How much are WNBA players worth? The league’s future lies in the answer.
When the WNBA playoffs tip off Sunday, punctuating one of the most successful seasons in league history, the future of women’s basketball will shine bright with stars, storylines and growth across the board, including higher ratings, merchandise sales and expansion franchise fees. But beneath the surface, tension between the players and team owners threatens to derail that progress. It stems from a seemingly simple yet actually tricky question: How much are WNBA players worth?
Players and some economists say it’s straightforward: Players should earn roughly 50 percent of the league’s revenue, just as the athletes in the big four U.S. men’s sports leagues do.
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The WNBA and its owners say … almost nothing, at least publicly. The league office declined to make any executives available for interviews, and all 13 teams declined or did not respond to interview requests.
“I can’t talk to you,” one member of an ownership group said when reached by phone. “No one should be talking to you.”
Behind the scenes, owners are arguing for a less than 50-50 split because they say expenses eat up a higher percentage of revenue than they do in bigger, more established leagues, according to people familiar with the league’s thinking. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk publicly about the negotiations.
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Then there is the question of whether owners are owed anything for their longtime support of a league that operated at a loss for years. According to people familiar with the league’s finances, the owners spent approximately $500 million to keep the WNBA afloat over its first 29 years.
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At stake is a transformational opportunity for WNBA players. They have demanded the owners “Pay Us What You Owe Us,” the phrase they famously wore on shirts during All-Star Weekend. And they insist they’re willing to take drastic action to get every dollar, including a potential strike during the 2026 season, which is set to feature another thrilling class of rookies.
“We’re not backing down,” said Alysha Clark, a vice president of the players union. “We’re prepared for any and all outcomes.”
Eyeing equity
For most of the WNBA’s existence, some players compared the league to a summer job. Salaries were limited — roughly between $30,000 and $100,000 — and most players spent the offseason in countries such as Russia, Australia and Turkey, where they could earn 10 to 15 times as much.
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“The f---ing janitor made more than me,” Diana Taurasi once said in a documentary about her WNBA playing career. “I’m the best player in the world, and I have to go to a communist country to get paid like a capitalist.”
The current collective bargaining agreement, signed in 2020, substantially increased compensation and resources available to the players, who this year earned between $66,000 and $249,000. But until relatively recently, players still flew commercial from game to game, and some still take on extra work as college coaches and clamor for basic amenities enjoyed by their NBA peers, including modern practice facilities and full-time meal service.
Then came the explosion in popularity headlined by Caitlin Clark, who, along with other new stars, fueled rising ticket prices, surging viewership and, most importantly, a new media rights deal. Last year, the WNBA announced an 11-year, $2.2 billion deal with several broadcasters.
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On the heels of that monetary influx, owners and players agree salaries need to increase again. But there’s conflict over how much.
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The players’ priority is a new financial structure that grows with the league. They currently receive a fraction of league revenue, and the salary cap rises a fixed 3 percent every year. WNBA players want what the men have — a 50-50 split that ties the salary cap to revenue and allows them to reap the rewards of their labor and popularity.
While the league’s revenue is not publicly known, David Berri, a sports economist and Southern Utah University professor, estimated it will be at least $500 million next year. A 50-50 split would put the average salary around $1.5 million, he wrote in his newsletter, and the minimum would be roughly $750,000 — “about ten times what Caitlin Clark is getting right now!”
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Union reps have long complained that it’s difficult to negotiate because the NBA, which owns a controlling stake in the WNBA, is not fully transparent with the finances of the women’s game. In a statement, the WNBA called the allegation “simply untrue,” saying the league has provided the union with extensive financial and other business information, “including detailed league and team financial statements.”
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Another tension between the league and union is the value of that new media rights agreement. While the deal was a significant increase from the previous one, some critics argued that negotiating it simultaneously with the NBA hurt the bargaining power of the ascendant women’s league.
Claudia Goldin, a Nobel Prize-winning economist and union adviser, said given the viewership per game, the number of games and the length of the games, the WNBA should have received one-eighth of what the NBA got, or $9.8 billion. Instead, it got 1/35th.
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Goldin and other player advocates saw the deal as an instance of the NBA, not the open market, determining the worth of the WNBA.
Skip to end of carousel The Sports Moment newsletter (The Washington Post) Reporter Ava Wallace takes you through the buzziest, most engaging sports stories of the week. Sign up for the weekly newsletter End of carousel In a statement, the WNBA said it was advantageous to go to market with the NBA given that the leagues’ combined schedules provide media partners and streamers with year-round, premier basketball programming. William Mao, senior vice president in the media rights consulting division at the Octagon agency, was skeptical the WNBA could have otherwise negotiated a better deal than $2.2 billion over 11 years.
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Mao argued that the WNBA benefits from being part of the NBA and that its media-rights growth from $60 million per year to $200 million per year was “really, really good” progress. While other fast-growing women’s sports properties — such as the NCAA basketball tournament and the National Women’s Soccer League — have experienced exponential rights growth, the WNBA started from a higher number.
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If the WNBA got roughly $900 million per year, as Goldin calculated, it would be valued slightly less than the College Football Playoff ($1.3 billion annually) or “Thursday Night Football” ($1 billion). Mao doubted any broadcaster would actually write that check.
“There are only some things in the marketplace right now that are driving billions of dollars … in media rights value on an annual basis,” he said.
Still, Goldin and other player advocates said there is another clear signal that the league’s market value is growing: the exploding price of owning an WNBA team.
