Sophie Cunningham: WNBA is ‘laughing stock of sports’ amid CBA negotiations

The WNBA and WNBPA met in-person on Monday for the first time since October as they continued their collective bargaining negotiations, but while the sides continue to progress slowly toward an agreement, Indiana Fever star Sophie Cunningham lamented how the deadlock between players and owners paints the league in an undesirable light.

The sides are “getting frustrated,” Cunningham said, with just over three months remaining until the scheduled start of the 2026 season. And figures from other sports are taking notice of the disagreement between the WNBA and its players.

“I’ve been around a lot of NHL people, a lot of NBA people, a lot of MLB people, and everyone is like, ‘Why are you guys not using what we’ve already built?'” Cunningham said on her podcast, “Show Me Something.” “This is a successful business. Why is the W not learning and leaning on people who are already building that type? … Our negotiation and all that, how that’s going, it’s like we’re the laughing stock of sports right now. That is so f—ing typical.”

The WNBA has never experienced a lockout in its 29-year history. MLB was the most recent league among the country’s five major sports to enter a lockout, although it did not cancel any games during the 2021-22 work stoppage. The last time a league cancelled games was in the 2012-13 NHL campaign when the league shortened its regular season to 48 games per team.

During the latest three-hour meeting, the WNBA told players that it did not have a new CBA proposal prepared. Its last proposal came in early December and included increases to the salary cap and max player salaries at $5 million and $1.3 million, respectively. Those figures are approximately five times the present values but about half of what the WNBPA reportedly sought in its counterproposal.

“From my perspective, it seems like that half of our owners are player-first and really wanting to invest, and the other half are more league-side,” Cunningham said. “But it’s weird because they do want to invest, but you just don’t have owners who are willing to spend.

“Owners who are most involved I would say right now would be New York, Seattle and Phoenix. They have funds, and they’re awesome. Their ownerships are completely awesome. They are very player-first. They know that you’re going to maybe lose a little money on the front end, but you’ll get it back if you invest. At the end of the day, depending on where these negotiations go, if you give these players what they want, you’re going to get all the best players. Therefore you’re going to win. Therefore your ticket sales are going to be up. Everything’s going to be up.”

Player compensation is the biggest holdup in the CBA negotiations. Minnesota Lynx forward Napheesa Collier said last month that the sides found common ground on issues such as maternity leave, child care and charter travel.