Pearl - August 02, 2025Pearl RIPS APART Woke Female Athlete
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Summary
In 2024, the median salary for WNBA players was just 2% of that of their male counterparts. In this episode, Catherine Bertrine, Howard Megdall, and Pearl Davis discuss why it s not fair that women get paid less than men in the WNBA.
Transcript
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Here is Catherine Bertrine, a cyclist, triathlete and CEO of the Homestretch Foundation,
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which provides free housing to female professional athletes struggling with the gender pay gap.
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Howard Megdall is joining us, a sports writer, commentator and author of the upcoming book
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Becoming Caitlin Clark, a biography of the record-breaking WNBA player.
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And rounding out our panel is Pearl Davis, an American YouTuber and a cultural and political commentator.
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Well, in 2024, the median salary for WNBA players was just 2% of their NBA counterparts.
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And you could argue that the men's game simply makes more money, a lot more money.
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But when you consider it in terms of percentages, NBA players are paid around 50% of the league's revenue,
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while the women get only a touch over 9% of the revenue.
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So, Catherine, let's start with you. Is that fair?
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In this modern day and age, we need to pay the women equally.
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And, you know, I come from the world of professional cycling where we're struggling with the same gender pay gap.
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And no matter what sport across the globe, the fact that women's sports are, and not even sports,
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women across the world are being paid less than men.
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And not penny by penny or dollar by dollar, but to the significant point of being equal.
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What is the difference between profit and revenue?
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Obviously, you've got a point to make, so go ahead.
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No, I'm asking the question, because if you're going to make the claim that we need to have equal revenue,
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Well, the difference is visibility and the fact that women aren't seen on the visible platforms.
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But no, but Pearl, to go back to the question that we posed,
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is it fair that the women get a lesser percentage of the money that they make for the sport?
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Profit is how much it brings in minus expenses.
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So I don't really care if you bring in $200 million, but you spend $300 million, then you're still losing money.
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I'm going to jump in here and point out a couple of things, and I'm glad to be with all of you today.
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First of all is that, obviously, it's not nearly as simple as profit versus revenue,
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because you have, for instance, owners of WNBA teams who are having their assets grow exponentially.
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So whether the profit or loss comes in at X amount of money, that doesn't take into account the fact that teams that were worth $10 million five years ago are now worth $400 or $500 million as well.
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There's no shortage of investment that comes in.
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But there is a larger problem here, and that is centering men around these questions rather than—
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Centering men around this instead of simply coming up with a basic answer to the question,
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what is an appropriate amount of the total revenue that players should receive from a league,
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whether it is a men's league, whether it is a women's league?
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And then figuring out profit versus revenue, what money goes into expenses,
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what money goes into investment in something that grows the lead's bottom line for its owners.
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This is the gray area where things actually get determined.
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And so, no, the world is not nearly as black and white as profit versus revenue.
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I mean, I think it's pretty black and white that if you're spending more than you're making,
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If you are investing in something that's worth more over time,
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how is that not relevant to the overall revenue that's coming in?
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If you have purchased a house that continues to go up in value and you own the house,
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your ultimate bottom line, your assets are worth considerably more.
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You're welcome to disagree, but pretty clearly a number of owners don't view it that way,
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which is why three different WNBA owners in expansion just paid $250 million a piece to do it.
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They didn't do that so they could go in and lose money.
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I just, I don't think you can really compare it when the NBA brings in $11 billion a year
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Nobody actually said they're losing $250 million and that's a made-up number,
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but why are you comparing it to the NBA at all?
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What is it about the WNBA that means that players shouldn't receive 50% of revenue
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if that's the percentage of revenue that NBA players and leads across the world make?
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If I had an employee that wanted more money, I'd ask, are you making me more money?
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And if you're losing $250 million a year, $50 million, $10 million, whatever, whatever.
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If anything, it's gaining more than it ever has.
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Revenue has gone up considerably year after year after year.
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We know that a majority, if we're going to stick into the reality-based part of this,
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we know the majority of WNBA teams earn money.
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We know the fact that the WNBA just signed a new media rights deal.
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For those at home who want to know how this really works, the media rights deals are the
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engine financially that drive profitability or loss with Leeds for a long time.
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And through 2025, the WNBA media rights deal, which was signed 10 years ago, did not allow
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But a new media rights deal that values the work that's being done on ESPN and other partners
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alone at $200 million rather than $33 million changes the numbers.
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When we look at attendance going up, the revenue changes significantly.
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And ultimately, yes, the numbers are up considerably.
