WNBA CBA proposal includes mandatory draft combine, new revenue-sharing model: SourcesSabreena Merchant and Ben PickmanWed, December 3, 2025 at 4:31 PM UTC·8 min readAs the WNBA and the players’ union pursue a new collective bargaining agreement, sources with knowledge of the negotiations told The Athletic the league believes it has delivered a salary structure based on revenue rather than being fixed in the CBA.
The latest proposals from the WNBA allow total compensation to rise with increased revenue, tie the salary cap to revenue growth and feature massive jumps in player compensation.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementHowever, sources said the WNBA’s current salary structure proposal would result in the players receiving less than 15 percent of total league revenue. That percentage would decrease over the life of the CBA, based on the league’s revenue projections.
The WNBA is proposing a system in which a portion of league revenue would be shareable, with 50 percent of that portion going to players, sources with knowledge of the negotiations said. How that metric is determined is unclear, but it would result in a projected $1.2 million of total compensation for max players in the first year of the agreement, with that figure expected to rise significantly.
The average compensation in 2026 is projected to be at least $500,000 under the new proposal.
The current CBA has a mechanism in which excess revenue (after a specified target is met) is shared with the players: 30 percent is taken off the top as a “cost of revenue,” and the remaining 70 percent is split between the league and players. That provision has never been exercised because targets were cumulative starting in 2020, and the WNBA fell behind during the pandemic.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementThe proposed revenue metric in the league’s new proposal would also have a cost-of-revenue component and is not expected to comprise the league’s total revenue.
In the league’s latest proposal, when the WNBA conducts its year-end audit, if players have not yet received 50 percent of the revenue metric, the remainder will be allotted to them in payouts.
A salary cap will remain in place, which the league hopes will ensure competitive balance, sources said. However, total compensation might exceed wages under the cap because of the revenue-sharing component.
The league presented its latest proposal last weekend after the sides agreed to a second extension to its deadline. The league presented its latest proposal last weekend, and the union countered with its proposal on Tuesday evening. The two sides are scheduled to meet again this week. Even with the league and union agreeing to extend the expiration of the current CBA to Jan. 9, sources have said “significant gaps” remain in negotiations. A hang-up persists regarding what makes up the segment of league revenue that will be shareable with the players, and what percentage is shared.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement“I don’t feel like there’s any cultivation of a culture of trust,” WNBPA president Nneka Ogwumike, a 14-year veteran who plays for the Seattle Storm, told The Athletic on Wednesday. “We don’t feel valued in these talks as they stand today. … I feel like we’ve been heard, but not listened to. And I’m hoping that that changes in this 40-day extension, because what we want to do is get a good deal done.”
Though discussions around a new CBA have primarily focused on the salary system, other matters have been addressed in proposals exchanged between the league and the players’ union. Here is the state of the talks on some other critical topics:
Draft combine
The WNBA has proposed holding a draft combine in the offseason. To be eligible for the draft, invited players would be required to participate. In the league’s proposal, base rookie contract salaries of invited players who did not participate without an excused absence would be reduced by half.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementThe WNBA’s proposal comes as the NBA bargained a combine clause into its latest CBA in 2023. The NBA and NBPA agreed that all players invited to the combine must attend and participate or be ineligible to be drafted until the “first subsequent draft for which the player attends and fully participates,” with some exceptions. In the NBA’s agreement, participation includes league medical examinations and sharing medical history, as well as taking part in various drills, team interviews and media circuits, among other assessments.
Core designation
The WNBPA has proposed eliminating the core designation — the WNBA’s proverbial franchise tag. As of now, the league has rejected the idea. The union is broadly looking to eliminate team-exclusive negotiating rights.
Whether the core is a part of the new agreement is also relevant to the expansion draft rules, as previous expansion drafts have included regulations regarding the number of core players.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementThe league also seeks to limit the number of guaranteed contracts teams can offer players. Currently, teams have a limit of six veteran-protected contracts. The union is looking to remove the per-team limit.
Rookie-scale contracts
In the current CBA, rookie-scale contracts last four seasons, including a team option on the fourth year. The union would like to reduce the contract length to three years so players can reach free agency at a younger age.
If a player enters the league at 22 — the lower limit for domestic players — she might not hit unrestricted free agency until 29, after four years on the rookie scale, one year of restricted free agency and two years of being cored.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementThe league has repeatedly not engaged with the union on reducing the length of the rookie contract.
One way to allow players to reach free agency sooner would be to lower the age limit. However, a source says that the topic has not come up. Currently, players in the NCAA have to be 22 in the year of the draft, and international prospects are draft-eligible at 19.
Expanded season footprint
The league proposed starting training camps as early as mid-March in its most recent proposal. The current CBA allows the league to begin training camp as early as April 1, but it has never opened camps before mid-April under the present CBA.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementSeveral scheduling conflicts could arise if the league moved up the training camp start date. Though the Unrivaled season ends by mid-March, some international professional leagues, including EuroLeague and potentially Project B, would be impacted. The WNBA has not included a concrete exclusivity clause in its proposals, but some around the league see the potential footprint adjustment as a step toward exclusivity.
WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert has previously expressed caution about moving up the season’s start date. Still, she has said she’s open to extending the season into November.
“It’s a challenge on the front end,” Engelbert said on “The Bill Simmons Podcast” in May. “You can’t move it too much forward if you want the rookies to come in, which we do because it’s a great feeder system for us. So we’ll look at the back end and how far can we go? And how many NFL and college football Saturdays can we go into, and we’ll evaluate all that under the CBA.”
At All-Star Weekend, Engelbert also acknowledged the possibility of the 2026 season extending into November because of the 2026 FIBA World Cup.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementNon-birthing parental leave
The current CBA doesn’t include a leave policy for non-birthing parents. However, throughout negotiations, the WNBPA and league have exchanged proposals about parental leave for non-birthing parents. The league’s latest proposal allows non-birthing parents one week of paid parental leave. It is unclear what the union’s counterproposal includes.
Housing and cars
The league has removed team-issued housing from its proposals. Players are currently provided either team housing or a monthly housing stipend, which varies by team market. (The housing stipend in Las Vegas, for example, was $1,117 last season, and it was $2,647 in New York.) Meanwhile, the players have sought to include housing costs as a benefit covered in the player portion of the revenue-sharing system. The league has also proposed eliminating the provision of cars for players.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementMinimum facility standard, staffing requirements
The WNBPA has proposed a series of requirements for teams involving their facilities, including private practice facility access and various locker room and training spaces. The league has not engaged with the union’s proposal about uniform team standards across practice facilities, including private locker rooms and weight rooms. The sides have engaged in productive discussions about team staffing requirements, standardizing a minimum number of staffers, including strength and conditioning coaches, athletic trainers, doctors and others.
Both parties have a mutual appetite to continue the league-wide charter program.
Retirement benefits
Among the possible benefits for retiring or retired players, the sides have discussed a one-time payment for former players with a certain number of years of service. However, the amount to be tendered is under negotiation. The WNBPA is also seeking a medical benefit for uninsured retired players.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementMental health
The union would like players to receive reimbursement for mental health services in the new CBA. The league has included access to mental health care in its proposals, but a gap remains in the financial component.
Term length
The current CBA went into effect in January 2020 and is set to run through the 2027 season. Both sides were allowed to opt out by Nov. 1, 2024, and the union exercised that option. There is no specification on the length of the next agreement; those terms are expected to be negotiated along with the rest of the CBA.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
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