Women’s basketball players can finally stay stateside to make a living, says WNBA star Paige Bueckers, a reversal of a trend of WNBA athletes going overseas to supplement their income from the league.
Even as WNBA salaries pale in comparison to the NBA, women basketball stars have found other ways to make money without going abroad, Bueckers said, thanks to the rise of name, image, and likeness (NIL) deals for student-athletes and the rise of alternative leagues in the U.S.
“You’re less likely to go overseas and more prone to stay in the United States, just because there’s more opportunities now,” Bueckers told Fortune.
There are more than just financial benefits from continuing to compete in the U.S. WNBA players who have to exert themselves more in between seasons are more injury prone, Bueckers said, with fatigue being exacerbated by overseas travel.
For others, travelling overseas is risky. Six-time WNBA All-Star Brittney Griner was detained in Russia for 10 months in 2022 after Russian authorities found her guilty of carrying hashish oil—a marijuana concentrate—in her luggage. Griner previously said she felt it necessary to play in Russia to make ends meet.
Bueckers said now, players can still make the choice to play abroad, but it’s no longer necessary financially.
“People who want to have that experience and go and play overseas, that opportunity is always available for them,” Bueckers said. “But for people to not feel like they need to in order to stay alive…I think it’s great for that to be a decision that you have to make, and not an obligation.”
“We want the same things as the players want,” Engelbert said. “We want to significantly increase their salary and benefits while balancing with our owners, their ability to have a path to profitability as well as continued investment. You see tens of millions of dollars being invested in practice facilities and other player experience by teams. We want to strike the right balance between those two so that can continue.”
Bueckers was among the athletes wearing the shirts at the All-Star event.
“We are the players, so we feel like we just should get what we deserve and what the people before us have paved the way for us to get, what the next generation deserves,” Bueckers told Fortune. “As the game continues to grow, and the W continues to capitalize off of our growth…we feel like we should just get a piece of that pie.”
