It’s been a long time coming, but the WNBA’s new collective bargaining agreement is finally finished.
For years now, players have let their displeasure with the state of the league be known. The crux of their argument was that as the league continues to grow in popularity the players deserve better treatment and a bigger piece of the pie.
They argued that the league’s revenue split with the players, player benefits, travel arrangements and salaries weren’t aligned with the salary and benefits NBA players receive.
Many of those concerns have been addressed in the new CBA, which was announced Tuesday morning on Good Morning America.
Everything isn’t official quite yet — the league’s board of governors still have to approve the deal. But, from the look of things now, that process should go smoothly.
Let’s dive into the details of the new deal.
This is an extremely player-friendly deal
The players are getting almost everything they wanted out of the WNBA’s new agreement.
The money
The league is increasing its salary cap by 30% and its max salaries are almost doubling from $117,500 to $215,000. Certain max players will also have the opportunity to earn additional compensation up to $300,000 — that would means a max player’s earnings would essentially be bumped up over $500,000.
The benefits
Players will receive a full salary while on maternity leave and a new annual childcare stipend while pregnant. In the current CBA players could have their salaries slashed in half because of pregnancy or childbirth.
Skylar Diggins played an entire season pregnant because of how the league treated expecting mothers. She opened up about it on Twitter.
Mental health resources are also included in the new collective bargaining agreement.
The travel
Travel has been an issue for years in the WNBA. Because the league doesn’t use charter flights, teams flew coach or were bussed from game to game on the road.
At times, that led to major issues. In 2010, the Las Vegas Aces forfeited a game after a 26-hour travel day, and the Indiana Fever had a similar problem back in 2015. The 6-foot-8 Brittney Griner was forced to sit in a middle seat in coach on her way to last year’s All-Star game.
In the new deal, they’re still not flying charter. But players are also now guaranteed their own individual hotel rooms on the road and will have mandatory upgrades from coach on flights to economy-plus or comfort-plus.
Not too shabby.
The owners weren’t left high and dry
Though the agreement is extremely player friendly, there are still some stipulations that could benefit owners.
The revenue split
The revenue sharing split will also improve in this new deal. In the current deal, players only received 20% of basketball related income in their split with the league.
Under the new agreement, the players will have an opportunity to push that split to 50-50 – but only if certain revenue goals are hit on marketing and broadcast deals. That puts onus on everyone to grow the game to maximize revenue.
Player retention
WNBA players regularly go play overseas in the offseason because of the low salaries they earn from the league. Breanna Stewart, the league’s reigning MVP, was lost for the season after she tore her Achilles playing for her Russian club.
Teams might be able to prevent that now. Under the new agreement, the league has dedicated a $1.6 million pot to pay players to stop going overseas with a $250,000 cap for a single player. Under the old deal that cap was $50,000.
The league also managed to keep the “core player” designation, which is essentially the WNBA’s franchise tag. However, players can only be designated a maximum of three years by 2020 and 2021 before a team can’t do it again. In 2022, that number shrinks to two.
In-season tournaments
The league is also going to create more opportunities to market their best players. The league is introducing special competitions called “cup games” with big prize pool money involved.
The two teams with the best records in Cup games will play for the Commissioner’s Cup title, per the New York Times, and the prize pool in 2021 is $750,000.
The NBA had a similar idea for increasing the stakes of regular season games. It’s a terrible idea for that league. For the WNBA it’s a great one. Aside from how interesting it makes the league’s regular season (which is already way shorter than the NBA’s), it also gives players another vehicle to get paid. This is a win-win.
There are still questions left to be answered
There aren’t many ways you can cut this to make it look like the players got a bad deal. Relative to what they had, this is most definitely a come up of epic proportions.
BUT, if there is a caveat to throw in there, it’s that we still don’t quite know where the money is coming from. The last time we heard, half the league was actually losing money. So players are being paid more, but we don’t know exactly where the revenue for all of it is coming from.
The NBA could be doing a great thing and contributing more. The owners could have a plan in place that nets them enough to pay more. We don’t know the exact answer and won’t find out for a while.
But, while all of that is worth keeping an eye one, what’s important is that we finally have a deal in place that values the league’s players appropriately. Setting how they’re doing it aside, that’s a good thing for sports.
[jwplayer D1pmtUyV-q2aasYxh]
