Basketball: Can the WNBA make money?
The simplest reason the WNBA isn’t paying Clark more is that the league brings in just $200 million annually and relies on the NBA for some of its funding. The NBA, by contrast, brings in about $10 billion. When the NBA and its commissioner at the time, David Stern, founded the WNBA in 1996, return on their investment wasn’t their immediate focus. As Stern later recounted, he wanted “to develop new fans, more programming, have arena content outside the NBA season, give more girls an incentive to play basketball.” And, he added, “we knew it was going to be a long haul.”