By Alex Schenck
The salaries of Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) players is an issue that the new collective bargaining agreement (CBA) for the WNBA will hopefully address.1 In October of 2024, the WNBA players’ union opted out of their current CBA, which expires October 31, 2025.2 A couple of the main issues that the negotiations need to address is whether the players should get higher salaries and a larger share of the league revenue.
- ANALYSIS
While there is a goal to increase the salaries in the WNBA, there are questions on how to increase salaries effectively so that the league can still grow and make money. A significant topic that the players and the league will negotiate over is what percentage of the league’s revenue the players should get for the salary cap. For example, in the National Basketball Association (NBA), the players get close to 50% of the league’s basketball-related income towards their salary caps.3 However, the WNBA players only get 9.3% of the league’s revenue for their salaries.4 This share should increase in the new CBA because the WNBA, as part of a larger media rights deal with the NBA, signed a media rights deal with Disney, NBC, and Amazon worth $2.2 billion.5 This averages out to $200 million annually over eleven years and is six times larger than their previous deal.6
An example of why the league should increase their players’ salaries is the average salary of a WNBA player. The maximum amount a player in the WNBA can make is $241,984, while the minimum is $64,154.7 The teams are under a hard cap at $1,463,200.8 Additionally, the league’s top rookies, Angel Reese and Caitlin Clark, are a big reason for the increased popularity of the league, only making $73,000-$76,000. The players should make more money, especially when the league’s popularity is at its highest ever.
However, another consideration is whether or not the WNBA is making any money. This past year, despite the rise of popularity, the WNBA is projected to lose around $50 million after generating around $200 million.9 Furthermore, the league is expanding. Adding the Golden State Valkyries in 2025 and new teams in Portland and Toronto in 2028.10 With the costs of a growing league, it may not be efficient to raise the salaries and caps of the teams.
An example of a similar league and how they handled sharing revenue with their players is Major League Soccer (MLS).11 Their media revenues were valued at $205 million annually for Apple TV, similar to the $200 million annually for the new WNBA media rights deal.12 The MLS shared the revenue at a 12.5% rate in 2023 and 25% for the following years.13 However, this deal and revenue sharing have their drawbacks. The MLS has underperformed because the games are behind the Apple TV paywall. Therefore, the players have gotten less revenue than projected.14 However, the WNBA does not have the same paywall issue as the MLS. The WNBA should not have the same valuation issue as the MLS. The WNBA just had their most successful viewership season ever “with an average of 1.19 million viewers, a 170% increase from last season,” they had their “highest total attendance in 22 years.”15
While there are pros and cons to increasing the salary of the WNBA players by increasing their revenue share, this is something the league needs to do. Not only should the players make more because they made the league around $200 million, but it would also incentivize the players from not playing in other leagues. With a new media rights deal for the WNBA, they should be making more money than ever before. Also, the players delivered the most popular season in sports history, contributing to the sport’s growth. Weighing these factors suggests that the players should get an increased revenue share and a higher salary and cap for each player and team.
- RECOMMENDATIONS & SOLUTIONS
There are several ways that the WNBA can increase the players’ salary while fostering the league’s growth. These recommendations include cap-smoothing, lowering the draft age, and a soft cap for the league. These solutions will have to balance the WNBA’s growth, the players’ salaries, and building revenue for the WNBA.
The first strategy the WNBA should use to increase their players’ salaries is cap-smoothing. With the new media rights deal going into effect in 2026, cap-smoothing makes sense. Cap-smoothing is an idea that the NBA implements, which would gradually increase the cap each year rather than all at once.16 The basketball-related income the team’s salary cap is based on would spike with the new media rights deal.17 Cap-smoothing would gradually increase the cap over several years so that there is no drastic increase in the cap in one year, allowing the more wealthy teams to spend more. However, cap-smoothing in the WNBA would serve the purpose of competitive equality while also gradually increasing the salaries of WNBA players. WNBA players would see a rise in the cap in 2026 and the following years with the new media rights deal. Keeping this increase gradual would also aid the league in maintaining costs while growing the league’s popularity and revenue and adding new teams. If agreed upon between the players and the league, cap-smoothing would “spread the necessary growth in the cap over multiple seasons or compromise on an alternative that allocates revenue through some channel other than the salary cap. This would prevent the cap from jumping drastically in one offseason and disperse revenue amongst the entire player pool more evenly.”18 This ensures that salaries rise with the popularity of the league. Starting with the first season of the new CBA in 2026, the WNBA should implement a strategy similar to the MLS, starting at 12.5% and moving up to 25% after five years.
The next recommendation would be to lower the draft age of the WNBA. This is an ancillary issue to the salary because if the draft age is lowered, college athletes could still stay due to the rise in Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL). An influx of younger, talented players would increase the league’s popularity. For example, the WNBA showed its best year in television viewership the first year Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese were in the WNBA. The television viewership could have increased a year or two earlier with a lower draft age. The current draft age for domestic players is 22 or until they finish college, while for international players, it is 20.19 The draft age should be lowered to 20 for domestic players. This will primarily help with the expansion of the league, which will lead to an increase in player salaries. The WNBA will need a deeper player pool; lowering the draft age will do that. Players like Juju Watkins or Sarah Strong, who have dominated from their first year in college, could leave and go to the WNBA sooner. Furthermore, this would increase the brand identity of those players with the WNBA rather than their earlier college teams.
The last recommendation would be to implement a soft rather than a hard cap in the WNBA. The main benefit of a soft cap on the league is that teams could get more creative with player salaries and roster construction, meaning they could pay certain players more money. 20 With the hard cap system, salaries are restricted to the league’s success equitably, limiting the benefits a player can receive.21 The NBA uses a soft cap system, and it helps teams keep their rising stars (even if a team has met their spending limit) or even role players who have been on the team for more than three years.22 23 Implementing the soft cap would also be important in keeping the players in the WNBA. Players go overseas to make more money in the offseason but are limited by WNBA prioritization rights and time off bonuses.24 With a soft cap, the increased flexibility and salary of the players would reduce the need for these restrictions and keep the WNBA players exclusively in the WNBA.
- CONCLUSION
In conclusion, the WNBA should increase their player’s revenue primarily by raising their percentage of shares in basketball-related income. To accomplish this, the WNBA should introduce cap-smoothing, which would increase the amount of money teams get to pay their players as the league grows in popularity. Next, they should gradually increase the player’s share of the basketball-related income to 25% to measure the success of the new media rights deal while increasing pay to the players. Furthermore, to increase the popularity and stardom in the league, they should lower the draft age to 20, so some of college’s best players can enter the WNBA earlier. Lastly, the WNBA should implement a soft cap so that teams can pay players more than their cap allows in certain situations. This should simultaneously set the league up for success while increasing the pay of the players who are popularizing women’s basketball.
Schenck is a third-year law student at Santa Clara University School of Law. He graduated undergrad from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Schenck have work experience working in collegiate athletics, marketing, and the law. After law school, he will be working at a law firm doing commercial litigation and labor & employment.
WORKS CITED
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2 Voepel, Michael, and Alexa Philippou. “WNBA Players Opt out of CBA: Salaries, Long-Term Benefits among Focus.” ESPN, 21 Oct. 2024, www.espn.com/wnba/story/_/id/41929722/wnba-opt-cba-collective-bargaining-agreement-wnbpa-players-union-2025-season.
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