As the WNBA continues on its extraordinary growth trajectory, the players are looking to cash in.
Following the 2025 season, the W’s collective bargaining agreement with its players will expire, at which point the league and the players union will need to come to terms on a new deal or risk a work stoppage for 2026. Negotiations are expected to be spirited, with players possessing the most leverage they’ve ever had after last year’s record-breaking season from a viewership and attendance perspective.
Business is booming for the WNBA, and players want a bigger piece of that pie. Last year, the league took steps towards meeting some of the players’ demands, outlaying over $20 million to supply charter flights for all of its teams for the first time in history. But given that the league’s minimum salary remains on-par with that of an entry level sales rep in any old industry, the WNBA players will be fighting for more than just charter flights when negotiations begin in earnest this fall.
But despite how CBA negotiations typically go in other professional sports leagues, where there’s plenty of chitchat from either side taking place in the media, WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert says she’ll be taking a different approach.
“We’re not going to negotiate in the media, we’re going to negotiate with players across the bargaining table, so I’m not going to comment on specifics other than we’ve been building a new economic model, quite frankly, leading women’s sports to build that model with our new media rights deals with all that corporate partnerships,” Engelbert said during a press conference prior to Monday’s WNBA Draft. “So yes we want to have a fair deal for all but it has to be within the confines of a sustainable economic model that goes on for 10 years.”
The WNBA remains in a unique position when it comes to its potential revenue, specifically from a media rights perspective. The majority of the league’s broadcast rights are tied up in the NBA’s media rights deals, with ESPN, NBC, and Amazon all getting a slice of the W as part of their individual deals with the men’s league. The WNBA has sold much of its remaining inventory to CBS and ION. But given that the league has limited inventory to sell at a true market rate, it’s difficult to expect huge growth since much of their media rights revenue is already baked in.
“We’ve had a few years of great growth… but we need to continue to make sure that we can fund the things that the players are asking for, that we want for them, too,” Engelbert continued. “We all want the players to make more money, that will happen. We’ll do something transformational but again, nothing to report exactly today because we’re not that far into negotiations to report any specifics.”
It’ll be a tough needle to thread for the league as players will likely point to skyrocketing ratings as a sign that they should be getting paid substantially more than the current going rate. But the WNBA is, at the end of the day, a business. And the league will only be able to pay players what it can afford.
Public sentiment will surely be on the side of the players in this negotiation, and that will likely only be furthered should Engelbert stay true to her word about not negotiating in the media. But despite this, the commissioner is remaining positive.
“I’m very optimistic that we’ll get something done,” she said, “and it’ll be transformational.”