into a viable product. It was borderline unwatchable. The players were still fully professional players, even though the crowd numbers were low & teams were not making money.

Sure, but who is the WNBL's version of LK to fund it,

I'm more than happy for players to earn as much as possible, but its easy to say lets pay them thousands of dollar's more with out any increase in funding or revenue to pay for it, you cant just expect the owners to do so if they dont want to, and if they did they would/could.

Take away the gender part of it, the exact things i mentioned such as difference in revenue, TV money, sponsorships, ticket sales is the reason why NBA players earn millions more than NBL players for doing the same job too.

The issue is funding/revenue, if you can find people to pay it you can pay the players male or female as much as they want, but thats obviously easier said than done.

Im a fan of WNBL and WNBA and would love them to earn as much as the men, but they just dont have as much revenue/funding.

Larry K and others have obviously chosen to help the NBL, he can do what he likes, if you can get him to do the same for the WNBL then awesome, but it cant be demanded of him at the same time.

LK wanted to do for the WNBL what he has done for the NBL but BA won't give it to him. They butchered the NBL & SEABL, LK has taken both & fixed both. Sadly, BA are holding on for dear life to the one league they have left, to the detriment of all involved.

I was moreso responding to the comment that gets made over and over that womens leagues have to earn more money via revenue & merch to get paid a living wage (be a pro baller), this same standard is not applied to men’s sports.

BA are useless, no doubt about that.

https://australia.basketball/staff/
Would get rid of 1/3 of these people asap.
All of executive management

Hard to argue against that

"Does Adele have to subsidise Guy Sebastion because she makes millions more than him and they 'do the same job'?

Or does Adele deserve to earn more because she sells more tickets, albums, etc, etc,

In the same way the NBL players get paid more because they sell more tickets, merch, sponsorships than the WNBL does

Sure they all probably do work as hard as each other, but its just business the people that earn more sales/revenue ultimately earn more.

Those who want the WNBL players to earn more then buy as many tickets, merch, etc as you can and help it grow."

Let's take these statement back another step, of course Adele shouldn’t be subsidising anyone, she’s an “individual artist” not part of a playing group/team, so not really a relevant argument

But if you put it down to how each artist is promoted, that where you can find the connection, whilst both are relevant artists in their own right, Adele’s promotional team far outweighs Guy Sebastian’s, they negotiate bigger and better venues, that draw in bigger and better crowds, which in turn produces higher revenue , that then increases exposure via more media attention. Do you see the comparison ( you can argue one is a far better artist than the other but again that comes down to personal taste )

Now let’s put that into women’s sport, women’s AFLW, Crocket, soccer netball all get great exposure, and those players are reaping the benefits in increased salary, bigger better venue to get more crowds who bring in revenue.
Is the standard of those sports better than it was before they were given more exposure, no, infact the AFLW is a terrible standard compared to the men, the women’s cricket is actually better than the men’s , but they are given main steam attention, the news reports on them, and tv channels play them almost as much as the men’s equivalent

Women’s basketball on the other hand might as well play at the local YMCA for all the attention it gets, because it is literally ignored by all man stream media.... With the exception of LJs return this season you wouldn’t have known we had a women’s national league going on, but it was literally all about “the goat” , ignoring the fact that the 100 other female players worked their butts off everyday training just like their male counterparts to produce a national league which may not be exactly the same as the NBL, but it’s still a dam good brand of basketball, the game between flyers and flames at John Cain arena showed you can definitely fill a larger venue given the chance, imagine putting Boomers and Flyers in that venue.

Sporting events given the media coverage that can attract sponsors who want bang for buck is the only way these teams get revenue. But women’s basketball can’t get that exposure.

Saying women can make do on the smaller wage packet and supplement with outside work, would you expect men to do that.
Women don’t get cheaper food, or rent or mortagages because they are women, many of these women have families to help support, just like their male counterparts, it’s not cheaper to live as a female, so why should their be a discrepancy in pay level that could be fixed if they were given equal exposure and some bloody respect…….something that’s clearly lacking by many posting here.

"Saying women can make do on the smaller wage packet and supplement with outside work, would you expect men to do that."

Men do that. How much do NBL DPs and training players get paid? How much do super-committed NBL1 guys who are trying to make it to a higher level get paid? Less than the best-paid WNBL players.

How much do VFL guys get paid who have to be at a similar fitness level as the AFL players they compete against? Less than the best-paid AFLW players.

The reality is the very best in a sport get paid the most, and in most sports the very best are men. Sport is one of the very few industries that separates the sexes for a reason.

You're comparing 2nd tier men’s leagues to first tier women’s mouse. What you’re failing to factor in is that the boys/men in the 2nd tier have a payday to work towards if they can get good enough. They can sacrifice for a few years with that aim. Half of the female players make that sacrifice for their whole career, often cut short because they need to 'get a real job’.

I definitely wouldn't call NBL anywhere near remotely flush with cash.

Small sports/sport leagues less financially capable of paying a wage enough to prevent it being a barrier is to an extent a public interest concept, particularly for things like the Olympics.

