W.N.B.A.’s Popularity Booms, but Money for Players Hasn’t Kept Pace

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Allisha Gray is a 29-year-old guard for the Atlanta Dream. She is six feet tall, speaks with a central Georgia drawl and smiles as if she’s keeping the best secret. During the W.N.B.A.’s All-Star weekend, she jumped into a whole new tax bracket. Her salary this year is $185,000, but she earned an additional $115,150 on Friday by winning the league’s 3-point contest and skills competition. The W.N.B.A. awards $2,575 to each winner in its skills competition, but most of Gray’s windfall came courtesy of a deal announced the day before between the players’ union and the insurance company Aflac, which agreed to pay $55,000 per winner. Her situation illustrated a theme of the league’s All-Star festivities. There is more money than ever coming into the W.N.B.A. from sponsors, ticket sales and new media rights deals, like the ones announced on Wednesday, which are expected to be worth six times what its current deals are. The presence of the rookies Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese has exponentially increased interest in the league this season, and many fans of those two players have stayed to watch the rest of what the league has to offer.