WNBA Salaries: Silver promises increase, but the debate is about percentage

Salary Increase for WNBA Players: Perspectives and Challenges

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver announced that WNBA players will receive a “significant salary increase” in the new collective bargaining agreement. However, Silver emphasized the importance of evaluating this growth in terms of “absolute figures” rather than revenue sharing.

I think participation is not the right way to look at it because there’s a lot more revenue in the NBA. I think they should look at the absolute numbers in terms of what they’re earning. They’re going to get a big raise in this collective bargaining cycle and they deserve it.

Adam Silver

The WNBPA opted not to renew the current collective bargaining agreement a year ago and has been negotiating a new one since then. The current agreement is scheduled to expire in less than two weeks, on October 31.

The WNBPA shared a clip of Silver’s comments in an Instagram story, with the phrase “I think participation is not the right way to look at it” repeated in a loop, accompanied by the caption “Don’t they want to share?” and tagging Silver.

A key point of disagreement in the negotiations, according to the players, is how salaries should be determined amid a period of great growth for the league. The players are pushing for a system where the percentage of revenue allocated to salaries grows with the business, similar to the NBA, where the salary cap is determined by Basketball Related Income (BRI), and players receive approximately half of that amount, as established by their CBA.

On the other hand, the league’s proposals have presented a salary cap that increases at a fixed rate over time, as in the current CBA, where the cap increases by 3% annually.

Satou Sabally of the Phoenix Mercury stated during the WNBA Finals that a recent proposal from the league makes the players feel that “we are not part of the league’s growth.”

If we were to continue with this CBA, we would decrease, in percentage, our compensation.

Satou Sabally

The league’s salary cap was $1,507,100 in 2025, with a maximum of $249,244 and a minimum of $66,079. The WNBA has experienced record growth in the last two years, with an increase in attendance, viewership, merchandise sales, investment, and franchise valuations, in addition to a new media deal worth $2.2 billion. When asked during the Finals about the points of disagreement between the players and the owners in the CBA negotiations, WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert spoke about the importance of “balancing” an increase in player salaries with the “long-term viability of the league”.

That’s what we’re trying to determine, where the right balance is. I think we all agree that we’re trying to return as many dollars as possible to the players, but we also want to incentivize the owners’ investment. We want the owners to have a viable business. Obviously, we are looking at an expansion to 18 teams by the end of the decade. So it’s important that those incoming owners have the opportunity for a viable economic model for the future.

Cathy Engelbert

If the two sides do not reach an agreement before Halloween, they could agree to an extension that would allow them to continue negotiating, as they did for the last CBA that was finally signed in January 2020. A new CBA must be finalized before a two-team expansion draft for the Toronto Tempo and the Portland Fire takes place, and it must also precede a free agency period where most veteran league players are unrestricted free agents.