Jun 4, 2018
The history of women's pro sports is quite short. Of the leagues associated with the SheIS Initiative, the WNBA is the oldest. And the WNBA is only in its 21st season. The other professional sports leagues for women in the SheIS Initiative includes National Pro Fastpitch (currently in its 15th season), Canadian Women's Hockey League (11 seasons completed), and the National Women's Hockey League (three seasons played).
And then there is the Women's Professional Lacrosse League (WPLL). The age of the WPLL can currently be measured in hours. On Saturday, the WPLL launched with its first two games. The first game in league history resulted in the New England Command defeating the New York Fight by a score of 13-10. The leagues second game -- which one can watch online -- saw the Baltimore Brave play the Philadelphia Fire… well, you can watch to see what happened.
The WPLL consists of 125 players, with players drawn from eight different national teams (the United States, Australia, Canada, England, Hong Kong, Italy, Mexico, and South Korea). Of these players, 25 were selected in the first player draft in WPLL history. With the first choice in that draft, the New York Fight selected Kylie Ohlmiller, an attacker from Stony Brook. As a senior, Ohlmiller led Stony Brook to the America East conference title. Stony Brook also advanced to the quarterfinals of the women's lacrosse NCAA tournament.
At Stony Brook, Ohlmiller was definitely a star, ranking 5th in the nation with 4.19 goals per game. But although Ohlmiller was valuable to her team, was she valuable to her university?
People tend to divide college sports into the revenue sports (i.e. men's basketball and football) and the non-revenue sports. Such a division gives people a sense that only two college sports generate revenue. That view, though, is not consistent with the data.
Since 2003, the Department of Education has collected revenue data from the nation's colleges and universities. According to the 2016-17 revenue numbers (last year numbers are reported), here were the top 15 women's college sports:
Of the 34 sports that report revenue data, only six other sports in women's college sports generated more revenue than lacrosse. In addition, only seven men's college sports (out of 32 sports) generated more revenue than women's lacrosse; and one of those seven is not men's lacrosse (men's college lacrosse only reported $140.6 million in revenue in 2016-17).
The top 15 teams in women's college lacrosse in 2016-17 were as follows:
According to the Department of Education, Stony Brook had 32 women participate on their college lacrosse team in 2016-17. The NBA tends to share about 50% of league revenue with their players. Had Stony Brook followed that practice, the team's players would have received $632,395 this past season and the average Stony Brook player would have been paid $19,762 (assuming revenue hadn't changed from the previous season).
Ohlmiller, though, was not an average player. The highest paid player in the NBA in 2017-18 (Stephen Curry) was paid about six times more than the average player. If we think of Ohlmiller as the best player on Stony Brook -- and she was paid like the best player in the NBA -- then she would have been paid $119,143 by her school last year. Of course, Ohlmiller did not receive this amount. And she is not likely to earn this amount as a professional.
By David Berri
Originally featured here
