As the WNBA's television ratings, revenues, and ticket sales continue to grow, the league’s players have been calling for a bigger piece of the pie, similar to what their counterparts in the NBA have received for years.
A growing chorus of WNBA stars has been calling for a larger revenue share as the collective bargaining agreement between the WNBA players’ union and the league gets set to expire on Oct. 31 and will need to be renegotiated.
Players like Minnesota Lynx star Napheesa Collier and Los Angeles Sparks guard Kelsey Plum have spoken about the players wanting higher salaries and a bigger share of the league’s revenue. At the WNBA All-Star Game in July, the league’s biggest names wore black shirts with "Pay Us What You Owe Us" on them.
NBA commissioner Adam Silver addressed the issue Tuesday on "TODAY" in an exclusive interview with Craig Melvin. The NBA owns 42% of the WNBA, and WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert reports to Silver.
He was asked if WNBA players should be getting a larger share of the revenue in the league.
“Yes,” Silver said. “I think ‘share’ isn’t the right way to look at it because there’s so much more revenue in the NBA. I think you should look at it in absolute numbers in terms of what they’re making, and they are going to bet a big increase in this cycle of collective bargaining, and they deserve it.”
WNBA players get 9.3% of league-generated income under the current collective bargaining agreement, according to Market Watch, compared to NBA players getting roughly 49-51% of the league’s basketball-related income under their own bargaining agreement.
The WNBA’s players are not arguing for equivalent salaries to NBA players, although much has been made of Indiana Fever superstar Caitlin Clark making a reported $76,000 a year on her rookie contract. They are instead calling for a bigger share of the league’s revenue that’s roughly equivalent to their NBA counterparts.
“A lot of times, the misinformation comes in where we’re asking to be paid what the men are being paid. That’s not true,” Plum said on the “All the Smoke” podcast in July. “We’re asking just the same percentage of revenue or a similar percentage of revenue. And right now, that’s not the case. And so that’s what we’re fighting for.”
“We get a very tiny percentage of all the money that’s made through the WNBA, which obviously is made through the entertainment we provide,” Collier told The Associated Press in July. “So we want a fair and reasonable percentage of that.”
Collier made headlines in September when she blasted Engelbert, during her 2025 season exit interview, saying the WNBA has the “worst leadership in the world” and claiming Engelbert said Clark and other stars “should be on their knees” thanking the WNBA for giving them a platform to make money off the court.
Engelbert responded by saying she was “disheartened” by how her conversations with Collier were characterized.
