Caitlin Clark, Mr. Supply and Mrs. Demand

Through an insane set of circumstances, and the exponential instance of the Peter Principle, Kamala Harris is actually the Vice President of the United States as I write this. There is indeed a God, so that is not likely to be the case after next January, but it's true for the moment.

The people who tell Joe Biden what to do and to (try to) say have given her a few assignments over her tenure as VP, none of which she has attended to, enough to have accomplished anything. As I write this, the biggest news item is the rioting on college campuses by pro-Hamas protesters, but the puppeteers can't let Kamala near that one, because her husband is Jewish, and that wouldn't work.

So she has been given the Caitlin Clark "situation" to try to address, which really isn't any kind of problem, but putting Kamala in charge of it will keep her from cackling about something actually important.

So here is the "situation." Miss Clark was, until recently, a female college basketball player for the University of Iowa.  Her well-deserved claim to fame was as a great scorer, lots of three-point shots, that sort of thing. Although her team failed to win the women's NCAA basketball championship, she was excellent and, as a result got a lot of people to watch the tournament -- and was drafted first in the WNBA's amateur draft, by the WNBA's Indiana team.

Should she sign with Indiana, which she may have already, she will be paid either $75,000 or $85,000 a year (I'm not sure), which is the maximum salary for a first-year player in the WNBA.  While lots of Americans would be really happy to make either of those figures each year, as Miss Clark is one of the best in her field, some think that figure is very low, and that is the issue that Kamala has been assigned to cackle about.

The reason, of course, that the almighty "some" think the figure is low, is that in the male version of the WNBA (the actual NBA, which I haven't watched for years), ten-figure annual salaries are routine.  The guarantees for the stars in that league, like, you know, that guy, and that other one, are well over $100 million. Each.

So Kamala, being Kamala, is starting from the idea that the difference in salary structures is because in one league the players are women, and, you know, patriarchy, and all that.  The two leagues, after all, are both basketball, and therefore by simple economics should pay the same.

[OK, actually Kamala is starting from the idea "Wait, this is what you want me to take up as a cause in an election year?  This is the best you've got?"]

But I digress.

First, let us note that Miss Clark will not starve.  Nike, that paragon of virtue and Chinese child-labor sweat shops, has signed her to a huge ten-figure contract to endorse sneakers. This whole issue is not about what size mansion the young star will be able to afford.  She is getting paid. The reason for the seemingly insane disparity in pay between the men's and women's leagues is pretty simple.  

People actually watch the men.

The interest in the NBA is sufficient that they actually sell tickets, which is an upwards of 20,000 per-game average for the most successful teams, and still over 16,000 for even the least popular ones.  Of the 12 WNBA teams, by contrast, not a single one averaged even 10,000 tickets, and four of the 12 averaged fewer than 5,000 per game.

More importantly, that attendance disparity was enough to where there is no real television contract of any size to pour revenues into the women's league.  Ticket sales are nice, but TV is where the buckos come.  Without those buckos, there is no money to pay NBA-level salaries.  And without sufficient eyeballs to sell commercial time, no TV network is going to want to air their games.

Kamala, who has no capacity whatsoever to argue a point, is going to try to contend that the reason for the disparity is some kind of sexism at play. Well, I suppose it has to do with the fact that one league is women and one is men, but only in the sense that the women's game has not shown itself to be interesting enough for sufficient numbers of people to want to watch it.

The laws of supply and demand are immutable in a free society.  The price of something is established by its availability (supply) and market (demand).  If no one wants the product, the price goes down; likewise, if there is some increase desire for the product (demand), the price goes up, and vice versa for both.

The salaries in the WNBA are what they are (i.e., comparably low) because the product (the women's professional game) has failed to attract an audience (demand) sufficient to where people will either buy tickets or watch on TV -- either of which would generate revenues.

