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After a pair of 12-hour collective bargaining sessions and eight total back-and-forth proposals to save the WNBA season, the players’ union will return to negotiations Thursday and ask the league to raise the 2026 salary cap above $6.2M, sources told SBJ early Thursday morning.
The two sides have spent two days taking red ink to each other’s counterproposals, and the league’s latest offer just past midnight Wednesday — which included a $6.2M salary cap number up from $5.75M — was exorbitant enough that Commissioner Cathy Engelbert called it “real historic and transformational” before heading home at 2am ET.
But while WNBPA President Nneka Ogwumike said prior to midnight that she was sensing “movement,” sources said the union will respond Thursday with a ninth proposal that moves the cap figure slightly higher.
“We want to play, we’ve heard that from the other side as well,” Ogwumike told reporters outside N.Y.’s Langham Hotel, where the two sides negotiated from 2pm Wednesday to roughly 2am Thursday. “We need to see a more robust demonstration of that.”
With the dispute still unresolved, the status of the league’s 30th anniversary season — due to begin on May 8 — remains a conundrum. The league has sent rough estimates to its teams, with a best-case scenario of staging an expansion draft for the Portland Fire and Toronto Tempo somewhere between April 1 and April 6; a free agent signing period between April 12 and April 18 and a college draft on April 13. But that was all assuming a CBA deal could be consummated by March 10, a deadline that has come and gone.
While the league quadrupled its 2025 salary cap number of $1.5M in Wednesday night’s eighth and latest proposal — and offered a projected 2026 max salary of $1.3M that can grow to $2M and a projected average salary of $570,000 that can grow to $850,000 — it wasn’t enough to end the impasse. For instance, the union likely wants to raise the $6.2M cap number because the league won’t budge on offering players 70% of net revenue, which amounts to around 15% of gross revenue after deducting expenses. Or perhaps because the league won’t budge on paying for housing for all players throughout the course of the CBA.
Not only that, but the union is also purportedly seeking more profound health benefits, a superior 401(k), perks for retired players and the elimination of the franchise tag.
But, from the tone of Engelbert’s comments early Thursday morning, it’s uncertain how much further the league will bend when it receives the week’s ninth counterproposal Thursday afternoon.
“Our proposal on the table is a real historic and transformational deal for these players,” Engelbert told reporters before leaving the Langham Hotel. “Huge gains and salaries, benefits, everything you’re seeing, but beyond that when you see the whole thing. huge, huge benefits. … We’re proud of the deal we have on the table. I think it’s, again, huge gains for the players, while again, balancing that with, the health of the league.”
