Although there is a lengthy solution to go earlier than the WNBA and its gamers affiliation attain a deal for a brand new collective bargaining settlement, after months of contentious negotiations, one factor appears sure:
For the primary time in WNBA historical past, a participant will make a $1 million wage in 2026.
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The league’s most up-to-date proposal requires a $5 million wage cap — a large 230% enhance — that can produce a few of the largest contracts for American girls’s skilled athletes throughout any sport.
A proposed 20% max wage for particular person gamers would produce base salaries as much as $1 million, with extra escalators primarily based on league income that the WNBA estimates would convey their full worth to $1.3 million.
And people numbers might proceed to climb. Negotiations are ongoing, with income share nonetheless a serious sticking level between the 2 sides. But when a $5 million cap is the baseline, the elevated salaries that can come together with will probably be one of many key triumphs of this CBA.
With that in thoughts, let’s take a more in-depth take a look at the historical past of the WNBA and different leagues — together with the NBA, which owns and oversees the WNBA, and soccer’s NWSL — to place these will increase into context, in addition to perceive why gamers nonetheless do not suppose they’re being supplied what they deserve.
WNBA wage cap historical past
Though the WNBA is heading towards its thirtieth season, the league solely adopted a wage cap in 2003 as a part of protracted negotiations on the league’s second CBA. Earlier than that deal, the league signed gamers to their contracts. From that time, particular person groups agreed to contracts as a part of the introduction of free company.
The primary wage cap was $622,000 per staff, which the WNBA tasks can be barely greater than the typical participant makes in 2026 underneath its proposal. Getting there, nevertheless, took years of sluggish progress. The 2003 CBA outlined annual will increase of 4%, whereas a brand new CBA signed with little fanfare in 2008 elevated it 6% that season and both 3% or 4% in subsequent years. By 2014, the WNBA had stagnated financially — the wage cap truly went backward at the beginning of a brand new deal and grew simply 2% yearly. In 2019, the WNBA’s wage cap was nonetheless lower than $1,000,000.
That modified considerably in the newest CBA, agreed to in January 2020. The cap jumped 30%, far and away the most important single-season enhance in league historical past to that time, although it went up simply 3% annually of that deal. A income sharing element primarily based on cumulative league income — the goal of which was primarily based on the 2019 season — by no means triggered, largely as a result of the WNBA went with out ticket gross sales throughout the 2020 marketing campaign, taking part in on a bubble campus as a result of COVID-19 pandemic, and performed in entrance of lowered crowds in lots of markets to begin 2021.
In that context, the large leap within the WNBA wage cap on this settlement can be a matter of catching as much as the league’s progress. In 2025, the WNBA broke its single-season attendance document, beforehand set in 2002 when there have been 16 groups. Past that, new nationwide TV offers set to start in 2026 and signed collectively with the NBA’s present deal will convey in additional than $200 million in annual income earlier than counting WNBA-specific offers with Versant and ION, an eightfold enhance from what had been reported in 2019 when the earlier CBA was negotiated.
The primary $1 million WNBA wage
The WNBA has had a max wage since its inaugural CBA, albeit with the proportion of the cap altering dramatically over that span.
Initially, the max wage of $85,000 was set at 13.7% of the cap in 2003, however raises didn’t hold tempo. By the tip of the 2008-13 CBA, the gamers’ max was lower than 12% of the cap, a restrict that stayed in place by means of 2019. This made WNBA superstars simply the perfect worth in sports activities. It additionally compressed pay scales for veterans — a big proportion of the league’s starters who had reached free company made the max.
That modified within the present CBA, which elevated the WNBA’s so-called “supermax” for qualifying gamers — those that re-signed with their very own staff or modified groups by way of sign-and-trade — to 16.5% of the cap. Within the present proposal, max salaries stand to extend much more: The supermax would make up 20% of the cap going ahead.
By comparability to the NBA’s most salaries (which run from 25% to 35% of the cap, primarily based on years of service), that appears paltry. Nevertheless it’s necessary to keep in mind that the NBA has a gentle wage cap as in comparison with the WNBA’s exhausting one, which means most groups exceed it. WNBA groups can solely go over the cap in hardship conditions.
The NBA’s luxurious tax line is a extra acceptable level of reference. On common, NBA groups sometimes spend the same proportion of the tax quantity because the WNBA does the exhausting wage cap. The WNBA’s 20% max could be equal to about 24% of the NBA luxurious tax line, much like the max for gamers with six years or fewer expertise. (That is nonetheless not near probably the most skilled, highest-paid gamers.)