The teams themselves are businesses -- they exist to make profit, meaning to generate more in revenue than the amount of their expenses.  If the demand for the products (in this case, the entertainment of a basketball game) is steady, the revenues from tickets, concessions, etc., will be a certain consistent amount each year.  If that amount is only enough for a salary budget of, say, $1.2 million a year, then across a 12-player roster, that averages about $100,000 per player, which is pretty much the WNBA average salary.

Why, you ask, might that salary budget be so much lower than that of the NBA?  Kamala, of course, won't bother to ask the question (she already claims she knows the answer, which by the way is wrong).  The answer she wants to believe is that it is all about prejudice against female athletes and patriarchy and privilege and that crap.

The correct answer, unfortunately for her, is in the numbers themselves.  Specifically, the number at issue is the revenues of the two leagues.  The WNBA, across all teams, generates about $60 million per season, or about $5 million per team.  The NBA, on the other hand, the men's league, generates about $10 billion per year (yes, with a "b").

In other words, they pay a lot more in salaries because they actually bring in a lot more cash to be able to pay their players with.

While I find neither league's games interesting enough to watch on TV, let alone pay for a ticket, it's clear that across the 350 million or so Americans, there is plenty of interest in the men's game, and little to none for the women's game -- less than one percent of what the men's game brings in, going by revenues generated.

I believe that Kamala will jump all over the fact that the viewership for the recently-completed NCAA women's tournament championship game was actually higher than that for the men's championship, which was won by I forget whom. 

What I do know, though, is that the women's game was at 3:00pm EDT on a Sunday afternoon, while the men's game started at 9:20pm on a Monday -- meaning that the only TV audience for the men's game were the alumni of the two teams and a bunch of insomniac gamblers.  There were no casual watchers, since you have to stay up until like midnight on a work night to see the end of the game (yes, the NCAA can be immensely stupid).  I don't know how much of a factor that was in the disparate TV audience, but it sure had an effect in my home.

I can hear it now from the Vice-Cackler-in-Chief.  "Now people are going to start watching the WNBA in record numbers, and the players should be paid what the NBA players are paid!"  Yes, she will say that, because she thinks that way.

First, if the WNBA players were paid even half what the NBA players are paid, the league would fold in a heartbeat, because there wouldn't be enough revenue to pay a single player per team, and the game is even less interesting without any players.

Second, and more important, is Americans' habits.

Let me remind you about another uninteresting sport -- soccer.  And I'll further remind you that every four years (or so) there is this event called the "World Cup" where, after some arcane qualification system, teams representing a couple dozen countries play every once in a while and eventually one of them wins.

Once in a while -- and remember, this is only played every four years (or so) -- the USA men's or women's teams qualifies for the tournament, and whips up some temporary interest in the game on this side of the pond.  ESPN and the other globalist media whoop and holler and declare that now Americans will be forever interested in soccer, which not coincidentally is broadcast by ESPN and other globalist media.

But it never happens!

I don't care how well one of the USA teams does; within three hours and 27 minutes of the USA's last game, Americans all turn to something else, and completely forget about soccer until the next World Cup, three or four years (or so) later.  The game has failed to engage Americans for decades and clearly never will.  Fun to play, dull as sin to watch.

This is exactly what will happen with the WNBA, and for exactly the same reason.  People don't watch because the women's pro game hasn't made itself sufficiently appealing to where it can draw an audience, any more than soccer has.

Good for Caitlin Clark; she has developed a skill to its highest level and is going to get paid boatloads (albeit by Nike, not the WNBA).  It just isn't enough to have any lasting impact on America's perception of the attraction of women's pro basketball. After her first couple of pro games (which, mind you, will not have the drama of an NCAA final), audiences will go back to doing what they did before they ever heard of Caitlin, and Nike will be very lucky to recoup its investment.

And Kamala will be off cackling in the distance, having failed to come close to recognizing the immutable pairing of Mr. Supply and Mrs. Demand.

Copyright 2024 by Robert Sutton.  Like what you read here? There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com and, after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around. Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton