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The WNBA and its labor force are in the midst of a contentious, high-stakes CBA negotiation, which could not be happening at a more interesting historical juncture. Women’s sports have seen explosive growth in their popularity over the past few years, which is not without its tensions. Namely: the class of people who have benefited most from all that growth are not the athletes themselves, but rather the team owners. This negotiation represents the most significant attempt by players to get what’s owed to them.
The way to understand this is through a pair of recent, conjoined cheating scandals that involved WNBA owners stretching or breaking the rules to compensate their players outside of what was allowed. Joe and Clara Wu Tsai of the New York Liberty and Mark Davis of the Las Vegas Aces are seen as paragons of the new class of WNBA owners, in that they want to win and are willing to spend money to do so. They spent money on above-board stuff like practice facilities, but also charter flights in the Tsais’ case and private school tuition for star players in Davis’s case, to say nothing of Las Vegas tourism officials casually doubling players’ salaries.
There’s a lot to get into here, and nobody better to talk with than Maitreyi Anantharaman. Defector readers will be familiar with her work on the WNBA, labor, and labor in the WNBA. Maitreyi and I had a great conversation about the history and future of WNBA players trying to get paid, and how these cheating scandals inform that fight.
Listen to Only If You Get Caught wherever you enjoy podcasts. The show is produced by Alex Sujong Laughlin and hosted by me. You can find the show’s transcript here.
