On this episode of Oregon On The Record, hear a conversation with Beau Dure of The Guardian about the changing landscape of the WNBA and the slow pace of increased salary for players in the league, even though ratings and revenue are skyrocketing. This will impact the new Portland team - The Fire - next season.
You'll also hear from Ryan Whiteside of the Lane County Democrats about strategies the party need to incorporate for a winning message.
The following transcript was generated using automated transcription software for the accessibility and convenience of our audience. While we strive for accuracy, the automated process may introduce errors, omissions, or misinterpretations. This transcript is intended as a helpful companion to the original audio and should not be considered a verbatim record. For the most accurate representation, please refer to the audio recording.
MICHAEL DUNNE: The WNBA is the hottest league going right now. Attendance is setting records; TV revenue and viewership are on the rise. Additionally, the league is expanding, and that includes Oregon getting its own franchise, the Portland Fire. Yet, just recently, during the WNBA All-Star game, players wore T-shirts that said, “pay us what you owe us.” And it's true, WNBA players make a fraction of what their male counterparts in the NBA make. Today on the show, you'll hear from a Guardian sports reporter who wrote a profile of how the economics of the WNBA are indeed unfair, but also complex and not easy to fix. Then, in the second part of the show, we'll continue our week-long check in with Lane County Democrats to get their view on how the party is doing.
Beau Dure, who writes for The Guardian and is also an author of several sports related books, both, thanks so much for coming on and talking with us.
BEAU DURE: Sure, thanks for having me.
DUNNE: During the recent WNBA All-Star Game, a lot of players wore T-shirts which said, “pay us what you owe us.” It really created quite a stir, and you wrote an article about it. Tell our listeners about the article you wrote, and what you were conveying through that article.
DURE: Well, I was doing a lot of math, which journalists generally try to avoid, but I did it anyway. And essentially, there's always fuzzy math when it comes to any sort of negotiation like this. In sports, I covered it with the US Soccer Women's National Team pay dispute, and actually the Men's National Team pay dispute as well. And numbers can be hidden, fudged, moved around and so forth, and I was not able to get to the bottom of why. There are claims that WNBA is losing $40 million when ratings are way up and attendance is up. All the metrics look very good, and yet they say they're losing money, losing a lot of money. I mean, most sports endeavors lose money. And you can be the owner of something in part, because the value of it will still remain constant. You can eventually sell it for a fair amount, or it's a vanity project. Not all sports. Sports is not always a for-profit business. But with the WNBA, it's clear that they're getting a much lower percentage of revenue than other leads are now granted. It's easier for the NBA to pay 50% of its revenue to players, and for the WNBA to pay 50% because it is 50% of a no matter what the math is, a much larger number in the NBA. And a lot of the other costs are fixed. I mean, how long does it take to open up an arena? How much does it cost to fly? And actually, the WNBA did make an investment in charter flights recently, which was a pretty big deal, because that's a fair amount of money to spend, and something that makes a huge difference for players. They're not subject to the whims of airlines and cancellations and delays and so forth. So all of those costs are going to hit any league. And so you may not expect the WNBA to get 50% of league revenue, but the salaries you're looking at now are pretty small. Now, granted, the timing is good that they're going into a collective bargain negotiation now, because women's sports are essentially having a moment, and WNBA in particular is riding Caitlin Clark-mania, and also a good wave of expansion, Golden State has been a rousing success story…
DUNNE: The Valkyries.
DURE: That's right. And you’ve got expansion coming next year, and I'm sure that's going to do pretty well as well. So, I would imagine, in a sense, it's not fair to look at them at how they are being paid right now. Really, what's important is the salaries are going to be paid moving forward. Now, the WNBA has taken a tremendous leap forward. They really should be paid a lot more going forward.
DUNNE: And I imagine, sports fans, I think we've all become sort of inured to, you know, these massive salaries, but the WNBA is very closely tied with the NBA. It's different in football or baseball, where you don't have a men's and a women's league, but certainly, the 15th player on an NBA roster is going to make multiples of what Caitlin Clark makes in salary. Is some of this just simply, a lot of people are finally waking up to the fact that, yeah, there's a big, big disparity in salaries? And like you said, Caitlin Clark is rivaling, probably anybody in the NBA in terms of exposure and commercials and that sort of thing. Do we just sort of need to get used to the fact that this is going to take time?