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I literally don't know where you got it from, but it has nothing to do with the moment.
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I think you may have confused profitability with expansion fees.
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I just explained to you the many ways that they are.
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We know that TV viewership has gone up 30% in the past year.
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Now, revenue for the WNBA has doubled since 2019.
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Catherine, give us your interpretation of whether or not we are seeing a lack of interest in
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women's sport, or is it that it just doesn't seem that there's fairness in the profits?
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While there's not yet fairness in the profit, we are absolutely seeing an uptick in the viewership
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And the most wonderful effect that Caitlin Clark has had is that it's not just been her presence
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She has completely made people across the world pay attention to women in all sports.
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And so we're seeing, you know, the wave of Caitlin in the most wonderful way.
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And people are finally tuning in and following that whatever sport they might be following,
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whether it's soccer or cycling or women's ice hockey, there is a Caitlin Clark in each sport
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that is making this incredible move forward for all of us.
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And we're thankful for what's happening within the WNBA.
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And one of the things that we've always done in women's sports, especially in the last 10 to 15 years,
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is to start speaking up about everything from equitable pay to equal opportunities.
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You know, and that's one thing we can draw to light right now.
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As we know, the women's Tour de France, known as Tour de France Femme Avec Zwift, is happening
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And this is a race that has long been coming down the line for many of us who fought to
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bring it to the airwaves and to the visibility, and not just that, but into existence.
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And the fact that that is now happening and the cycling world is seeing a return of investment,
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not just in women's cycling, but in all cycling, because more people are tuning in,
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more people are able to finally say, it doesn't matter if it's a man or a woman who I'm watching
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All I want to do is see some great game being played.
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So when we talk about the return of investment and profits and losses, we have to look at
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a much bigger picture and not just where this has come from, but where this is now and where
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The idea that is it fair pay for the same amount of effort that they put in?
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Does this always need to be distilled down to profits or are we talking just good old
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I think we may have an audio issue there with Howard.
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What about the fair pay for the effort that they put in?
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We are so lucky to even have women's sports at all.
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I think we're incredibly lucky to be able to play sports, even though we operate at a loss.
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And it's very frustrating when I hear women whining and crying about not getting paid enough.
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When I have family members that are in the military, I have family members that do the hard jobs in society, and you guys are crying because you're not getting paid enough to dribble a basketball.
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The reason that women, the reason people are tuning in for Caitlin Clark is because of the drama.
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So people kind of like to see the catfights on the court.
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Nobody's tuning into the WNBA to watch a bunch of missed layups.
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I played overseas, you know, but I have to be honest.
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All the people complaining about equal pay, they were never at my games, ever.
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Is it possible there's some jealousy of where the league is now compared to where it was then?
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Because people are not tuning in for the drama.
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They're taking in for the ability to play basketball, which Caitlin demonstrates so beautifully that she is fully capable.
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Well, the world is lucky that there gets to be professional sports league.
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And women's sports have developed because of that.
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There is a man in Alaska that dies so we can get crab meat.
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Every boat that goes out, it's like three months long.
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You know, I have cousins that do hard manual labor construction where they're, you know,
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they're sacrificing their body to keep the society running.
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You're not getting paid enough to dribble a basketball?
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You guys are lucky to have a league to begin with.
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So if you want to get paid more, increase the profits, not the revenue, which you guys
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didn't even know what the difference between the two was.
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Like, and that's the challenge that I'm getting is you guys are crying and you've no idea how
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Whether we're talking about revenue, whether we're talking about profits, we know that TV
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ratings are up for women's basketball 23% on last year.
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So how can you say that no one's interested, Pearl?
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OK, it goes up, but the viewership is still way lower than the men.
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No one's saying it's not the same as the men, but why can't they get a percentage of their
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The women's basketball don't get a percentage of the sales of their merchandise the way that
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Why should a basketball jersey be allowed to be sold with Caitlin Clark's name on it when
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And to be honest, their gyms were pretty much empty.
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We had maybe like 10, 15, it was maybe it was just the parents, maybe boyfriends that
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We might've had our viewership go up 23%, but it's like, OK, you had 20 people at the
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That's the equivalent of the WNBA at a mass scale.
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But just because people might not be turning up for some sports, if they're turning up and
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selling out stadiums for the WNBA, isn't that evidence that there is more?
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It may be still a smaller amount, but more than there was in the past.
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It doesn't matter if your cost exceeds how much you're making.
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Their costs are higher than the revenue they're bringing in.
