WNBPA president Nneka Ogwumike: CBA talks are ‘on track’

The WNBA will have a lot to hammer out with its players union in the coming weeks and months, but so far negotiations seem to be going smoothly.

According to a report by Madeline Kenney in the New York Post, WNBPA president and Seattle Storm veteran Nneka Ogwumike believes conversations with the league over a new collective bargaining agreement (CBA) are “on track.” The union has stated its intention to have made “significant progress” by a scheduled face-to-face meeting with the league during next month’s WNBA All-Star Weekend.

“Based on what we anticipated — perhaps maybe the players and the union — we’re on track for what we wanted to do,” Ogwumike said before a game on Sunday. “We’ve been in steady conversation with our union staff, our board of advisors and, of course, our player reps and executive committee. We just got the first response back about a week ago. We were informed of that.”

The upcoming negotiations will be the most high-stakes in the league’s history. As the WNBA’s popularity continues to soar, players will be fighting for salary increases and cap flexibility, expanded rosters, and even influence over the league’s future media rights deals.

Next year, the league will become the beneficiary of new media rights deals between the NBA and its three media partners — ESPN, Amazon, and NBC — which begin this fall. Those agreements, worth $76 billion over 11 years, include WNBA inventory for each partner and will vastly increase the media rights revenue the league earns.

The WNBA also sells additional inventory not accounted for in the NBA deals. Earlier this month, the league re-upped a package of Friday night doubleheaders on Scripps’ Ion, and there are hopes that CBS Sports will renew its package of games as well.

All of this means a much larger revenue pie for the league to divvy up, and the players will want a larger slice.

So far, that hasn’t led to any contentious negotiations. But it’s still early going.

“The WNBA continues to meet regularly with the Women’s National Basketball Players Association and engage in constructive dialogue as part of our ongoing collective bargaining discussions,” a league spokesperson told the Post.

While the WNBPA has previously said it plans to be “aggressive” in negotiations, both the union and the league likely know that any form of extended work stoppage could jeopardize the momentum that has been built the past couple of seasons. No doubt, both sides will be incentivized to avoid going down that road, and capitalize on the financial windfall from its new rights deals.