WNBA players have never had more power than they do today.
A stellar rookie class led by Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese has propelled an already growing league to a new stratosphere of popularity and visibility. Attendance and ratings records are being shattered, and everyone wants to know why player salaries aren’t higher. The league is about to receive a windfall from a recently negotiated media rights deal that is expected to pay at least six times what it makes under the current deal, according to a person familiar with the figures who spoke on condition of anonymity because the deal has not been finalized.
It would seem that now is the perfect time to take advantage of the opportunity they have this fall to opt out of their collective agreement, two years before it expires.
But the players’ union doesn’t want to move too quickly. That’s why it created a five-person advisory committee last month, made up of lawyers, academics and financial and media professionals, to help its members analyze the decision.
“What we need to do as players and as a PA is make a decision together, but also listen to the pros and cons on both sides,” said Breanna Stewart, a New York Liberty forward and the league’s most valuable player last season. “Staying on the team, opting out — what are our goals going forward, especially after the things that have changed this year?” asked Stewart, the union’s vice president.
The advisers are Claudia Goldin, a Harvard professor who won the Nobel Prize in economics last year for her work on women in the workforce; W. Charles Bennett, a former FBI agent and accountant and fraud investigator; Deborah Willig, a managing partner at the Philadelphia law firm Willig, Williams and Davidson, who has negotiated on behalf of other players’ unions; Tag Garson, a longtime sports and entertainment executive; and David Cooper, a communications specialist and professor at New York University.
The advisory group’s professional qualifications are a sign of the importance the union places on the next contract. Travel arrangements (players hope to codify charter flights in the next collective bargaining agreement), salaries and the revenue-sharing structure are expected to be major issues.
“This time, we have to be great,” said Terri Jackson, the union’s executive director. “Everyone talks about a ‘transformative collective agreement.’ Whether it’s now or two years from now, we have to be great. These people who stepped up for us are beyond great.”
The league’s current labor contract is set to expire in 2027, unless the league or the players opt out. If either side opts out by Nov. 1 of this year, the labor contract will end Oct. 31, 2025, giving both sides about a year to negotiate a new deal.
The team’s withdrawal carries the risk that negotiations could last more than a year, which could lead to a lockout. The team’s players’ executive committee and player representatives will vote on the withdrawal.
The advisory team will meet about twice a month with the rest of the union’s collective bargaining committee, which includes a group of players and union officials. The first of those meetings was held June 26.
“I learned 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 2017 WNBA draft. “They’re asking questions I hadn’t really even thought about.”
Goldin said she had been inundated with applications since winning the Nobel and had said yes to a “tiny” number of them.
“One of them was to be on ‘Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!,’” Goldin said, referring to the comedy news show on National Public Radio. “And one of them is to be part of the team that’s going to help the incredible players in the WNBA.”
The advisory group is primarily providing advice for now, though a few members have been assigned specific tasks. In an effort to be transparent, the WNBA has shared some financial documents with the union, which Jackson saw as a positive sign for negotiations. Bennett and Garson have been asked to review them.
“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 oversee revenue sharing and salary cap programs since 1989.
Garson, who played women’s basketball as a student at Northwestern University more than 30 years ago, has also been tasked with closely monitoring media rights negotiations involving the league, including the NBA’s upcoming television deal, which will include rights to the WNBA.
The NBA’s Board of Governors approved a deal Tuesday with Amazon, Comcast and Disney that would provide $200 million a year in broadcast rights to the WNBA, according to the person familiar with the deals. The WNBA hopes to earn at least $60 million more a year from other partners, likely CBS and Ion, which currently broadcast WNBA games. Under current broadcast rights deals, the WNBA earned $43 million in broadcast fees.
Players also have retirement pensions, roster sizes and improved fertility and parental benefits on their minds. The collective bargaining agreement currently requires players to play for eight years before receiving a $20,000 payment for family planning services such as adoption and egg freezing, a threshold many players never reach.
There was a time when WNBA players, perhaps concerned about the league’s long-term viability, were more cautious in collective bargaining discussions.
“I’ve personally seen more players make decisions out of fear of losing something so special and being very grateful for the few resources they’re given,” said Nneka Ogwumike, the Seattle Storm’s union president, who was drafted in 2012. “That was in my first two years. I learned from that that we have a lot more power than we think.”
As the league has matured, players have become more involved in the latest CBA, which was ratified in 2020, and interest in understanding the process has remained high.
Stewart wasn’t involved in the last negotiations, and she said that made her want to be active this time around and use her influence “by being one of the faces of the league, showing up at these important meetings and being there when we’re going head-to-head and fighting for what we want.”
She remembers Sue Bird, who she played with in Seattle, encouraging her early in her career to get involved. Bird did the same for Plum when they were both at USA Basketball basketball camps.
Veterans would like to see their star rookies step up, but they realize they’re already under intense scrutiny. Plum said they’ve already done “more than their share” to help their fellow players.
“It’s just amazing to see how young they are, but also how they carry themselves and how they continue to move their game forward and also the league forward,” Plum said.
Ogwumike expects league’s new media rights deal to be a game-changer for WNBA
“This is a crucial time,” she said. “For the future of the Federation, for the future of women in sport, for women in sport and in business, and I’m really happy to be able to learn from history.”