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The deadline for the WNBA and WNBA player’s association to agree on a new collective bargaining agreement is just days away on Oct. 31. Among the changes the WNBAPA is seeking in the new CBA is for players to earn a higher percentage of the WNBA’s revenue instead of just fixed increases to salaries, which currently limits a player’s maximum base salary to about $250,000.
“We are being so grossly almost taken advantage of, and it should be illegal,” Lynx star Napheesa Collier told Glamour.
That $250,000 base salary doesn’t extend to all players across the WNBA either. Players on their rookie contracts, for example, are earning than less than $100,000 per year in the first three years of their careers.
“The amount of money that Caitlin Clark has made the league is insane, and she’s getting 0% of it because we have no rev share,” Collier said. “She gets less than $80,000 a year, and she’s bringing in, like, hundreds of millions of dollars. It’s insane.”
Despite players like Clark, A’ja Wilson, Paige Bueckers and Angel Reese and driving huge increases to viewership and revenue across the league, their salaries haven’t adjusted to reflect those gains at this point.
Instead, Fever guard Lexie Hull said to Glamour she makes “double to triple” by playing in Unrivaled, and that much of her income comes through endorsements. While the average salary in the WNBA is around $150,000, per Front Office Sports, the average in Unrivaled is about $220,000.
A WNBA spokesperson told Glamour in a statement, “As the WNBA has stated repeatedly, we agree with the players that they deserve to be paid more and, importantly, to participate in the success and growth of the league by sharing in revenue. The comprehensive proposal we provided to the Players Association includes both significant guaranteed salary cap increases and substantial uncapped revenue sharing that enables player salaries to grow as the league’s business grows.”