DURE: All these things have taken time. And then they all, they've all gone more slowly than a lot of advocates would like, and that's how it goes. And if you look at the most current parallel for that, and this will be familiar to people in Oregon, is the NWSL in soccer, where you had a league that started in the early 2000s with a lot of hype, a lot of marketing money. They blew through all their startup money very quickly, and collapsed after three years. And it took years and years to get anything else started. 2009 they tried again, a looser structure, and that structure kind of fell apart in 2011 so again, that was gone, and so to get the NWSL back going, they started with a very bare bones approach to things. And people were getting four figure salaries at that point. They all had second jobs. Were pretty important at that point. And they were all living with host families and so forth, or most of them were. So, it was not necessarily what you would call 'Major League' even though it had all the top US players that had Abby Wambach and Hope Solo and everyone you saw at the time, sure. And of course, Christine Sinclair, I'll throw out for you, for your Oregon people…And then there's a bit of a, 'if you build it, will they come' element to this as well, because then people came in and started investing more in women's soccer. That's happened locally for me with the Washington Spirit. To some extent, it's always been true in Portland, where there have been some issues with the club, but there's been a fair amount of upfront investment in it. And people have found that, hey, you start spending some money on this, and it does start to gain some traction. And part of that could be good timing if you'd spent the same amount of money in 2013 maybe it wouldn't have been as successful. But right now, people are finding that if you spend that money, you'll get it back. And so, people making big investments in the WNBA right now, my guess is they're making pretty smart investments, and they're making them at the right time, if they'd made it before Caitlin Clark mania struck, you know, five years ago, it would have at least taken more time for them to see a benefit. But now it is on an upswing. I think we're still at the upswing. I think things are still going to keep going upward from here, because for one thing, Caitlin Clark is not the only good player in the league, sure. We talked about generational talents a lot. Generations seem to be getting shorter and shorter these days. As you look at men's basketball- and I went to Duke and they've had two generational talents in the last six or seven years: Zion Williamson and Cooper Flagg. In women's basketball, you have Caitlin Clark, but a few years before her was Sabrina Ionescu.
MICHAEL: We know her well…
DURE: Yeah, she's fantastic, she's in ads, and she should probably be in more ads. She should probably get more recognition than she does, because right now, frankly, she's better than Caitlin Clark. I hate to say it, but she is.
DUNNE: We would agree with that… And you're right. You're seeing incredible talent, and you're also seeing the fact that my question kind of comes from this: Looking at other women's sports, international soccer, the women, the United States women's team, you could make an argument that it was more popular than the men's team. At least a lot of the athletes were very recognizable. Now, we knew at the time they were still getting paid less than men. And I'm wondering, do you think the WNBA might be on a steeper glide path towards, I don't know, parity of however, the economics can work?
DURE: Well, there's something that has long puzzled me about women's sports, and that is that individual sports don't seem to have this problem. If you ask a lot of people, the answer would be Mikaela Shiffrin, or Lindsey Vonn, who's making a comeback, both women. You go back to some of the Olympics, and the figure who was the big star in 2000 unfortunately got caught up in a doping scandal after that, but Marion Jones. That's everyone's talking about who's the big Olympic star. Now, if you think about the last couple of Olympics, think swimming. Who do you think of?
DUNNE: Ledecky…
DURE: Exactly, the best women's distance swimmer of all time in who's in the World Championships right now, by the way. But team sports, for some reason, have lagged behind. And what's funny about that is that sometimes you hear people say, 'Well, we noticed a difference in physicality and speed' and so forth. And I always think, hold on a second - Katie Ledecky would not qualify for the final of a men's 800-meter Olympic swim competition, even though she is beyond dominant all-time in the event, in women's and that doesn't seem to bother anybody. And so, but then you're telling me that you're bothered that Abby Wambach doesn't head the ball as hard as Brian McBride does. Or, you know, somebody doesn't have the free kick skills of a Messi or a Beckham. I don't know. I just watched the women's Euros and Sunday, I saw one of the best games I've ever seen between England and Spain, those games, men or women. It was just fantastic. And then action. So I've never quite understood how there is now in women's basketball, there's the fact that it's rare to see a dunk.
