The WNBPA’s top legal advisor just delivered a sobering CBA update originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
On Oct. 21, 2024, the WNBA Players’ Association opted out of the WNBA’s collective bargaining agreement amid rapid growth that poured more money into the league than ever before. With franchise values rising and new franchise players like Caitlin Clark drawing more attention to the league, the WNBA had become big business — and the league’s CBA, ratified in 2019, was deemed no longer fit for purpose.
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A year of negotiations over what would be a historic new agreement though has seen tensions rise around the league. Millions of viewers tuned into the 2025 WNBA Finals, where the Las Vegas Aces swept aside the Phoenix Mercury for their third title in four years, but the Aces’ resounding Finals victory has taken a back seat to a bitter public feud between the WNBA’s commissioner and one of the league’s star players. Concerns over the physicality allowed in the WNBA have dominated conversations around the league too, and the players’ union has campaigned openly for a revenue-sharing system that is similar to the NBA — a prospect that NBA commissioner Adam Silver has been reluctant to accept.
A deal by Friday “is not going to happen”
Erin Drake, the WNBPA’s senior advisor and legal counsel, told The Athletic’s Sabreena Merchant and Ben Pickman that while she believes in miracles, she is “not hopeful” that the players’ union and the WNBA are going to agree on a new CBA before it expires on Friday.
“We have worked hard to be able to say, on Friday, ‘we did it,'” Drake said. “Unfortunately, that’s not going to happen.”
Speaking on The Athletic’s No Offseason podcast, Drake said there remain “fundamental” disagreements between the league and the player’s union on revenue sharing. Drake said the WNBA is not matching the “urgency” of the players in getting a new deal done before the Oct. 31 deadline, which Drake explained was and is “very real” to the WNBPA.
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“We are trying to do something that is not unfamiliar in professional sports and mature economic models, but is certainly new to the WNBA,” Drake said. “And I think (the WNBA) are trying to do something a lot more familiar to what we have now.”
Drake added that an extension of the current CBA to continue talks over a new one is “always on the table,” leaving that possibility firmly open. The WNBA and the players’ union extended CBA talks in 2020; in both 2008 and 2014, negotiations continued through the end of the calendar year to reach an agreement.
But this time is different.
The WNBA is fetching $250 million expansion fees for new franchises that will enter the league later this decade; teams in Toronto and Portland are set to begin play in 2026, and both the Tempo and Fire rosters need to be filled via an expansion draft. Player salaries have remained static while the league’s new $200 million-per-year media rights deal takes effect next year — an 11-year, $2.2 billion agreement that will encompass the primes of players like Clark, Paige Bueckers and A’ja Wilson.
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WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert — and her boss, Adam Silver — have promised that salary increases are coming. But the league’s latest reported proposal isn’t good enough for the players, who are seeking to capitalize fully on this moment in the league’s history. The expiration of the CBA, then, seems a foregone conclusion.
