With the current collective bargaining agreement set to expire on Friday, the WNBA has offered the WNBPA a 30-day extension to continue negotiating a new CBA, sources confirmed to The Athletic on Tuesday. ESPN was the first to report.

Regarding an extension, WNBPA senior advisor and legal counsel Erin D. Drake said earlier Tuesday on The Athletic’s “No Offseason” podcast: “We’re having constant conversations with players, but that is a strategic decision for everyone to consider. Of course, an extension is always on the table, as are a number of other options.”

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“The biggest benefit (of an extension) is certainty,” Drake added. “You know what the next period under that extension is going to look like. It’s going to look like this agreement. … The drawbacks of that is that you have cemented this reality while you’re negotiating and that things remain the same.”

Drake said she did not expect to see a deal on a new CBA by Friday.

Commissioner Cathy Engelbert entertained the possibility of an extension prior to the start of the WNBA Finals while still expressing hope that a deal could get done by the Oct. 31 deadline. “I feel confident that we can get a deal done, but if not, I think we could do an extension,” Engelbert said. “Hopefully, the Players Association and we will continue to work hard between now and the end of the month.”

A source familiar with the negotiations said that while the players would consider an extension under the right circumstances, “those circumstances do not yet exist.”

The players’ union opted out of the present CBA on Oct. 21, 2024, but the two parties don’t appear to have made much progress on a new deal in the year since. The main sticking point is the issue of revenue share: the league is proposing a structure similar to the current iteration that has a fixed salary cap and potential revenue share if certain targets are achieved, while the WNBPA wants a revenue-sharing system that allows players to partake in all of the revenue the league brings in.

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Regardless of the model, players are expected to see significant salary gains in the new CBA. How they get there remains a point of contention, and neither side is content with how the negotiations have proceeded.

WNBPA executive director Terri Jackson said last week that the league’s response was “to run out the clock”, while the league accused the players union of spending more time “disseminating public disinformation.” The league also said in a statement Tuesday that it submitted its latest proposal to the WNBPA on Oct. 1 and only received a response on Oct. 27.

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

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