The WNBA and the league’s players’ union have reached a verbal agreement on a new collective bargaining agreement, they announced early Wednesday morning. According to ESPN’s Shams Charania, the new CBA will include maximum salaries over $1 million, minimum salaries over $300,000, and a starting team salary cap of $7.5 million. Those figures represent a dramatic increase in player pay: Under the previous CBA, which players opted out of in October 2024, the 2026 salary cap would have been $1.55 million. As WNBA cap expert Richard Cohen pointed out, the new minimum salary of $300,000 is more than what Kelsey Mitchell, the league’s highest-paid player, earned last year.
Since opting out of the 2020 CBA at the end of the 2024 season, players have spoken about their wish for a “transformational” deal, one that would allow them to share in the rapid financial growth of the WNBA. “For the first time, player salaries are tied to a truly meaningful share of league revenue, driving exponential growth in the salary cap,” union president Nneka Ogwumike said in a statement Wednesday afternoon. Her statement also mentioned gains on ancillary issues the two sides had been discussing, including facilities standards, housing, retirement, and expanded family planning benefits.
The two sides met for more than 100 hours in marathon bargaining sessions over the last week, much of that time spent trying to agree on a framework for revenue sharing. Player proposals sought a percentage of gross revenue, while the league’s proposals reportedly only offered them a percentage of net revenue. The exact details of the revenue sharing system in the new CBA haven’t yet been made public—a term sheet is yet to be formalized, WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert said, and the agreement will need to be ratified by players—but Charania reports that players will receive an average of nearly 20 percent of gross revenue over the life of the deal. Before last week, the union was reportedly seeking 26 percent of gross revenue, down from an initial ask of 40 percent. The league had previously offered players a percentage of net revenue that the union estimated would amount to less than 15 percent of gross revenue.
In any case, this CBA will be the first to use league revenues to determine its salary cap, which union first vice president Kelsey Plum called a “significant win” when she spoke to reporters earlier this month. The old CBA did include a more rudimentary revenue sharing mechanism under which players could unlock a percentage of revenue above certain thresholds, but the revenue targets in the 2020 CBA increased by 20 percent each year, while player pay only increased by 3 percent annually.
Lots of league business has been waiting on the other side of these negotiations. The league office recently sent teams potential dates for a compressed offseason schedule that will include two expansion drafts, a free agency period, the college draft in May, and preseason games. Though Engelbert had given players a March 10 deadline to reach a deal to avoid delays to the season, and then mentioned another Monday deadline this past weekend, she said Wednesday that the WNBA season would actually begin as scheduled, on May 8. Funny how that worked out.