One different notable comparability between the leagues is the unfold between most and minimal. The NBA’s ratio is a whopping 42.5:1 for the highest-paid gamers and the bottom. With the WNBA’s most up-to-date proposal, the ratio of max wage to minimal wage can be round 5:1. That is actually greater than it as soon as was (previous to the 2020 CBA, the WNBA’s highest salaries had been lower than thrice the smallest) however nowhere near the NBA.
It is value remembering that the NBA’s wage cap wasn’t launched till the league had performed longer (practically 4 a long time, beginning with the forerunner BAA) than the WNBA has now. It has continued to evolve over a long time. The WNBA’s funds proceed to make progress, and the outcomes of those CBA negotiations will mark the most important step ahead but.
After WNBA gamers opted out of the CBA in October 2024, just about no veterans signed contracts that prolonged into 2026, which means greater than 100 unrestricted free brokers might want to signal contracts this offseason. Ethan Miller/Getty ImagesComparison to different leagues
Earlier this winter, soccer’s NWSL beat the WNBA to the primary $1 million salaries for ladies in American professional staff sports activities. Sophia Wilson of the Portland Thorns grew to become the primary when she exercised a participant possibility for 2026 in December. The NWSL accepted a “excessive impression participant” rule this offseason to assist groups exceed the $3.5 million cap to pay stars extra after a number of of the league’s prime gamers left for greater salaries in Europe. Trinity Rodman of the Washington Spirit was the primary participant to make the most of that rule, signing a deal value greater than $2 million yearly that makes her the highest-paid girls’s soccer star globally, her agent Mike Senkowski advised ESPN.
WNBA salaries underneath the present proposal would not get that top regardless of a bigger wage cap than the NWSL due to the league’s most wage, however participant salaries crossing that threshold can be necessary symbolically nonetheless.
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Athletes in males’s staff sports activities first started making in extra of $1 million a yr within the late Nineteen Seventies, after the arrival of free company however previous to the NBA wage cap. NBA stars Moses Malone and Invoice Walton reached the mark in 1979-80, similtaneously Nolan Ryan grew to become the MLB’s first million-dollar participant.
The fashionable historical past of the NBA wage cap begins in 1984-85, when it was launched for the primary time and set at $3.6 million. That got here amid fast progress of the league spurred by stars Larry Chicken, Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan in addition to the arrival of cable tv as a income. Since then, the biggest relative single-season leap within the NBA’s wage cap got here in 1995-96, when a brand new CBA produced a 44% enhance. The 2016 cap spike that allowed the Golden State Warriors so as to add Kevin Durant and type an excellent staff translated to a smaller enhance, 34.5%, although at $24.1 million, it was simply the most important change in greenback phrases.
The massive distinction between the NBA within the Eighties and the WNBA over the earlier CBA is that the league’s income sharing mannequin, which defines the cap as a proportion of so-called “basketball-related earnings,” allowed fast progress in successive seasons. So from 1984-85 by means of 1990-91, the primary yr of the NBA on NBC, the wage cap collectively grew 230%, practically an identical to what the WNBA’s present proposal would offer relative to 2025.
The WNBA’s proposal would introduce a mannequin much like the NBA, the place gamers get 50% of web income after subtracting bills. The massive distinction is that mounted prices like journey, help personnel and enviornment lease make up the next proportion of earnings within the WNBA than the NBA.
Consequently, the WNBPA estimates that the WNBA’s proposal would offer them lower than 15% of gross income. The WNBPA has countered with a proposal calling for 30% of gross revenues earlier than contemplating bills. The WNBA tasks that might lead to $700 million in working losses over the course of the brand new CBA. Gamers counter by noting that these losses could be made up for by proceeds from enlargement charges with Cleveland, Detroit and Philadelphia set to enter the league by 2030.
The WNBA, like different professional leagues, considers enlargement charges to be fairness slightly than income. Consequently, that cash just isn’t a part of the pool to be shared with gamers. However, it will probably cowl the projected losses with out forcing the WNBA to make the most of capital calls.
Like their main professional sports activities counterparts, WNBA homeowners have benefited from skyrocketing staff valuations over the course of the present CBA. These have escalated many multiples past the relative quantity that participant wage will enhance. For a lot of the WNBA’s historical past, $10 million was the official sale value for franchises, and much much less money truly modified fingers. In Might, the New York Liberty offered minority shares at a $450 million valuation, representing roughly a 4,400% leap.