WNBA players have never had more leverage than they have right now.
A sparkling rookie class, headlined by Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese, has catapulted a league that was already growing into a new stratosphere in terms of popularity and visibility. Attendance and viewership records are being shattered, and everyone wants to know why the players’ salaries aren’t higher. The league is about to receive a windfall from a newly negotiated media rights deal that is expected to earn it at least six times what it does in the current deal, according to a person familiar with the numbers who spoke on condition of anonymity because the deal has not been finalized.
It would seem an ideal time to take advantage of the opportunity they have this fall to opt out of their collective bargaining agreement, two years before it is set to expire.
But the players’ union doesn’t want to be too hasty. So, last month it created a five-person advisory committee consisting of lawyers, academics and financial and media professionals to help its members parse the decision.
“What we need to do as players and as part of the PA is we make a united decision, but also listen to the pros and the cons both ways,” said Breanna Stewart, forward for the New York Liberty and the league’s MVP last season. “Staying in, opting out — what are our goals going forward, especially after the things that have changed this year?” said Stewart, a vice president for the union.
The advisers are Claudia Goldin, a Harvard professor who won the Nobel Prize in economics last year for her work on women in the labor market; W. Charles Bennett, a former FBI agent, as well as an accountant and fraud investigator; Deborah Willig, managing partner at the Philadelphia law firm Willig, Williams and Davidson, who has negotiated on behalf of other players’ unions; Tag Garson, a longtime executive in sports and entertainment; and David Cooper, a communications specialist and professor at New York University.
The professional credentials of the advisory group are a sign of the importance the union is placing on the next contract. Travel arrangements — players hope to codify charter flights into the next CBA — salaries and the structure of revenue sharing are expected to be significant issues.
“This time, we’ve got to be great,” said Terri Jackson, executive director of the union. “Everybody’s talking about ‘transformational CBA.’ Whether it’s now or two years from now, we’ve got to be great. These folks who have stepped up for us, they’re better than great.”
The league’s current CBA is set to expire in 2027 unless either the league or the players decide to opt out. If either side chooses to opt out by Nov. 1 of this year, then the CBA will conclude Oct. 31, 2025, giving the sides about a year to negotiate a new agreement.
Opting out comes with the risk that negotiations could take longer than a year, potentially leading to a lockout. Players on the executive committee and team player representatives will vote on the opt out.
The advisory team will meet about twice a month with the rest of the union’s CBA committee, which includes a group of players and union executives. The first of those meetings was held June 26.
“I learned that I have a lot to learn,” said Las Vegas Aces guard Kelsey Plum, the union’s first vice president, who was the first overall pick in the WNBA draft in 2017. “They’re asking questions I didn’t even really think of.”
Goldin said she had been inundated with requests since winning the Nobel and had said yes to a “countably small” number of them.
“One of them was being on ‘Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!’,” Goldin said, referring to the comedic news show on NPR. “And one of them is being the part of the team that will aid the amazing players of the WNBA.”
The advisory group is primarily providing counsel at the moment, though a few members have been given specific tasks. In the interest of transparency, the WNBA shared some financial documents with the union, something Jackson cited as a positive sign for the negotiations. Bennett and Garson have been asked to examine those.
“I try to identify the revenues of the league and tie the players to the growth and that revenue stream to make sure the players keep pace in terms of salaries and benefits as revenues grow,” said Bennett, who has helped players’ associations monitor revenue sharing and salary cap programs since 1989.
Garson, who used to call women’s basketball games while a student at Northwestern University more than 30 years ago, has also been asked to keep a close eye on media rights negotiations involving the league, including the next TV deal for the NBA, which will include rights for the WNBA.
The NBA Board of Governors approved a deal Tuesday with Amazon, Comcast and Disney, which would allot $200 million a year for WNBA rights, according to the person familiar with the deals. The WNBA is expecting to earn at least another $60 million a year from other partners, likely CBS and Ion, which currently broadcast WNBA games. Under the current media rights deals, the WNBA has been earning $43 million in rights fees.
Other issues on players’ minds include pensions for retirees, roster sizes and improving parental and fertility benefits. The CBA currently stipulates that players must have played for eight years before receiving a $20,000 benefit for family planning services such as adoption and egg freezing — a threshold many players never reach.
There was a time when WNBA players, perhaps worried about the league’s long-term viability, were more cautious in conversations about the CBA.
“I personally experienced more players perhaps making decisions out of fear of losing something so special, and being very grateful for whatever few or little resources were being allotted to the W,” said the Seattle Storm’s Nneka Ogwumike, president of the union, who was drafted in 2012. “That was in my first couple of years. From that, I’ve learned that we have way more power than we actually understand.”
As the league matured, players became more engaged with the last CBA, which was ratified in 2020, and interest in understanding the process has remained high.
Stewart wasn’t involved during the last negotiation, and she said that made her want to be active this time and use her leverage “being one of the faces of the league, showing up for these important meetings and being there when we’re going head-to-head and fighting for what we want.”
She recalled Sue Bird, with whom she played in Seattle, urging her early in her career to get involved. Bird did the same for Plum while they were both at USA Basketball camps.
The veterans would love to see their star rookies get involved, but they realize they are already facing intense scrutiny. Plum said they’d already done “more than their part” to help their fellow players.
“It’s just amazing to see how young they are, but how they carry themselves and how they continue to move their games forward and also the league forward,” Plum said.
Ogwumike expects the league’s new media rights deal to change things for the WNBA.
“This time is crucial,” she said. “For the future of the W, for the future of women in sport, for women in sport and business, and I’m really glad to be learning through the history.”
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