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It doesn't matter if the revenue is going up if you're still losing money.
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And the challenge is, you know, and you get this a lot with media people, is they've never
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been, generally, they've never been in charge of a lot of people.
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So it's like, you have to get the money from somewhere to pay everybody that's working at
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And what keeps happening is they keep saying, pay me more, pay me more.
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To say, yeah, I do have something to say about that.
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But I first think it's very important that we bring in the most recent statistic, which
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is just recently, within the past 24 hours, Caitlin Clark's rookie card just sold for $660,000,
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which is 8.5 times her annual salary of $76,000.
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So this is the most money ever made at a public auction for a woman athlete.
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So despite the league pulling in, you know, and not only that, but, you know, the women's
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league is pulling in more viewership than ever.
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And this is so, so very important to keep current with what's really happened.
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And what's really happening right now, because I know in the past, the viewership wasn't there
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for so many women's sports, but we are changing that.
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It's happening across the globe, especially with the different streaming visibility platforms we have.
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We had a technical glitch and we lost you there.
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We're going to move on to our next segment of the show.
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Let's talk about media attention, because there is no doubt, while it may have been from a smaller
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number than the men, audience figures and audience numbers for women's sport is increasing.
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But yes, it still lags behind the numbers that the male leagues capture.
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For example, if we turn our attentions away, maybe from basketball to women's football,
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an estimated 3.4 million people attended the men's FIFA World Cup in 2022, while the women's
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tournament drew in 2023, drew a crowd of a bit less than 2 million.
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So there is still a disparity in the number of people who are willing to pay money and turn
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Why do women's sporting events, sporting tournaments, attract less attention, be that
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Well, look, I reject the premise of the question.
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You can go back to a large number of examples where women's sports has received equal amount
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of investment and promotion and see that the opposite is true.
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Here in the United States, more than 26 million people watched the 2015 FIFA Women's
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World Cup, which is the largest audience for a soccer game in this country, men's or women's.
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You can go to the 2024 National Championship Games for college basketball and the women's
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college basketball tournament with Caitlin Clark as a star, drew 18.9 million.
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But a thing that so commonly happens here is there is a confusion of inputs and outcomes.
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It leads to outcomes that are uneven, which are used to justify the next input.
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And again and again, we see that happen in women's sports.
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Pearl, do you disagree with that sentiment or agree?
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So when women start getting as entertaining as men, you'll see the viewership be close
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In fact, we see them often exceed when there's even a rough equivalent of attention provided
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But, I mean, your personal opinion, of course, has no bearing on the actual numbers as they
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And I think it's also important that we talk about the visibility aspect.
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And we are still in a time frame where when it comes to broadcasting women's sports on
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Just let Catherine finish, Pearl, and then I'll come to you for a response.
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When women are given an equal seat at the table of decision-making as to when and where we're
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seen, we will see a dynamic turn in visibility for the better.
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And most of that is happening because people are sticking to tradition.
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The men are getting prime spots, you know, frequently more often than women are when
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When that changes, you will see that dynamic shift.
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But the good news is that is finally starting to happen.
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We're not just being broadcast at 10 a.m. on a Sunday morning like we were in the past.
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It's finally inching its way up the visibility.
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But we still need to make dramatic change happen there.
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And the flip side about it, and something that's so encouraging, is as we see it happen
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more and more, those are driving further decisions.
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Quite frankly, that's what we saw with Caitlin Clark.
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Caitlin Clark happened to be a freshman the year that ESPN started broadcasting every single
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The first time they finally decided to put a game on network television, ABC, here in
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the United States of America, it drew 1.6 million people, helped drive decisions that led to
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more and more visibility, that led to more and more people seeing it.
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I'm sorry, I don't like interrupting everybody.
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People, bottom line, need to have an opportunity to be able to see
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When they're able to see these sports happen, able to follow these sports, able to get more
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media coverage for these sports, what we see at the end of the end is people are buying
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in at a same, if not larger number than oftentimes on the men's equivalent.
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But bottom line is a huge growth we're seeing throughout women's sports where they get these
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And Pearl, you were saying that women just aren't as entertaining, but what do you make
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to Howard's point that a hugely greater number of people tuned in to watch the women's football
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team play their matches in the U.S. women's football team than any U.S. male football team?
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I mean, it may happen for a game, but across the length of a season, the viewership's always
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What about the argument that if you don't value it, if it's not prioritized, people can't see it.
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So if it's not prioritized on the screen, people can't value it.