DUNNE: I'm wondering too if you talked about the difficulty of women's team sports gaining traction. And I'm wondering, do you think that rivalries help? And I'm thinking specifically, we've already mentioned Caitlin Clark several times, obviously. But of course, she had this great rivalry with Angel Reese from LSU, and now with the Chicago team, and that's become kind of something that gets talked about. Is that good for generating casual interest in a league?
DURE: I think it certainly makes people tune in a bit. And of course, what's funny is that it makes no sense to have a rivalry between Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese, because they're such different players. Angel Reese might be the best power player. I mean, you look at the rebound stats right now, she could take a nap for the rest of the season and probably still end up winning the league rebounding title. She's so far ahead of everybody, whereas Caitlin Clark does everything else. Well, she's actually a pretty good rebounder for a guard, but she does everything else exceptionally well. I mean, it would make more sense for her to have a rivalry with Beckers or coming up soon from USC Juju Watkins. You know, those would be more head-to-head match ups and so forth. I mean, this, it's not bird and magic in that sense, where you might see that some matched up or, yeah, I mean, and they're even highlights. So, you can go back through the NBA vault and see Michael Jordan, for some reason, matched up against Larry Bird. And sometimes, sometimes people want to play the heel, you know, tomorrow, pro wrestling term and, and you had the Detroit Pistons, sure, back in our day, right?
DUNNE: The bad boys.
DURE: And you loved them or hated them. Most of us hated them, but you tuned in.
DUNNE: I think that that's kind of interesting too. Now, some of this is almost being shoehorned in by talk radio and the ESPN talking heads, but there is that element of 'Oh, Caitlin Clark wears the white hat,' and I don't mean that necessarily from skin tone, but just kind of her demeanor. And then Angel Reese, who likes to court controversy, and so some of it is sort of the off-the-court drama that, of course, the NBA and NFL and Major League Baseball have built up as well. Is that something that's important? Because obviously great play is going to be, the coin of the realm. But the idea that you have these other things kind of built-in with the marketing machine helps draw especially casual eyeballs?
DURE: Yeah, I would say it's a case where I wish it wasn't so. I wish that ESPN would, if I go to their site, would not have Stephen A. Smith yelling at me about how people are mistreating Caitlin Clark or Angel Reese, depending on what time of day he's yelling and I wish I'd see someone coming in and saying, 'hey, you know we've got a match-up. Clark and Ionescu are going to be on the same court.' You know, watch two generational talents in action. And you know, even though, as far as I know, they don't hate each other, I mean, Clark and Reese don't hate each other, sure, it's manufactured controversy, really, but there's no controversy I know between Ionescu and Clark. They had no college experience against each other. So, yeah, I wish that the sport wouldn't be relying on that, and it I guess when you turn a corner, it really doesn't, because, you know, the NBA needed to get bigger when we had the Pistons come along today. Do you really need that? I don't know. I don't feel like the NBA has a ton of controversy right now, other than you know, why didn't the Celtics win more when they had this core of players together? They only won one championship and I think people are more willing to just talk about the outlets of each team and what it means for this player to be traded to this team and so forth. So hopefully, at some point, you don't need the gimmicks.
DUNNE: Beau Dure, who writes for The Guardian and is also an author of several sports related books, thank you so much for taking time out to talk with us.
DURE: All right. Thanks very much.
DUNNE: We've been bringing you voices from Lane County Democrats all week to get a temperature check on the party, both locally and nationally. Here's our final installment, recorded at a downtown Eugene restaurant during an informal get-together with a member, Ryan Whiteside.
There's been a lot of talk about the idea that Democrats and then it goes something like this. Democrats need their own Joe Rogan, or they need that kind of a voice. Explain to me how you feel about attack versus counter. If that makes sense.
