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Another marathon negotiating session between the WNBA and union leaders ended early Monday morning after making progress toward a “historic” deal, commissioner Cathy Engelbert said.
“We are going to keep going. We’re going to get this deal done,” Engelbert said. “And, you know, it’s going to be historic.”
The sides are expected to resume talks later Monday, the seventh straight day of discussions about a new collective bargaining agreement. The previous session began Sunday afternoon and ended about 3 a.m. ET on Monday.
“We’re working as hard as we can to get it done as quickly as possible,” Engelbert said. “It’s complex. There’s a lot. There’s a lot of system elements. There’s a lot of structure elements. … This is a big, big league and we want to do everything we can for the players. So, we’re going to keep making progress.”
Union president Nneka Ogwumike has said that the key sticking points are revenue sharing and housing.
“It’s very important for us to nail those two things down,” Ogwumike said this weekend between sessions. “… So we want to make sure that we can get that.”
The WNBPA originally asked for 40% of gross revenue, a figure that had dropped to 26% by last week. The league originally offered more than 70% of net revenue.
“We’ve talked a lot about revenue share, which that’s obviously going to be, I don’t even really like calling it the elephant in the room. Like it’s there, you know, like we’re going to talk about it,” Ogwumike said. “But housing is big, you know, and housing is really big. And I think that perhaps people understanding this negotiation or learning about it has really shown how meaningful something like a housing benefit is, especially for the women in the W.”
The regular season is scheduled to start on May 8, with training camp set to open on April 19 and preseason games starting on April 25.
The league also needs to schedule a college draft as well as an expansion draft for the new franchises in Portland and Toronto, and nearly 80% of the league’s players are free agents.
–Field Level Media
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