WNBA gamers despatched a message to the league forward of their All-Star Recreation in Indianapolis Saturday: “Pay us what you owe us.”
All the gamers on Workforce Clark and Workforce Collier wore shirts with the message as they warmed up in entrance of a sold-out crowd of over 16,000 attendees and hundreds of thousands extra viewers at dwelling.
The declaration got here days after greater than 40 gamers met with the WNBA and failed to succeed in a brand new collective bargaining settlement. The gamers opted out of their final CBA in October and are negotiating for a greater revenue-sharing mannequin, greater salaries, higher advantages and a softer wage cap.
The gamers weren’t glad with the progress in negotiations as they head towards a late-October deadline, the Related Press experiences.
They determined to put on the “pay us what you owe us” shirts at a gathering Saturday morning, realizing the All-Star Recreation was one of many final high-profile occasions the place all gamers could be in a single place earlier than the common season ends in September.
WNBA’s fast progress fuels pay negotiations
One main sticking level in negotiations between WNBA gamers and the league is the wage construction and revenue-sharing agreements.
The league desires to pay based mostly on a hard and fast proportion whereas gamers need “a greater share the place our salaries develop with the enterprise, and never only a fastened proportion over time,” in response to Nneka Ogwumike, president of the Ladies’s Nationwide Basketball Gamers Affiliation labor union and Seattle Storm ahead.
WNBA gamers at the moment obtain 9.3% of league income, together with TV offers, tickets and merchandise gross sales, MarketWatch experiences. As compared, NBA income is cut up roughly 50/50 between gamers and homeowners, with gamers receiving between 49% and 51% of basketball-related earnings.
The WNBA has grown quickly in recent times, together with a brand new $2.2 billion media deal and enlargement charges of $250 million. It not too long ago awarded three new enlargement groups to Cleveland, Detroit and Philadelphia, which can develop the league to 18 groups over the subsequent 5 years.
The league had a report 2024 season with historic viewership, attendance and merchandise gross sales led by fandom round stars like Indiana Fever’s Caitlin Clark.
In flip, gamers desire a wage construction that provides them a “[larger] piece of the pie that we helped create,” Minnesota Lynx ahead and 2025 CNBC Changemaker Napheesa Collier stated to press after the sport.
“We wish to have the ability to have that justifiable share transferring ahead, particularly as we see all the funding stepping into, and we wish to have the ability to have our salaries mirrored in a construction that is smart for us,” Ogwumike stated.
WNBA salaries at the moment vary from the league minimal of $66,079 to the utmost of $249,244. The common WNBA base wage is $102,249, in response to Spotrac knowledge.
The league minimal within the NBA is now $1.27 million and the common wage is greater than $13 million, in response to knowledge from Sports activities Reference.
Some say evaluating the pay construction between the lads’s and ladies’s leagues is not precisely truthful. The NBA has been round for greater than 75 years, has a six-month common season and brings in billions of {dollars} in company sponsorships, whereas the WNBA is in its twenty ninth season and performs 4 months out of the yr. The NBA has round $13 billion in income whereas the WNBA is roughly round $200 million, CNBC reported in 2024.
To others, WNBA’s wage construction is “blatantly unfair to its gamers,” prime sports activities agent Jeff Schwartz stated in an interview with CNBC Sport in January. Schwartz based and runs Excel Sports activities Administration, which represents greater than 500 purchasers together with Collier, Clark, Tiger Woods and Peyton Manning and has negotiated billions in athlete contracts.
“The WNBA has to determine this out,” Schwartz stated of the CBA negotiations and participant salaries, in any other case many athletes could select to play abroad to complement their league earnings. They may additionally begin their very own, like his shopper Collier’s Unmatched, a 3-on-3 startup ladies’s basketball league which presents gamers fairness and a reported $220,000 paycheck — the very best common participant wage of any skilled ladies’s sports activities league, in response to Unmatched.
The place negotiations stand
WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert described latest CBA talks as “constructive” and ongoing, speaking to press forward of the All-Star Recreation.
“I need a number of the identical issues the gamers need,” she stated. “I am nonetheless actually optimistic that we’ll get one thing achieved that will probably be transformational and subsequent yr at All-Star we’ll be speaking about how nice all the pieces is. Clearly, there’s a number of laborious work to be achieved on either side to get there.”
“We have been at a really completely different place in 2020 than we’re in 2025,” Engelbert stated of when the final CBA was reached. “I feel you will see the revenue-sharing be a way more profitable one as we go ahead as a result of we’re in a greater place, fairly frankly.”
WNBA gamers characterised the assembly as a “missed alternative,” therefore their Saturday warmup shirts.
The second half of the WNBA season resumes Tuesday, and gamers from the All-Star Recreation say they have not determined if they will put on the shirts on their very own groups within the weeks forward, the AP experiences.
Some gamers, together with All-Stars Collier and Angel Reese, say they might stage a walkout if a brand new CBA will not be reached by October.
The WNBA didn’t reply to CNBC Make It is request for remark by time of publication.
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