WNBA Salaries: Silver promises increase, but the dispute continues over the model.

Salary Increase for WNBA Players: How to Measure Growth?

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

I think the percentage 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 making. They’re going to get a big increase 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. In an Instagram story, the WNBPA reposted a clip of Silver’s comments, repeating the phrase “I think the percentage is not the right way to look at it” and the caption “Don’t they want to share?”, tagging Silver. According to the players, a key point of disagreement in the negotiations has been how salaries should be determined, at a time of great growth for the league. The players are pushing for a system where the percentage of revenue allocated to salaries increases with business growth, similar to the NBA, where the salary cap is determined by basketball-related income (BRI), and the players receive approximately half of that amount, according to their collective bargaining agreement.

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 agreement, 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 collective bargaining agreement, 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 on the way. When asked during the Finals about the points of disagreement between the players and the owners in the collective bargaining agreement negotiations, WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert spoke about the importance of “balancing” the increase in player salaries with the “long-term viability of the league”.

That’s what we’re trying to determine, where that right balance is. I think we all agree that we’re trying to return every dollar 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 considering an expansion to 18 teams for the purposes of the decade. So it’s important that the owners who enter have the opportunity to have a viable economic model for the future.

Cathy Engelbert

If the two parties do not reach an agreement before Halloween, they could agree to an extension that allows them to continue negotiating, as they did for the last collective bargaining agreement that was finally signed in January 2020. A new agreement must be reached before an expansion draft is held for the Toronto Tempo and Portland Fire teams, and it must also precede a free agency period where most veteran league players are unrestricted free agents.