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WNBA commissioner and players share different views of bargaining meeting

Gabriela Carroll, The Philadelphia Inquirer on

Published in Basketball

INDIANAPOLIS — WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert said that she felt the league’s in-person meeting with the Women’s National Basketball Players Association on Thursday had been “productive.”

But when the league All-Stars took the court on Saturday for pregame warmups, they wore shirts with a simple message: “Pay Us What You Owe Us.”

Fans echoed the sentiment, chanting “Pay the Players” as Engelbert attempted to award All-Star MVP Napheesa Collier with her trophy. Kelsey Plum said postgame that the WNBPA decided to wear the T-shirts that morning.

“The fans doing that chant gave me chills,” Collier said. “The fact that we kept this so present and so in the conversation, it’s never left my mind.”

On Friday, WNBPA president Nneka Ogwumike characterized Thursday’s in-person meeting as a “missed opportunity,” and vice president Collier called it a “disappointment,” and said the league was nowhere near what the players association asked for. But Engelbert insisted the league wants what the players want.

“We were in a very different place in 2020 than we are in 2025, so I think you’ll see the revenue sharing be much more lucrative as we go forward, because we’re in a better place, quite frankly,” Engelbert said before Saturday’s game. “That’s why I’m so optimistic that we’re going to do something transformational here, because we want the same things as the players want. We want to significantly increase their salary and benefits, while balancing with our owners their ability to have a path to profitability as well as to continued investment.”

Discussions surrounding revenue sharing and salary expectations have headlined the conversation about the collective bargaining agreement, but for fans in Philadelphia, the upcoming CBA will have several ripple effects ahead of the city’s expansion team’s establishment in 2030.

First, the expansion draft rules. The WNBA will add five teams in the next five years, including two teams in 2026, Toronto and Portland. The rules that governed the 2024 expansion draft for the Golden State Valkyries, the league’s newest franchise, may not apply.

 

“We’ll work through the expansion draft rules, because it is something that is collectively bargained,” Engelbert said. “... Stay tuned on that. We’re still working through on what the expansion draft would look like with two teams. If we follow the same rules as what we did with the Valkyries, you can probably figure out what that might look like.”

For a refresher on the Golden State expansion draft, each existing team could protect up to six players from being taken by Golden State. The Valkyries selected one player from each team, and were allowed to pick one pending unrestricted free agent as part of their 12 selections.

The WNBA might be adding five new teams, but Engelbert wasn’t sure if the league would be adding additional games or time to the league calendar. The league currently plays games from May through October, hosts the rookie draft after the conclusion of the women’s college basketball season, and runs into mid-October in the playoffs.

In 2025, the WNBA is playing the maximum number of games allowed under the CBA, with each team playing 44 games, up from 40 in 2023 and 32 in 2021, and is increasing the number of games in the WNBA Finals series from five to seven.

That increased number of games earns more revenue, especially with more teams in the mix, but Engelbert was hesitant when asked about potentially expanding the calendar far past its current October end point.

The WNBA accommodates players who want to play internationally in the Olympics and FIBA World Cup, which each are played once every four years, with the next World Cup in 2026 and the next Olympics in 2028, and can’t start play earlier due to the NCAA season, which ends in April. The NBA season starts in late October. If the WNBA wants to maintain a similar time frame but add additional games, that will limit opportunities for rest for players, something the players have expressed opposition to.

“I don’t think there’s much you can do on the front end,” Engelbert said. “You can do a little bit on the back end. How many college football Saturdays do you want to go into? How many NFL Sundays do you want to go into? Although I would say, our fan base crossover isn’t — that’s why data is really important, to look at what our fan base crossover is with those other sports, and then the NBA would be starting. We generally haven’t overlapped with them on their front end or back end.“


©2025 The Philadelphia Inquirer. Visit inquirer.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

 

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