Pay Them

Today, every WNBA player makes more money than me and I have one thing to say about that.

ABOUT TIME!

Last July, I wrote about the criminal underpayment of WNBA players and their push for pay equity.

Today that becomes a reality as the WNBA Players Association and the WNBA have tentatively reached an agreement.

First… the numbers:

Salary Cap—- amount teams can use for rosters per year

2025 -$1.5million

2026- $7 million

Supermax Salary- Amount teams can play top player for a season

2025 - $249,244

2026- $1.4 million

Minimum Salary- Lowest amount allowed to be paid to WNBA player

2025-$66,079

2026- $600,000

Nerdy But Important

A big component I discussed in the earlier piece was around revenue sharing.

The last contract allowed for revenue sharing, or a split with players based on the revenue collected by the league…but it had a lot of IFS and was pretty low.

The IFS were based on revenue surpassing a certain amount of money and then the WNBA would skim some off the top and THEN the players got about 9.3%.

Seems super fair considering they do the bulk of the work and they are the ones we want to see.

Or.. as David Ruffin of the Temptations aptly stated, Ain’t nobody comin to se you Otis.

The revenue share, along with housing considerations was a big driver in the long and drawn out negotiations. The players wanted more of what they were earning, and the league…well they didn’t agree.

The Big Picture

I am happy for the women. Happy for the future of the WNBA. Happy for the much deserved semblance of respect of women’s sports.

It was always hard watching incredibly talented and dedicated people rush off to foreign countries just to play during the off-season because other countries valued them more.

Remember Brittney Griner getting stuck in Russia?

She was in Russia because there, at least they paid her enough to pay her bills. The GREAT United States did not.

The deal today is hopefully the start. I hope it spurs growth of other investments in women’s sports. More money in soccer, volleyball, or whatever else they want to play.

We should start recognizing a truth Dawn Staley and others told us all along, everyone watches women’s sports.