RYAN WHITESIDE: I think it's both. I'm a real big 'yes and' person, and so I think it's a fallacy to say we need our own Joe Rogan. No, we can't build a parallel media structure, especially right now. It's too late into the game. But what we can do, and I think what we've been hesitant to do, is we're worried about platforming people on our side, and we're also hesitant to go on some of these shows. The way you combat the right-wing media bubble if you invade it and co-opt it. You have to go in there and pop it. You can't let the right wing dictate to their audience what we are. We have to get that message across directly. And so that's part of those tactics. I think there is a way you can invade their media every time they say some kind of nonsense. But what that does is that gives you an opportunity to push back on that, call it what it is, and then say, 'and this is the alternative,' and this is what we would do differently. And if you're not on the attack and constantly doing that, part of their strategy is they flood the zone. There's a lot of nonsense constantly all the time. But what that does is it gives you an opportunity, if you're willing to take it and be on the attack of constantly being on the attack. Rachel Bitecofer wrote a book about this messaging. I think she lives here in town, and I like the way she phrased it. What they like to do is they like to toss us a hot potato, and the Democrats seem like they're afraid to catch it, and they don't know what to do with it. What to do with it. But what you really need to do is take the hot potato, dunk it in the oil and toss them back a hotter potato. That's the simplest phrase, or way I can think about it.
DUNNE: So are there examples, locally, statewide, nationally, of voices that are doing a good job to counter that, whether it's an elected official, whether it's someone in the media or just a movement or just a message that you think is getting through.
WHITESIDE: No, okay, I think it's missing, honestly. Ro Khanna has done some good stuff. Okay? I think Bernie Sanders and pointing out the oligarchy tour that was okay. A lot of those words, autocracy, oligarchy... they don't do anything. They're honestly meaningless. To move the needle, you have to really keep it simple. And I don't think it's a left-right message like that. The message doesn't change for an audience, like you just keep it simple. And like the president shouldn't have these powers. We shouldn't be doing this. This is the way we limit that. I think there's a much simpler way, because the thing with the Democrats traditionally is they seem like they're a little too political in their responses, like they're stopping and waiting. They want to see what the consultants say. They want to test a message. They want to make sure it's going to hit, instead of being authentic and genuine and reacting immediately, it's okay for me to make mistakes and more information to come to light, but when I see some nonsense in the news, and I go look for a reaction from my representative, and I can't find it. I have a really big issue with that, because there's so much nonsense that's ceding ground to them, that's letting that right wing media bubble do its thing. And so as far as that, like tactics and invading them and pushing back- like I just think there is a lot more that can be done, and I don't think it's that complicated, and that's part of the frustration.
DUNNE: Do you feel as though, especially heading in towards the midterms, the best message is the simplest message of economic challenges that are being sort of created at the federal level?
WHITESIDE: Not to sound like I'm running for something, but there's three lenses. I have a political science and history background, and I graduated from law school here at U of O in 2016. So, the way I always look at it is, you always have the three key issues, and then things will get bogged down if you don't focus on these things. It's always safe. Safety is always first. So public safety at home, not getting into any wars abroad. Safety is always first, and the second one for me is access to the opportunity to be prosperous. It's prosperity that's the economic issue. So yes, we always have to hammer that. We shouldn't be cutting programs for the poor and then also spending money retrofitting a Qatari jet that Trump gets to keep. There are some pretty easy economic messages there. Working class people have to feel a more direct benefit. And the third one, for me, the third issue, is a sense of community. I think we're all feeling a little space between us, as far as we need to build that with on a local level, the state level, on national level, what do we mean to each other? What does it mean to be an American? What is our shared sense of identity? And so, safety, economic issues, prosperity, sense of community. Hammer those three things.
DUNNE: Good enough. Brian, thank you so much.
That was our conversation with Ryan Whiteside of the Lane County Democrats, and that's the show for today. All episodes of Oregon On The Record are available as a podcast at KLCC.org. On Monday, we'll stick to sports and talk with both the U of O and OSU about the brave new world of paying college athletes. I'm Michael Dunne, and this has been Oregon On The Record from KLCC. Thanks for listening.
This transcript has been edited for clarity.
