The United Football League (UFL) is likely to lose another $50 million or more in its second season of spring football.  League owners would be smart to end that money-losing experiment soon.

Recent television ratings and low home attendance indicate that the average sports fan will not miss the UFL next spring if that league should fold soon.

The WNBA loses nearly the same amount of money as spring football’s UFL

The Women’s National Basketball Association began play in 1997.  A 13-team WNBA plays its schedule (a little more than half the number of regular season games as the NBA) from May through September.

Five of the 13 WNBA teams are owned by the same market’s NBA franchise owner and play in the same arena as their NBA counterparts.  The remaining WNBA teams are owned by others.

Former Iowa Hawkeyes sensation Caitlin Clark has pushed the WNBA to set all-time attendance records and television ratings in 2024.

The league is off to another good start in 2025.

Caitlin Clark and her Indiana Fever team clobbered her arch-enemy (former LSU center Angel Reese) and the Chicago Sky 93-58 in a game watched by a WNBA record 2.7 million television viewers on ABC.

The news seems very positive.

Did you know that the WNBA (like the UFL) also lost about $50 million last season?

Something seems very wrong with this picture.

One league (the UFL) played its games in nearly empty stadiums and drew less than half of the television viewers that the WNBA is pulling every week.  The women’s basketball league is now filling its arenas and attracting television audiences the UFL could only dream about.

The losses are definitely not due to huge salaries being paid by the WNBA today!

Spring football’s UFL paid its 45 players per team about $60,000/year in 2025.  That amounted to $2.7 million per team and a cool $22 million for the eight-team UFL.

This year’s WNBA is paying the 12 players on the 13 squads an average of nearly $125,000/year in 2025.  That works out to $1.5 million for each team.  It translates into a league payroll of approximately $20 million for the WNBA in 2025.

Caitlin Clark and the three other top picks in the 2024 WNBA draft received a maximum of $79,000 (correct).

The men’s NBA top first round choices signed contracts for upwards of $10 million per year last season.  Even 2024’s second round NBA selections received deals worth about $2 million per year.

Why is there such a vast pay difference between men’s basketball and women’s pro basketball?

The market delivers some brutal economic realities when viewing the NBA vs. the WNBA.

The NBA has a huge revenue advantage.  Its $10 billion in annual revenue dwarfs the WNBA’s estimated $350 million.

The NBA finally reached profitability 40 years ago.  The WNBA (regardless of its revenue level) has not.

Significantly larger media contracts, longer regular season (82 NBA regular season games vs. 44 for the WNBA), and lucrative worldwide merchandising have turned the NBA into the Godzilla of professional basketball leagues worldwide.

Let’s roll-out some comparative statistics between the two basketball leagues:

Some WNBA teams (like Caitlin Clark’s Indiana Fever) may now be turning a profit, but the league as a whole (now in its 28th season) is not.  

The term “revenue sharing” is a big deal in major league sports.  The NBA’s collective bargaining agreement between the owners and players calls for about 50% of the league’s basketball-related revenue to be distributed to the players.

Basketball players and owners in today’s WNBA appear to be sharing somewhere between 10% to 20% of the basketball-related revenues.

This disparity in revenue sharing has everything to do with the NBA becoming being profitable and projecting a viable long-term future.  The WNBA is still trying to tread water (financially speaking).

I’m fairly sure that the WNBA players wouldn’t want to share 50% of the owners’ recent losses.

Why are those television deals so drastically different?

New television contracts recently signed by the NBA with NBC, ESPN, and Amazon will provide the men’s basketball league with nearly $7 billion of media revenues every year for the next 11 seasons.

The WNBA’s current TV deal (signed last season) provides about $200 million in media revenue annually to the league.  That is significantly better than the former agreement which paid $50 million per season.

Let’s examine the differences in the two leagues’ media deals.

The NBA plays almost twice as many regular season games (82 vs. 44) compared to the WNBA with more than double the number of teams (30 vs. 13).

Now let’s add in the NBA’s extended (2+ months) playoff season from early April through mid-June.  There is minimal competition from other major sports on television during the NBA playoffs.

The WNBA’s playoffs come during a relatively brief one-month blitz from late September through mid-October.  They must compete for viewers and advertising dollars right in the middle of the NFL and college football seasons.

