What Are the Terms of the New WNBA Deal?

Photo: Steph Chambers/Getty Images

This week, the WNBA and their players association, the WNBAPA, announced that they’ve reached a verbal agreement for a new collective-bargaining agreement, increasing the pay for players and avoiding a delay in the start of their 30th season, which tips off May 8.

Under the new CBA agreement, players will get paid more — a lot more — and not a moment too soon. Based on a graphic posted by the women’s pro-sports collective together, the salary cap will go up from $1.3 million to $7 million, and the average salary will jump from $120,000 to around $600,000. Most notable is the minimum salary, which used to stand at $66,000 and will now be $300,000.

Players have been advocating for a deal that compensates them fairly for the past year following a major surge in the league’s popularity. In 2025, the league generated enough revenue to trigger revenue sharing with its players for the first time; TV ratings jumped 23 percent and ticket sales went up by 26 percent, and the league announced the addition of three new teams. Between 2024 and 2025, the league’s value reportedly grew 180 percent while the salary minimum in the league only went up by $2,000. The players are still paid far less than their male counterparts — last year, the WNBA’s number-one draft pick Paige Buecker’s rookie contract was around $78,000 per year; the NBA’s first drafted player, Victor Wembanyama, signed $12 million per year.

The WNBAPA has been negotiating this deal for 17 months and took their fight for better wages public last summer, when players wore shirts that said “Pay Us What You Owe Us” at the WNBA All-Star game. WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert’s postgame remarks were interrupted by the crowd chanting “Pay them! Pay them! Pay them!” A few months later, during the October playoffs, Minnesota Lynx player and WNBAPA vice-president Napheesa Collier called out leadership during a press conference, saying that she’d asked Engelbert how “she planned to fix the fact that players like Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese, and Paige Bueckers, who are clearly driving massive revenue for the league, are making so little for their first four years.” Engelbert’s response, Collier claimed, was that Clark “should be grateful she made $16 million off the court because without the platform that the WNBA gives her, she wouldn’t make anything.”

Well, it sounds like Clark and her fellow players will now be making a little bit more on the court, too. “For the first time, player salaries are tied to a truly meaningful share of league revenue, driving exponential growth in the salary cap, increasing average compensation beyond half a million dollars and raising the standard across facilities, staffing, and support,” WNBAPA president Nneka Ogwumike said in a statement following news of the agreement. “We’re just really grateful to be able to come to a deal we’re proud of ourselves. And quite frankly, we always told you all we were going to stand on business, and that’s what this looks like.”

While a formal agreement is still pending ratification, this is a huge step forward for the WNBA. Everyone watches women’s sports —  it’s about time they get paid for it.

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