WNBPA’s Leap of Faith in WNBA CBA Negotiations originally appeared on Sports news. Add The Sporting News as Favorite source by clicking here.
More than a year after opting out of the collective bargaining agreement, the Women’s National Basketball Players Association isn’t much closer to signing a new collective bargaining agreement.
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Negotiations with the WNBA have not proven successful thus far, and both sides faced an inflection point on Sunday: the impending expiration of the CBA, following a mutually agreed 30 day extension of the ABC 2020.
The sticking point remains the WNBPA’s demand that player salaries — and, by proxy, the salary cap — increase in tandem with the WNBA as a business. It’s a model that’s been used for years in the NBA — whose commissioner, Adam Silver, is the boss of WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert.
Will an agreement be reached in the next 40 days?
Shortly before the midnight deadline on Sunday, the WNBA and WNBPA announced another extension in the middle of their ABC discussions.
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The parties agreed to extend the period through the remainder of 2025 and through the second week of January, a 40-day period ending on January 9.
The WNBPA’s statement before the extension was confirmed laid bare its efforts to gain leverage and the upper hand in negotiations.
“We expect substantial movement from the league during this window,” reads the official statement from the WNBPA, which initially proposed a six-week extension from the CBA.
The WNBA’s most recent offer made headlines with a supermax salary exceeding $1.1 million. But the players’ union was unmoved by this offer because it did not contain a sufficiently significant revenue sharing element.
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With the 2026 league schedule already affected (expansion draft and free agency start dates remain unknown), the new 40-day extension could prove decisive not only in these collective bargaining negotiations, but in the future of the WNBA as a whole.
