In collective bargaining, “things tend to end at the 11th hour,” Adam Silver said in February while answering questions about the status of the WNBA’s ongoing CBA negotiations. “Now the 11th is really close.” At the time, the NBA commissioner was not ready to set an “end date,” but the WNBA told players and teams that an agreement must be reached by March 10 for the season to start as scheduled on May 8. An unusually large amount of league business still needs to be completed this offseason. Nearly all of the veteran players are free agents, and the two expansion franchises in Toronto and Portland also need to draft teams.
The 11th hour was really busy. After a month-long breakdown in communication between the two sides, the WNBA and WNBPA began exchanging offers and counteroffers again in early February. Other issues are also being negotiated, for example the recent proposal includes housing, but the key issue remains salaries, which are expected to rise significantly now that the league has signed new media rights deals worth more than $2 billion.
Since leaving the 2020 CBA in October 2024, WNBA players have said they want player salaries tied to the health of the business, calculated as a percentage of league revenue, similar to the NBA. Until now, the WNBA’s salary cap has been a fixed, essentially arbitrary number. Base salaries in 2022 were less than 10% of league revenue. The union’s latest proposal reportedly calls for player salaries to average 26% of gross revenue. (This would raise the 2026 salary cap to $9.5 million. The previous CBA set the 2026 cap to increase from $1.5 million to $1.55 million.) The league gave players 70% of “net revenue” after expenses, a figure the union said would be less than 15% of total revenue over the life of the deal.
Kelsey Plum, the union’s first vice president, told reporters Monday that receiving the proposal for a revenue-sharing system was “an important victory” for the union. But she and Breanna Stewart both said more negotiations still needed to be done. “Even if you look at our deal, the union’s deal, the league’s deal, I don’t think either of them are ready. Neither of them are ready to vote, because they both have to negotiate up or down or one way or another,” Stewart told reporters. Plum said he is prepared to negotiate on how the league’s costs are calculated, even if the players agree to the league’s net revenue sharing system.
That same day, ESPN’s Alexa Philippou and Don Van Natta Jr. reported that Plum and Stewart sent a letter to union executive director Terri Jackson expressing “serious concerns about how the PA is handling the current negotiations” and frustration with what they believe has been a “broader breakdown in communication between you, the executive committee and the players.” Stewart and Plum both serve on the union’s seven-member executive committee. After receiving the letter, Jackson arranged an executive committee meeting by phone Tuesday night, according to an ESPN report.
On Wednesday afternoon, the union’s executive committee issued a statement aimed at some damage control. The statement reiterated the players’ “full faith and confidence” in the union and negotiating committee and said “the league’s current offer is not worth accepting.” Along with the statement, the union shared some results from a recent survey that asked players whether they would accept the league’s current offer. 84% of respondents chose “No, 15% would not accept it and want the union to continue negotiating.”
The union did not share answers to some of the interesting questions players may have been asked. What will most players accept? Are you ready to strike? Plum raised eyebrows in his press release Monday, saying a strike would be “the worst thing for both sides.” But it’s not unusual for unions to say they want to avoid strikes during negotiations. A report on the WNBPA’s “tense” virtual meeting last week by Front Office Sports’ Annie Costabile said some players have changed their minds since December, when the union almost unanimously approved calling a strike “when necessary.” However, a source on the call told Costabile that the majority of the player leadership was committed to the attack if necessary. Alysha Clark, another executive committee member, told ESPN: NBA Today A strike still remained an option Wednesday afternoon. “As a union, we can fight with every tool we have in our pockets and we will get what we deserve. So it’s still on the table.”
As The IX’s Howard Megdal recently pointed out, the players have something of a “de facto strike fund” in the form of group licensing revenue generated from 2020, a $9.25 million pool that the union plans to split with the players this spring. (One of the things Stewart and Plum requested from Jackson in their letter was more information about the distribution of group licenses.) The union also recently announced that the league generated enough revenue to trigger a revenue-sharing provision in the 2020 CBA. The player will receive an additional $8 million from the league.
Stewart and Plum, whose names appear at the bottom of the executive committee statement, are in the comical position of trying to clean up the mess they may have caused. Stewart told The Associated Press on Wednesday that he had no intention of making his letter public. She said Tuesday’s executive committee meeting made her feel better. “We remain united and we understand what we are fighting for and that is the message we shared on the call last night,” she said. The size of the WNBA’s workforce has been described as an advantage in negotiations. Small groups are easier to organize and more difficult to disband. The only downside is that if there are cracks, they will look much bigger.
