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Much has been made of Caitlin Clark’s underwhelming rookie contract in the WNBA, but it has now been put into sharp focus with the news that even some of the mascots are earning more than the league’s superstar player.
Clark is due to make $78,066 in her upcoming second season with the Indiana Fever – the standard base salary for any second-year player who has come through the draft.
If you are to convert that to a standard 40-hour week, Clark’s salary translates to around $40 an hour. A very small wage to carry the WNBA on her shoulders, some might claim.
Over on the west coast, meanwhile, the WNBA’s newest franchise – the Golden State Valkyries – are busy preparing for their inaugural season in the league, and that involves plenty of hiring of new staff.
Among them is the team’s gameday mascot, and a job advert reposted by Front Office Sports shows an overwhelmingly higher salary on offer than that earned by Clark.
Incredibly, the San Francisco-based team will pay somewhere between $130 and $160 an hour to the person tasked with pulling on a hot and sweaty costume a few days a week.
Caitlin Clark is the WNBA’s biggest star but she is set to earn just $78,066 next season
The Golden State Valkyries are due to begin their inaugural WNBA season in May. Pictured right is new player Shyanne Sellers, alongside WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert
The mascot of the Dallas Wings dances at the WNBA Draft in New York earlier this month
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the news left fans stunned on social media, with one noting that is is ‘triple Caitlin Clark’s salary’.
Another added: ‘$160 an hour? They definitely shooting you out of a cannon!’
A third wrote: ‘Not the mascot getting 130 an hour but the practice players get minimum wage SMH.’
Clark, of course, will end up earning a significant amount more than anyone in the building at the Golden State Valkyries – player, mascot or otherwise – when you add on all her sponsorship earnings, but it has shone a bright light on the low rookie salaries offered out by the league.
In her first year as a professional player, Clark earned $76,535, and in her second that is rising to $78,066. In her third year, the superstar will pick up $85,873, and if she takes a fourth-year option she will earn $97,582.
The highest-paid player in the league currently is one of Clark’s teammates in Indiana, Kelsey Mitchell, who picked up $249,244 – but it seems only a matter of time until that honor falls to Clark herself.
