How WNBA Players Manage Wage Gap With Side Jobs, Financial Strategies

• WNBA players typically have other sources of income outside of their team salaries.
• Most play overseas, while others work in media, coaching, or businesses away from the court.
• WNBA All-Star Napheesa Collier told BI how players learn to manage their complicated finances.

All professional athletes have a limited window to cash in on their talents.

But for the top women’s basketball stars on the planet, taking full advantage of money-making opportunities is more crucial than it is for many other — particularly male — sports stars.

WNBA salaries maxed out at $235,000 in 2023, with the average league salary clocking in at $113,295 and the minimum hovering just above $62,000, per Spotrac. By comparison, Statista lists the minimum NBA salary for the 2023-2024 season at $1.1 million, though the average salary in the men’s league nears eight figures. That’s a difference of nearly $865,000 between the highest paid WNBA player and the lowest paid NBA player.

With only “a short amount of time to make this money,” as three-time WNBA All-Star Napheesa Collier told Business Insider, most of the league’s stars opt to compete overseas with a second team to collect a second, often larger, salary. Others choose to take on media or coaching gigs or work on businesses away from the court during the WNBA offseason.

But boasting several different streams of income to supplement their WNBA salaries can make managing their money far from straightforward.

“We really want to do the most of it the most with what we have,” Collier told Business Insider. “Learning about wealth management and how to grow our businesses and our brands and to make this money to how to do investments, how to save and budget the correct way, is really important.”

Side gigs and overseas incomes can complicate WNBA players’ finances

Collier acknowledges that she and her colleagues’ “lifestyles are so different” than the general population’s. As a result, they’re forced to consider “things that most people generally may not need” while handling their finances.

“Like learning about taxes in multiple different states, like what to do with overseas money,” Collier said. “Things that you might not normally have in your life.”

US Bank, a major sponsor of the WNBA known as a “WNBA Changemaker,” stepped up to help the league’s 144 players find their financial footing. With input from Collier — who spoke to BI as an athlete ambassador for the Fortune 500 company — and many of her colleagues, US Bank developed a custom educational program that included a microsite with on-demand content “personally tailored to us,” as Collier…