With the collective bargaining agreement (CBA) between the WNBA and the WNBPA (Women’s National Basketball Players Association) set to expire on October 31, the two sides agreed last Thursday to a 30-day extension for negotiations.
Over a year ago, the WNBPA decided to opt out of the CBA signed in January of 2020. The decision reflected that a lot has changed for the WNBA and its players over this five-year span.
This was all before a global pandemic forced the league into a bubble season in Florida. Before Candace Parker won a championship with her hometown team in Chicago, and before Becky Hammon returned to the league she played in to coach the Aces to three championships. Before the New York Liberty broke their 28-year championship curse, and before young stars like Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese took the league to new heights. What was once a 12-team league back in 2020 is now expanding again.
With all of that change, an influx of revenue has come into a league which has struggled for years on the business side. In addition to six new expansion teams total being added by 2030, the league signed an 11-year $2.2 billion media deal with Disney, Amazon and NBC Universal that will begin in 2026. Other media partners including Scripps and Versant have also signed deals with the league for 2026 and beyond.
And as a result, players opted out to fight for a share of the new money that they believe they deserve amid changing circumstances for the league.
In the months leading up to the initial October 31 deadline, tensions flared. A source familiar with the talks says the players didn’t send their full proposal to the league until April, which eventually drew a counterproposal from the league in June. Mercury star Satou Sabally called the proposal from the league a “slap in the face.” Then at least 40 players attended an in-person CBA-related meeting in July during WNBA All-Star weekend in Indianapolis that was more about listening and didn’t yield to satisfaction from the union.
The players wore Pay Us What You Owe Us t-shirts a few days later during the All-Star Game. And then months later during the playoffs Lynx star Napheesa Collier put WNBA leadership including Commissioner Cathy Engelbert on blast after her team was eliminated from the postseason right before the WNBA Finals. Strains between the players and the league had deepened, setting the stage for what we’re witnessing right now.
What are both the players and the league looking for in this CBA?
Now let’s examine each side’s main objectives beginning with the players. The players are looking for substantial salary increases in addition to an updated revenue sharing model where their salaries are tied directly to the fluctuations in the business.
In addition to revenue sharing and higher salaries, players are looking for charter flights to officially be codified after commissioner Engelbert began the charter program in the middle of the previous CBA in 2024. Also, players are looking for official language in the new CBA that requires professionalized standards across all teams. This could mean that no WNBA franchise is allowed to have their players practice in a rec center, codifying the need for team-specific professional training facilities that are accessible.
The players are seeking expansion to roster sizes whereas the current model of 11 or 12 players, depending on the salary cap, has led to the most injuries in recent memory. The WNBPA also aims to negotiate for more support when it comes to family planning for all players along with proper retirement benefits.
The league aims to pay the players more while also satisfying its owners and ensuring that there is a functional season in 2026; one that includes a draft lottery, expansion draft, free agency period, and amateur draft before training camps begin in late April.
Those desires are quite similar, but where exactly do the schisms lie?
Why have the tensions between the players and the league been high?
Most of the tensions have been around the discussion over revenue sharing. The WNBPA has stated multiple times that the league has been stubborn to push for something that doesn’t resemble the previous CBA when it comes to revenue sharing.
Is the league saying no to revenue sharing, though? Not exactly.
When the 2020 CBA was signed, the league promised revenue sharing for the players if the league was able to hit revenue benchmarks based on the money that was made during the 2019 season. Part of the issue was that months after the 2020 CBA was signed, the COVID pandemic made it difficult for the WNBA to make substantial revenue since fans weren’t able to attend games.
“The abridged explanation is that 17.5% of revenue beyond a specific target would be paid out to the players directly after the season,” CBA and salary cap expert Jacob Mox of The IX Basketball wrote. “An additional 17.5% would be added to the pool of money that the league spends on signing players to Player Marketing Agreements, also referred to as PMAs or LMAs. The remaining 65% goes to the league and its teams.”
Since the league never hit the revenue target that triggered the revenue sharing, salaries didn’t grow beyond the salary cap itself, which in the current CBA rises around 3% each year.
The players want a similar system that exists in the NBA. They want money that is directly tied to the business. The players union wants a “capped” or a fixed amount of revenue sharing rather than an “uncapped” revenue sharing model that only is triggered by hitting targets set by the league.
League officials, including NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, have said they agree that players should receive a larger portion of the league’s increasing revenue, but Silver has also clarified that the word “share” isn’t the best way to describe it.
In an interview on NBC’s TODAY Show, Silver said “yes” when asked if WNBA players should get a larger share of revenue, adding, “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 absolute numbers … and they are going to get a big increase in this cycle of collective bargaining, and they deserve it.
That brings us to our next question.
What makes these negotiations different from what is common across other professional sports?
While WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert is the public figure that leads and represents the owners in the collective bargaining process on the opposite side of the WNBPA, she is not the one who decides directly on revenue sharing. Her bosses are the owners that make up the WNBA and Silver who then reports to the owners of the NBA.
The WNBA’s ownership structure is unlike any other in professional sports. 42% of the league is owned by WNBA owners, another 42% percent is owned by NBA owners and then 16% is owned by a group of NBA and WNBA owners who double-dipped in addition to public figures like Conoleeza Rice, companies like Nike and former WNBA and NBA players including Swin Cash, Baron Davis and Pau Gasol.
That 16% was sold as part of a capital raise that Engelbert executed to be able to revamp the league’s digital footprint and hire more human capital.
Why does this matter for collective bargaining?
In practice, this ownership model creates three groups of shareholders who are seeking returns on the league’s recent growth, powered by lucrative media rights contracts and the expansion fees paid by new franchises.
This becomes especially complicated when there are NBA owners that have grown impatient over the years by how much money they believe they have lost by investing in the WNBA.
Journalist Sarah Spain explained on her podcast Good Game recently the ways in which these NBA owners have thought about the WNBA since its inception and why the paternal ownership structure of the WNBA has been complicated.
“I think there’s a positive way to think about it, which is that you’ve got support from folks for a yet unproven product, and it helped give you the lift you needed to get started,” she said. “Or the cynical way, which is people who wanted to hedge their bets and never fully believed enough in it to just invest the way they might any other startup or any other business that should have been proven by that point.
“However you look at it, eventually, you will have to reconcile whether you want that to stay the system that you operate under as you continue to grow and for a lot of women’s sports and leagues, it has not been beneficial to be under the thumb of someone who is not deeply invested in the product or doesn’t believe in it, the way that many do, once it has proved that it’s a viable product.”
The deal now runs through November 30 — what’s next if no agreement is reached?
What happens now is that both parties continue to negotiate.
But if the deal expires without a new agreement following this new deadline, that doesn’t mean that immediately the players get locked out or that the players go on strike. A bunch of different scenarios can occur which include another extension or remaining in a status quo period while negotiations carry on.
If tensions remain with not a resolution in sight, the result could be a formal work stoppage where either side of the negotiation will interrupt the progress with a strike or a lockout.
If a deal or another extension isn’t reached by November 30, both sides enter a status quo period where the rules from the previous CBA still apply while negotiations continue. Players would still be able to communicate with team officials and use facilities that many use during the offseason prior to free agency under the rules of the 2020 CBA.
If a lockout were to occur, players would no longer have access to team facilities. If the players went on strike, then the players couldn’t talk to coaches and team executives, which would cause even more disruption.
What’s at stake in these negotiations?
The health of the league and the careers of its players are all at stake.
There was a specific reason why the WNBA and the WNBPA decided to have a 2020 bubble season during the height of the pandemic. Being out of the general public for a year wouldn’t have just stagnated the growth of the game and the league, it would have shrunk its cultrural footprint.
Even if players resumed playing overseas for long seasons that are at least as long as the WNBA season if not longer, we’ve seen what happens when women’s basketball players aren’t able to be marketed in the United States.
But also even if players just play in startup domestic leagues like Unrivaled or Athletes Unlimited, those leagues run for at most two and a half months. That’s not nearly enough time for players to take advantage of their name, image and likeness in front of the media markets in the US.
This is also in reference to the fans and where their attention goes. As Ben Pickman reported earlier this month, prolonged work stoppages that took place during MLB and the NHL’s histories led to fans feeling “alienated” and as a result attendance dropped, losing all parties money.
And as stated previously, the WNBA has had a long reputation of being an unstable business and one that only lost money rather than made it. A prolonged work stoppage coming from either side would reaffirm those narratives rather than try to quash them once and for all.
To be clear, the WNBA and its players have agreed upon previous CBAs just before the start of new seasons. The 2020 CBA was ratified in mid-January back when there was just a free agency period and amateur draft leading into camp. The 2014 CBA was agreed upon in mid-February and then the 2008 CBA, which came at a time when the Dream were being added to the league, was agreed to at the end of January with the expansion draft for the Dream happening just eight days later.
And then back in 2003, the league held its amateur draft the same day that its second CBA was ratified after former NBA Commissioner David Stern threatened to cancel the season 17 days before.
Lastly, the first WNBA CBA was agreed upon just days before training camp opened in spring of 1999.
It remains to be seen how tight the WNBA’s window to accomplish all it must, which includes multiple drafts, a lottery, and a free agency period.
“We’re still going to be at the table,” senior advisor and legal counsel for the players’ union, Erin D. Drake said on The No Offseason podcast. “We’re still going to be negotiating until we get this agreement done. We just don’t know how long that’s going to take, unfortunately.”
With the November 30 deadline looming, what occurs behind closed doors will determine the WNBA’s future.
