With New CBA, the WNBA Is Venturing Into a New, ‘Transformative’ Future

Twenty years ago, labor discussions focused on how the WNBA would survive. Now, with the league ascending to new heights, the emphasis is rightfully on how it will evolve.

Las Vegas Aces center A'ja Wilson, who's won four of the last six MVP awards, is one of many players due to receive a massive pay raise under the new CBA. | Jayne Kamin-Oncea-Imagn Images

In the spring of 2003, as February became March became April, the WNBA remained stuck in labor negotiations. The league was still young enough for its existence to seem fragile. Two franchises had folded that offseason and two more had announced plans to relocate. The players had no hope of receiving meaningful pay increases: The league had proposed raising the veteran minimum only very modestly, from $40,000 to $41,200, and initially proposed cutting the rookie minimum and restricting higher salaries for lottery picks. As negotiations grew increasingly tense, NBA commissioner David Stern argued that any further delay would imperil not just the start of the season but the larger fate of the WNBA.

“We want to roll up our sleeves with the players and make this a permanent landmark on the American sports scene,” Stern told reporters that April. “We’ll see whether the players want to do it with us or not.” 

A deal was reached soon after. Players were split on whether to accept what many felt was a bad agreement: They ultimately voted to ratify the contract by a margin of 56% to 44%. A dispersal draft for the defunct teams was quickly followed by the college draft. There was no other real player movement: While the deal had created a pathway to free agency, only two dozen players were immediately eligible, and even that came with restrictions. The league would not introduce unrestricted free agency until further into the lifetime of the agreement. 

That 2003 negotiation is the closest the WNBA has ever come to missing games due to a labor dispute. It will remain so for at least the immediate future. With a deal reached in principle early on Wednesday, after days of marathon bargaining, there will be no games lost or delayed for the WNBA season in 2026.

It’s a contrast that frames just how much has changed for the league. A contentious WNBA negotiation 20 years ago could only be one centered on questions of cutting and compromising. This round of contentious negotiation was instead one centered on questions of ambition.

There was a buzzword that felt unavoidable in this process: transformative: League and players alike dropped the adjective frequently over the last few months, suggesting a contract that would introduce appealingly big changes, while staying conveniently vague about just how big those changes might actually be. (Doubling the average salary is transformative, but quintupling the average salary is, too.) In the wake of a landmark media rights deal, spiking attendance, increased merchandise sales and long-awaited expansion plans, the league had clearly already transformed. The question left was how it would look for a labor agreement to match. 

Early contract details have begun to answer that. The new agreement will reportedly feature a minimum salary above $300,000, with the average salary at roughly $600,000 and supermax salaries starting at $1.4 million; a salary cap of $7 million; and revenue sharing over the life of the deal that averages out to 20%. Each of those salary numbers is at minimum quadrupled from its past equivalent. (The salary cap and the average salary have quintupled.) It’s an economic transformation, certainly, but it’s also a conceptual one.

The new agreement means the league will exist in a new context. It suggests the WNBA will not so consistently have to be framed by what it lacks or where it lags or when it will have to eventually catch up. Simply put, it will pay its players something closer to a major professional salary, and it will look more like a major professional league as a result. There is room to argue that an even bigger transformation might have been possible—more revenue sharing, a higher salary cap, and so on. But the underlying principle here feels nearly as important as the specific numbers. Here is a vision of the league rooted in growth rather than basic survival.

Shortly after the WNBA reached its deal in 2003, Stern gave an interview to the Associated Press, resulting in what now feels like a striking time capsule of a newspaper article:

For all the sizzle of the women’s Final Four, where Connecticut’s Diana Taurasi and Duke’s Alana Beard wowed the crowds, the evidence is still scant that America needs or wants or will support a women’s pro basketball league. “I wish that madams Taurasi and Beard could be looking at coming out and earning $3 million, rather than a considerably lower number,” Stern says. “Someday their successors will.” Asked how long it might be before a WNBA player makes $1 million a year, Stern shakes his head. “Oh, my gosh,” he says, not even venturing a guess.

The next month will see expansion drafts for two new franchises. A whirlwind of free agency will consume the days that follow: Nearly every veteran in the league chose not to be under contract beyond last season, because nearly every veteran wanted a chance to land a new deal under that new, potentially transformative CBA. Their pay will triple or quadruple or quintuple or sextuple. The first $1 million player will instead be a whole class of $1 million players—not a unique superstar relying on a creatively structured contract but simply a group signing on for the new supermax. There will be questions about roster construction and playoff odds and team chemistry. There will be, in other words, standard offseason sports conversation. With any luck, it will feel transformative.