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There will be small YouTube channels, tiny YouTube channels, where if they have an entertaining
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clip or an entertaining segment, their whole life will change overnight.
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If women's sports was that entertaining that people would want to watch it, the clips would
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go viral and people would find a way to watch it.
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And so what happens is, is whenever women take an L...
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As somebody who's in this business, I can tell you how often the clips go viral.
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Whenever women take an L in life, the world has to tell them they're not taking an L.
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And so what happens in women's sports is we're not making money.
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We're not really having the viewership the men are having.
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Instead of the world being honest with us and saying, hey, you guys should be more entertaining
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and do a better job instead of blaming the men, what it does is it says it's not your
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fault because you don't have a seat at the table, gender pay gap, blah, blah, blah.
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When really the burden of performance is on us to be entertaining and get the viewership.
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Howard, is it about being entertaining or is it about being professional?
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Again, we've just been able to provide you a tremendous amount of data on audience, on
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And ultimately, it's going to be up to your audience to decide, right?
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Do you believe the massive increase in audience?
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Or do you just decide, well, Pearl said they're not entertaining, so I guess we've got to listen
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I'm going to go with the proproners of the evidence first.
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Well, I would say go into real life and actually come up with an illusion.
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What happens is that you guys are nerds, right?
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So a lot of nerds, what they want to do is be able to do.
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We don't need to resort to name calling, so let's keep the name calling out of it.
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Catherine, to get a, just a moment, Pearl, just a moment.
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Thanks, Pearl, and we'll throw a question to Catherine.
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Okay, Catherine, I'm curious about your opinions on this.
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Thanks, and we'll come back to you for a response.
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Catherine, in 2024, we had a wide-reaching media study
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that found 15% of sports coverage highlighted women's sport.
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If it was profitable, if it was something that broadcasters
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were going to see a bottom line and a ratings boost from,
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wouldn't they increase that percentage and show more?
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Is that evidence that they're not investing in it either?
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Huh? Maybe because the bottom line isn't there for them.
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I agree, you know, and I'm saying this as a very proud nerd
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because I do relate nerdism with people who are educated
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So, I will put my nerdism for us and say that absolutely.
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We'll let Catherine speak and then we'll bring it over to you.
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and if we're saying, well, women's sports are not as visible,
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then the visibility and the audience will grow.
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And again, I'm going to go back to the cycling world,
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but it really transpires to a bigger picture here.
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But years ago, 11 years ago, we made a documentary film
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And believe it or not, back then, I was working for ESPN
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and they turned down this idea of making a film on women's cycling,
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citing, oh, but nobody watches women's cycling.
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And I said, well, they don't watch it because there's no way to see it.
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And then I stepped away and I made this documentary independently.
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And when we crowdsourced to make this film happen,
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it turned out that 16 different countries around the world
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And it was an equal split between men and women
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These were people that just wanted to know more
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So long story short, what happened from that was that Half the Road,
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the film that came out in 2014, that people thought,
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that they had not yet had the opportunity to see.
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And that was women on the screen doing a sport that they loved.
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So if we take this logic and apply it to every women's sport,
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And the fans will fully support those who already exist.
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And then the entire sport, both men's and women's side, will rise.
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We've been able to see that happen in women's cycling.
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No one was watching women's tennis before Billie Jean King
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And she, a player within the realms of tennis at the time,
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And now women in basketball who are playing currently
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just as women's soccer did a few years ago.
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It takes people within the organization to stand up
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is a lot of people make money off of being victims, right?
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So she's going to make money off of her documentary film
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I'm held back because I'm a woman, blah, blah, blah.
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And what I'm telling the people is don't believe me,
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is we just don't have the attendance that the men do.
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That's how much of a privileged class we are as women,
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is we get the airtime for not making enough money
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for dribbling a basketball in an unprofitable league.
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But there are men that die to build the infrastructure
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All right, just give us one moment on that point, Pearl.
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Let me put that over to Catherine and Howard for a response.
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The nonsense idea that as long as you ignore all the facts
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and all the data, because anything to be manipulated,
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we just need to focus on what one person, Pearl,
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seems to think is reality, somebody who has argued publicly
00:30:47.960
that women shouldn't even have the right to vote.
1.00
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that ultimately found its audience and then some.
00:31:02.220
And this goes back to the larger basic point here,
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that there should be some sort of privileged class involved here.
00:31:11.620
It should simply be that if we create a circumstance
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When we have a marketplace in which decisions are made
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based on retrograde ideas about women's sports
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that ignore the huge audiences we see for women's sports
00:31:42.000
the outcomes are going to be disproportionately geared toward the men.
