Female athletes have long suffered a massive pay deficiency compared to their male counterparts, and WNBA stars Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese are in the process of trying to even the playing field through their superb play and the attention it draws.
The two rookies battled one another on Friday, August 30, during a matchup between the Indiana Fever and Chicago Sky, capturing the attention of former NBA star and current commentator Shaquille O’Neal who was sitting court-side.
O’Neal, who earned nearly $300 million during his playing career, issued a strong message following the performance, in which he advocated for equal compensation for women and the erasure of the gender pay gap.
Shaquille O’Neal wants WNBA stars to get the money they deserve.
NBA on TNT
“They’ve always played great, they’ve always played hard, I’m glad they’re getting their exposure. They definitely deserve it,” Shaq said of WNBA athletes. “Now we just got to get them similar contracts to what some of those NBA guys are making.”
Unfortunately, it isn’t quite as simple as that because contract size is related to the amount of revenue a league earns and how that revenue is split with its players based on the collective bargaining agreement in place.
Clark earns just over $84,500 per season on a four-year contract worth approximately $338,000 total. Reese earns slightly less. Jackie Young is the league’s highest-paid player with a contract exceeding $250,000 annually, per Front Office Sports.
Those numbers should all increase significantly when the WNBA’s new television deal kicks in following the 2025 campaign. The NBA negotiated the contract, which is worth $2.2 billion total over the next 11 years, per The Athletic. That is roughly four times the value of the current agreement, which should impact player salaries in a similarly exponential fashion.
The new television deal is due, in large part, to the spike in interest in women’s basketball at the NCAA level, which Clark and Reese helped spearhead with deep runs in the last two March Madness Tournaments that included a head-to-head matchup in the 2023 National Championship Game.
Reese got the better of Clark in that matchup, as LSU defeated Iowa to claim the crown. However, Clark evened the score on Friday night by dropping 31 points and 12 assists in a 19-point blowout victory for the Fever.