The NBA’s television advertisers delight knowing that the men’s league delivers a highly-sought male buying demographic (ages of 25 to 54).  That age group is most likely to buy new cars, home appliances, insurance, alcoholic beverages, and fast food.

The WNBA’s television demographics are surprisingly balanced with a nearly 50/50 split between men and women.  The fastest growing segment of WNBA television viewership have come (surprise!) from the NBA’s 25-54 year old male audience.

A very crowded sports calendar works against the WNBA

Playing the majority of its schedule during the summer months may seem like a bad idea for the WNBA.  The primary reason they chose that time is due to a very crowded major sports schedule occupied by long-time sports juggernauts.

The availability of basketball arenas is another reason why the WNBA has (yet) to play a traditional wintertime hoops schedule.  Several owners of the 13 WNBA teams own the city’s NBA team.  Those owners won’t do anything to risk the profits being generated by the market’s lucrative NBA franchise.

When do you think the WNBA should play its games? 

Football season (college and the NFL) dominates the sports headlines from August through January.

College basketball (men and women) then quickly takes the baton in February through early April’s crowning of national champions.

The NBA and NHL playoffs start that next week from early April through mid-June’s conclusion.

Major League Baseball’s lengthy 162-game schedule starts with a yawn around April 1 and concludes in late October with the World Series.

The WNBA has chosen to directly compete with baseball by tipping-off its season in mid-May and the having the league’s playoffs end in mid-October.

In auto racing terms, the WNBA is trying to draft off the June NBA Finals’ audience in hopes of adding new basketball fans.

There is ONE strategic advantage which the WNBA must exploit

This week’s NBA draft featured a first round filled with the names of many 19-year old college freshmen and foreign-born players.  I follow basketball rather closely but had only heard of about 20% of the players being selected in Wednesday night’s first round of the NBA draft.

The NBA only requires men’s basketball players to be one year removed from high school and 19 years of age during the year in which they enter the professional ranks.

Today’s men’s college basketball stars don’t stick around long enough to become true fan favorites by the time they enter the NBA.

The WNBA’s current requirement is that US college players must turn 22 years of age during the year in which they begin play.

That significant difference has helped popular young women’s basketball talents like Caitlin Clark (Iowa) and Paige Bueckers (U-Conn) grow a significant fan base during four years of playing college basketball.

The WNBA must capitalize on this marketing advantage.  The NBA’s “one and done” rule is a reason why the men’s basketball TV audience has plateaued in recent years.

History lesson – Most major sports leagues did not become profitable for decades

The early years of the men’s professional basketball NBA (established in 1946) didn’t become profitable as a league until the 1980’s.

Boston Celtics’ center Bill Russell finally became the NBA’s first player to receive $100,000 in 1966 (20 years after the league was founded).

Bill Russell’s inflation-adjusted salary would equate to $992,000 today in 2025.

It’s hard to believe that one of the NBA’s greatest players earned less than half of the $2 million/year contracts which will be paid second round selections after this week’s NBA draft.

The NFL was founded in 1920.  Some teams made money (like Green Bay), but the league itself wasn’t considered profitable until the late 1960’s.

Major League Baseball (which began in 1897) had a few profitable franchises like the New York Yankees.  MLB did not post a profit until the end of World War II during the late 1940’s.

The National Hockey League (1917) took more than 50 years to achieve overall profitability even though a few individual franchises like Montreal and Toronto had been making money.

The women’s basketball league must quickly develop more new stars and grow its television popularity

Play in the WNBA began nearly 30 years ago.  That sounds like a lot of time, but the league’s dramatic rise in home attendance and television ratings in just 13 months is a very positive signal.

Caitlin Clark’s immense popularity is akin to the rise of the NBA’s fan interest during the 1980’s as Larry Bird’s Celtics battled Magic Johnson’s Lakers.

Clark’s unique basketball skills have fascinated a younger generation and rekindled the interest of older fans, too.

The WNBA must add even more marketable former college stars to piggy-back off the boost which Caitlin Clark has given to the league recently.

Formative years in the NBA, NFL, Major League Baseball, and other major sports did not enjoy financial success across the league for decades (especially for its early stars).

The WNBA may be on the verge of taking its big step soon.

Then again, it might not.

Market forces will determine whether the women’s basketball league will be able to keep growing its television audience.  More permanent support from fans in the stands and (especially) from television viewers at home will give the WNBA a chance to move toward profitability over the next decade.

The trend is their friend – at least for now.

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