Several months into negotiations for a new collective bargaining agreement, it appears the Women\u2019s National Basketball Players Association and WNBA have made little progress in striking a deal before the current contract expires after this season.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The WNBPA received its first response from the WNBA last month, which Mercury star Satou Sabally recently called a \u201cslap in the face.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Speaking after Liberty practice Saturday, WNBPA vice president Breanna Stewart said the league\u2019s response was \u201cpretty polar opposite\u201d to the players union\u2019s initial proposal.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was the hardest part,\u201d Stewart said. \u201cIt\u2019s like, we\u2019re not even talking about the same thing right now. We\u2019re talking about X\u2019s and O\u2019s at this point and completely different sides of the game.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Breanna Stewart is the WNBPA vice president. Getty Images<\/p>\n
The slow negotiation process between the two parties is gearing up for what Stewart believes will be a \u201cspicy\u201d meeting between players and the league in Indianapolis during All-Star weekend later this month.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The stakes for this CBA are much different than past years.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The WNBA has exploded in popularity, and the players want to reap the fruits of their labor.\u00a0<\/p>\n
TV viewership and attendance is up. Last year, the WNBA announced an 11-year media rights deal that\u2019s valued at a whopping $2.2 billion.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And just this week, the WNBA announced that it\u2019ll expand to 18 franchises by 2030, with Cleveland, Detroit and Philadelphia each reportedly paying a $250 million expansion fee.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The players opted out of the current deal last October, which gave the union and WNBA a year to hash out a new contract.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Satou Sabally called the the WNBA\u2019s response a \u201cslap in
the face.\u201d IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect<\/p>\n
But with only 118 days until the current CBA expires, there appears to be a lot of work to be done.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The players have been open about their desire for revenue sharing, increased salaries, expanded rosters and having a seat at the table for media rights negotiations among other things.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The WNBPA said it sent multiple proposals to the WNBA over the past few months, but didn\u2019t receive an official response until June.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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WNBPA president Nneka Ogwumike said it took awhile for the league to counter because it didn\u2019t accept the union\u2019s initial drafts as legitimate proposals.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ogwumike and the rest of the union went back to the drawing board and added more details. The players held meetings two or three times a week even after the season started.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been made clear that this perception that the players don\u2019t understand the business,\u201d Ogwumike told reporters after Storm practice Saturday. \u201c[WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert] told me that to my face myself.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Breanna Stewart looks on during the Liberty\u2019s loss to the
Dream on June 29, 2025. NBAE via Getty Images<\/p>\n
Ogwumike believes the players have submitted a \u201cfair\u201d bid.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to have a growing portion of the revenue share,\u201d she said. \u201cWe want this league to be exactly what it is today and more. So I\u2019m hoping that something positive progressive yields from this meeting that we\u2019ll have in Indy.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
WNBPA executive director Terri Carmichael Jackson said in May that the union is committed to negotiating \u201cfor as long as it takes\u201d on a new CBA and didn\u2019t rule out a potential work stoppage. She hoped that the two parties would have made \u201csignificant progress\u201d by All-Star weekend, which is scheduled for July 18-19.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But the process up to this point has been \u201ca little bit slow,\u201d Stewart said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom the players\u2019 perspective, it\u2019s hard to be able to navigate this during the middle of the season, but also we know how important it is and really getting it done before the end of October and we\u2019re making that effort to be able to do both,\u201d Stewart said. \u201cThe fact that it\u2019s been a little bit slow to start is tough, but hopeful things will ramp up now after getting their proposal back. We have a big meeting in Indy at All-Star and it\u2019s gonna be spicy.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Several months into negotiations for a new collective bargaining agreement, it appears the Women\u2019s National Basketball Players Association…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":151450,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3724],"tags":[7,5441,3801,66,458],"class_list":{"0":"post-151449","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-breanna-stewart","10":"tag-new-york-liberty","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-wnba"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/114807039904026950","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151449"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151449\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/151450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}