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as it operates over just a random retrograde person
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who seems to shout the loudest, angriest opinions.
00:32:08.720
Yeah, I'm going to stick with the facts right, Catherine?
00:32:18.260
because the huge audiences we are seeing for the WNBA,
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I assume those people are made up in your adult life.
00:32:50.160
Okay, Catherine, I'm going to give you a write-up reply
00:32:53.420
with regard to Pearl's comments about your documentary,
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and then we'll continue on to our final segment.
00:32:58.980
Right, well, I've got to start with a laugh on this.
00:33:07.700
We make it because we truly love the subject that we're making about.
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Pearl, I'm a little bit shocked by some of your thoughts,
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and celebrating the movement of women's sports,
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you get the same better viewership than the men.
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When women's basketball brings in billions of dollars
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when women's sports are bringing in billions of dollars.
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both in terms of money and in terms of audience.
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And so we're continuing to see it going in that direction.
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are somehow centered, Pearl, in your mind no matter what.
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Instead of, oh, look, women's sports in and of itself,
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instead of trying to find a way to denigrate it
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by comparing it to something that has had worlds
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of more investment and has been around for much longer,
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So why is that not a celebratory moment for you
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that women always want special treatment for everything.
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00:36:10.860
Because it's not real success, it's subsidised.
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If it was real success, it would be profitable.
00:36:21.580
But look, we've been talking about looking to the future.
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Because the simple fact is that women's sports,
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women's face to become professional athletes?
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how do you celebrate the successes they've achieved
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because you have a history working with women in this capacity.
00:37:24.980
their leagues haven't been around as long as the men's leagues.
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And is there the same energy put into helping them overcome those barriers
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as there has been energy in other forms of gender inequality in the past?
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because we've seen a lot of this happen throughout women's sports
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where something like a low salary means that a woman is going to...
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A low salary in sport means a woman will also have to carry multiple part-time jobs
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just to make ends meet on top of her professional career in sport.
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is pushing for a base salary that is a livable wage
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and that is on par with the salary that's happening on the men's side of the sport.
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the women were not deemed to have deserved a base salary.
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That's straight from the mouth of the UCI president just 10 years ago.
00:38:40.640
And what was happening was that women who made it to the world tour level,
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were on a pittance of a stipend that was not set to a decree of any sort of level.
00:38:54.340
So some athletes were making less than $10,000 trying to race professionally
00:38:59.000
and really having to carry jobs on top of that.
00:39:03.000
So we did lobby for a women's base salary,
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And the women at the world tour level now have a base salary of €35,000.
00:39:17.360
We are trying very hard to push it up to 50 and then 100, etc., to take steps up.
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But the fact of the matter is that we still have to push so hard
00:39:26.740
just to have equal footing for the same amount of work that the men are doing
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and the same amount of races that the men are doing.
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And I think that's very important that we understand no women in professional sports
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They are asking for equal wage compared to the equal hours
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and the equal races and or games that they are playing.
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And so these are the things that often have to be...
00:40:02.440
oh, wait, wait, they don't make this, they don't make that,
00:40:06.640
And then what happens is the women, you know,
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really are just kind of, you know, part of tradition,
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that's how it continues until disruption occurs,
00:40:24.020
with those wonderful shirts that say, you know,
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But we didn't know that unless we heard from inside the sport
00:40:40.720
So these are the things that will still have to happen
00:40:42.780
in all of women's sports until we're at a platform
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And so, yeah, that's a long answer to your question.
00:41:14.700
but surely women's sport is just going to continue to grow.
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So it'll just keep losing money every single year.
00:41:27.200
I have no problem with equality when you have equal outcomes.
00:41:30.480
But again, what women want is they don't want to do the work that men did.
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are you going to berate her for interrupting me,
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do you know how much loggers make in the United States?
00:42:10.140
But just to bring you back to the topic at hand, Pearl,
00:42:41.740
that women shouldn't have the right to vote.
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You can kind of take all of that with a grain of salt.
00:42:58.580
and thank Catherine for what she's been able to do.
00:43:27.560
that she hasn't been able to really break through.
00:43:36.520
I wish that we could continue for a little bit longer
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So we are unfortunately going to have to leave it there.
00:43:49.140
But I really do appreciate all of your contributions.
00:44:08.320
a sports writer and author of the upcoming book,
00:44:23.120
Thanks, everyone, for your contribution to CounterPoints.