Some euro countries and UK have used the lottery to put funding into sport.

Inevitably the government plays a part in funding, even the AFL and Cricket - so it’s not ludicrous to wonder how funding can be best used.

For me it’s more the curiosity on infrastructure and how that’s funded significantly by government and then ends up pricing tenants out. Maybe multi-use/functionality and how they can maximise utilisation should play more or a role rather than x amount for an AFL stadium, x amount for a soccer stadium, x amount for a state basketball centre, x amount for a netball centre with very little consideration that the funding and infrastructure can cover off more than a single sport at a time. Part of that goes to the actual operation and ownership of the place too.

AFLW there would be untapped value so far, perhaps due to being new and CBAs etc. There would be a business and economic case for the AFL to create more salary space and funding for higher wages.

WNBL on the other hand can only pay what is sustainable. No point asking for money to be printed for you.

That’s why if I’m BA, I need to let the wnbl go to LK if he’s willing because LK could utilise his businesses, NBL operations and capitalise on synergies to give the WNBL the best possible chance to maximise revenue streams and pass that on via increased salary/wages.

Gov needs to consider how they can prevent infrastructure pricing clubs out, and how multi-use of infrastructure can be maximised to make overheads shared by various codes, reducing the burden on any individual code (aside from volume of use having an obvious influence).

People just cant see that even if the clubs are losing money in the end, the amount players and coaches are paid in NBA, NBL, Euroleague, WNBL, WNBA, NBL1, literally any sporting club or league in the world is directly tied to revenue one way or another sometimes its literally in the CBA like the NBA others its in how the club creates its budget allocations towards players, as in the end they need the money coming in to be able to pay the wages and their other expenses, you cant pay people money you dont have, whether its male/female, first tier or 2nd tier or 3rd tier, it is what it is.

In many businesses and sports leagues the amount players/employees get paid is around 30-50% of the revenue, even if the end result is an overall loss to the club/business.

Bigger more popular leagues get better medial/TV deals, sponsors, sell more tickets and merch and hence the participants get paid more.

The same is why WNBA players earn more than WNBL players too.

Think about it most NBL and WNBL clubs are already making losses, to increase the WNBL salaries without increasing revenue would just increase the losses, so obviously the clubs and owners cant/dont want to, it is what it is.

The only way to change this is to increase the revenue, or find someone who is willing to fund larger losses than clubs currently are experiencing, and reality is there are not many people willing to sign up to fund larger than the current level losses, the clubs at times have trouble finding people to fund the current level of losses. Think of how many ownership changes have occured around the NBL and WNBL over the past decade or so.

Whether its fair or not or right or wrong, this is the reality.

If people want players to be paid more in any sports league, then buy tickets, buy merch, encourage others to do the same which also in turn helps the club get more sponsors and TV deals to pay for it.

"You're comparing 2nd tier men's leagues to first tier women’s mouse."

You seem to be comparing 1st tier women's leagues to 1st tier men's league... and saying that is equal.

They're not equal.

Female players get played more than say u19 men, but am very confident if they played each other who would win.

It's not a hard reality... they're not equal.

This concept was 'given opportunity, female players would generate the same type of support', but this is an idiotic trope coming from the mouth of feminists.

OK, ask a feminist which WNBL team they follow? They don't? "Oh ok, so they didn't garner you as a new, previously untapped supporter."

Professional sport is an entertainment product, with remuneration roughly correlating to levels of support.

That's what they get paid on.

In terms of support, they are not equal.


"What you’re failing to factor in is that the boys/men in the 2nd tier have a payday to work towards if they can get good enough."


Yes... and? That's entirely fair.

"They can sacrifice for a few years with that aim. Half of the female players make that sacrifice for their whole career, often cut short because they need to 'get a real job’."

Ask the 8th, 9th, 10th player on a NBL1 side the same thing.

Have a guess why end of the bench players in NBL1 are so young.

That is not 'unfair'

You could have made your point using feminism as a point of reference given your blatant misunderstanding of feminism.

Nobody here is saying we should be inventing money to give to particular people, or that people should be forced to distort the market based mechanism in the name of making sure all pay is equal.

Everyone understands that some sports pay better than others, some leagues better than others.

Female tennis players on the world circuit get paid better than AFL players. AFL players get paid better than NBL players. It is what it is.

The question should be - is there capacity to bring wages up? If so, how?

AFLW it'll happen because the business case will be there, it’s just a question of timing. Will it be equal to males? No, not even close. But I’ve put forward reasons why AFL will want it to increase.

WNBL is in the same boat as NBL. What benefactors are available and how good can they be at lobbying the government and how effectively can they take advantage of international success to lobby for funding.

There would be a business case for LK to consider taking on the challenge of the WNBL because of the capacity to reduce costs and take advantage of synergies. But ofcourse, that requires lots of stakeholders to agree, and people don’t like agreeing at the best of times as seen in this thread.

Without using feminism as your frame of reference*