In 2021, billionaire NFL owner Mark Davis bought the Las Vegas Aces for $2 million. Two years later, the Golden State Warriors’ ownership group landed an expansion team for $50 million. This summer, Cleveland, Detroit and Philadelphia groups beat out other bidders for new franchises, and each paid a $250 million expansion fee. The Mohegan Tribe agreed to sell the Connecticut Sun for $325 million before the league office reportedly scuttled the deal. (On Thursday, Connecticut’s attorney general sent a letter to the WNBA seeking “documents related to [the WNBA’s] role in the potential sale.”)
“It just doesn’t make sense what we’re being told and what is being pushed to the public,” said Nneka Ogwumike, the players union’s president. “It’s at a point now where our salaries, our compensation, our value — the system has to reflect that of growth with the business.”
Looking out for ‘legacy’
While players have questioned the league’s transparency and earnestness, the face of the owners, WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert, has struck a delicate PR balance.
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“I want everything the players want,” she repeatedly has said while subtly maintaining that everything the players want isn’t necessarily good for them. They need a “sustainable” economic model, she told Sportico, “so that their legacy is not that the future of the league is at risk.”
WNBA leaders believe a 50-50 revenue split could threaten sustainability, people familiar with the league’s thinking said, because giving WNBA players the same professional standards as their NBA peers — chartered jets, luxury hotels and the same arenas for smaller crowds — eats up roughly 90 percent of WNBA revenue.
“The NBA is not a meaningful point of comparison,” one of the people said.
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Goldin, the union adviser, has questioned the accuracy of the league’s financial statements, and WNBA union leaders could face more challenges than their NBA counterparts in verifying them. In the NBA, the contract between the league and the players allows the union to audit the league and some teams to examine “basketball-related income.” The WNBA players union can audit the league office’s revenue but does not have the right to audit any of the teams.
“The league and teams’ financial statements accurately reflect the revenues and expenses of the business,” a WNBA spokesperson said in a statement. “Any implication otherwise is entirely false.”
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Tamika Tremaglio, the former head of the NBA players union who advised the WNBA players union on its previous CBA, said the women’s union has unprecedented leverage and needs to negotiate with a transformational mindset, not a transactional one.
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“They need to rip [the CBA] up and start again,” she said. She urged the union to demand not just revenue sharing but equity, and she argued the league’s youngest players understand their value because they were in college during the name, image and likeness (NIL) era.
Tremaglio, who now leads the sports division of management consulting firm Secretariat, believes the WNBA benefits greatly from its association with the NBA in terms of prestige, marketing and infrastructure. But if the players aren’t satisfied by the end of the negotiations, she said, outside businesspeople could seek to offer them radical alternatives.
“Many people with tremendous wealth are asking the question of, ‘Should we start our own league?’” Tremaglio said. “People are holding their breath [watching these negotiations]. A lot of what’s being thought about is really dependent on what happens in the CBA — not only here in the U.S. but I think globally.”
A trophy, then talks
The WNBA will crown a champion in mid-October — but the Finals could be just a preview for the biggest battle of the year. The CBA is set to expire two weeks later.
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The players believe they’re well positioned. They say they have solidarity and alternatives that could help sustain them through a work stoppage, including Unrivaled, Athletes Unlimited and leagues overseas.
Unrivaled, the three-on-three league created by union vice presidents Breanna Stewart and Napheesa Collier, said this past week that it’s now valued at $340 million, more than all but two WNBA teams, according to Forbes. The league pays better than the WNBA — its average salary was $220,000 last season — and it will expand next season by two teams. But the upstart leagues still have far fewer jobs; there are 54 roster spots in Unrivaled, 40 in Athletes Unlimited and 156 in the WNBA.
“Unrivaled presents a significant leverage point for the players union in the CBA negotiations,” said Danny Cortenraede, founder of venture firm InStudio Ventures. He compared the potential disruptive force of upstart leagues to the American Basketball Association in the 1970s.
Yet WNBA owners have their own leverage: money. The league’s owners include some of the world’s wealthiest people, and several of them also own NBA franchises. Across the bargaining table, lesser-known WNBA players make less than six figures, and their union has just $4.4 million in cash reserves, according to its latest legal filing.
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Despite its unusual factors, this negotiation — like all labor negotiation — is about accumulating negotiating power, said Harry Marino, a labor lawyer who spearheaded the organization of minor league baseball players. The negotiation seems likely to reach the postdeadline space he calls “staring contest land,” he said. And both sides are already taking positions.
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Late last month, the union accused the league of “a lack of urgency” in negotiations and questioned whether it was “just running out the clock.” The league, in a statement, said its “number one priority” was a new CBA that balances player priorities and “the long-term growth and success of the league and teams.”
“What the league is trying to do now is lower the players’ sights by freezing them,” Marino said. “They hope the lack of engagement will sow doubt in their position … and that the players will start to fracture or become less engaged and feel less commitment to their bottom line.”
The players insist they’re committed. In early August, Stewart was sidelined with a knee injury and attended a negotiating session in person in New York. She sat across from Engelbert and the rest of the league and said the numbers didn’t add up.
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“I told them, ‘We would love to talk about this, but you guys need to know that what we want is a nonnegotiable,’” she said.
And Wednesday, the union kept applying pressure; 85 lawmakers from the House of Representatives sent a letter to WNBA officials demanding the league “bargain in good faith.”
In the coming weeks — and maybe months — the question hanging over the league will be which side has the power to get what it wants.
