{"id":220674,"date":"2025-10-17T21:22:14","date_gmt":"2025-10-17T21:22:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/220674\/"},"modified":"2025-10-17T21:22:14","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T21:22:14","slug":"wnba-labor-strife-is-no-bueno","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/220674\/","title":{"rendered":"WNBA Labor Strife Is \u2018No Bueno\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Front<\/a><\/p>\n

Afternoon Edition<\/p>\n

October 17, 2025<\/p>\n

As the WNBA faces internal strife, the league and the players\u2019 association are drawing closer to the Oct. 31 deadline to ratify a new collective bargaining agreement. And owners in other leagues are weighing in. Islanders co-owner Jonathan Ledecky told FOS the WNBA could learn from the NHL.<\/p>\n

\u2014Eric Fisher<\/a>, Annie Costabile<\/a>, and David Rumsey<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Nicole Pereira Photography<\/p>\n

The last month of the WNBA has looked more like a reality series.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A new WNBA champion was crowned with the Las Vegas Aces solidifying their dynasty era, but not before commissioner Cathy Engelbert was publicly called out by one of the league\u2019s preeminent stars, Minnesota Lynx forward Napheesa Collier. Less than a week later, Engelbert denied Collier\u2019s characterization of their previously private conversation, specifically that Indiana Fever guard Caitlin Clark should be \u201cgrateful\u201d<\/a> for the opportunities the WNBA provides her.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When Engelbert took the mic at the WNBA Finals to present the Aces with their third trophy in four years, her voice was drowned out by a stadium of nearly 20,000 booing. Now, owners from other leagues are weighing in on the state of negotiations between the WNBA and the players\u2019 union.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you think about sports, it works when the employees and stockholders are aligned,\u201d Islanders co-owner Jon Ledecky said during the Front Office Sports Asset Class summit Thursday. \u201cThe fans are our stockholders, and the players are in essence the employees. What you\u2019re seeing now in the WNBA spilling into the public view is no bueno. It\u2019s not a good idea.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The WNBA and the Women\u2019s National Basketball Players Association have until Oct. 31 to ratify a new collective bargaining agreement.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If that deadline comes and goes without a new CBA, both parties can agree to an extension, which multiple sources have said will likely be necessary, similar to the 2019 negotiations in which a 60-day extension was needed to come to an agreement. A new CBA was reached just before the start of free agency in 2020.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The NHL is entering a new season with labor peace\u2014while the WNBA’s CBA standoff continues.<\/p>\n

Islanders owner Jon Ledecky says the WNBA’s public turbulence is not good:<\/p>\n

“What you’re seeing now in the WNBA spilling into the public view is no bueno.”<\/p>\n

Presented by @Dealmakertech<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/H3q2hAqCzP<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Front Office Sports (@FOS) October 16, 2025<\/a><\/p>\n

To Ledecky\u2019s point, the contrast between the WNBA situation and what\u2019s happening now in the NHL, where he operates, could hardly be more stark.\u00a0(Several owners have teams in both the WNBA and NHL: Ted Leonsis owns Washington\u2019s Mystics and Capitals, Larry Tanenbaum is the governor for Toronto\u2019s Maple Leafs and Tempo, and the Canadiens\u2019 owners are in the Tempo ownership group.)<\/p>\n

The NHL and NHL Players\u2019 Association this past summer reached a four-year extension<\/a> to their collective bargaining agreement, ensuring labor peace until at least September 2030. The deal arrived with no public rancor of any kind, and had been telegraphed nearly a year in advance<\/a>, as league commissioner Gary Bettman said in October 2024 that the relationship with the union was \u201cin a good place.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The current labor deal in hockey is a fundamental part of a period of historic strength for the sport<\/a>, one that also includes fast-rising revenues, a salary cap growing in commensurate fashion, impactful new contracts<\/a> for several major stars, and rising interest in expansion<\/a> that will include a $2 billion entry fee more than triple the level from just four years ago.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Getting to the current point in hockey, however, involved many tough periods in the 1990s and early 2000s. The NHL lost nearly half of the 1994\u201395 season due to a management lockout, and then the entire 2004\u201305 season was wiped out due to a lockout. Labor issues then resurfaced in 2012\u201313, again canceling half of the season. (Ledecky bought a minority stake in the Islanders in 2014, after the last lockout, but he was a minority owner of the Capitals for years before that.)<\/p>\n

In each of those episodes, the introduction and implementation of a salary cap was a fundamental issue and created widespread discord. Ultimately, though, the two sides have landed on a structure that has helped produce the current success.<\/p>\n

Ledecky said those periods produced some hard lessons that have now been well learned by the league and union.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you make a deal that shares revenue, as we do in the NHL, 50-50, with a hard cap, you have labor peace. You have a sense of growing the brand and the game together, and your players become your partners,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s incredibly important for the health of the league.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the NBA, similar to the NHL, revenue is at about a 50-50 split between players and owners. But the WNBA has a convoluted ownership model that makes sharing revenue more complicated.<\/p>\n

The WNBA stakeholders are divided into three buckets: 42% of the league is owned by the 30 NBA owners, another 42% is owned by the WNBA owners, and the remaining 16% belongs to an investor group that was part of a capital raise conducted by the league in 2022. (Some NBA owners are in two or three of those buckets.) This ownership structure has created questions about who will be responsible for sharing revenue with the players.\u00a0<\/p>\n

According to multiple sources, the WNBA\u2019s most recent proposal<\/a> includes a supermax salary around $850,000 and a veteran minimum around $300,000. These numbers are up significantly from the current max, which is $249,244, and minimum of $78,831.\u00a0<\/p>\n

However, players feel the record-breaking capital that has flooded the league in recent years\u2014including a media-rights deal that will bring in more than $200 million annually\u2014needs to be better reflected in their salary structure.\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Jerome Miron-Imagn Images<\/p>\n

As fragmentation continues to mushroom across sports broadcasting, the NBA is well aware it has an issue here of its own making, and it is looking to do something about it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The league is introducing a new \u201cTap to Watch\u201d initiative<\/a> across all of its own media extensions, as well as a variety of outside digital and social media platforms, that will direct fans to live national and local games. The move arrives as the NBA begins $77 billion worth of new media deals this season with Amazon, ESPN, and NBC Sports\u2014a set of contracts that, once football season ends, will involve national games shown every day of the week<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Adding further to the potential confusion for fans, and what Tap to Watch seeks to address, is the involvement of streaming services such as Amazon Prime Video, Peacock, and ESPN\u2019s new direct-to-consumer service<\/a> in the NBA game coverage, beyond the linear platforms for NBC and ESPN.<\/p>\n

In addition to the NBA app, NBA.com, and individual team apps and websites, Tap to Watch will involve Google, Meta, X\/Twitter, Snap, Reddit, Roku, and Dapper Labs from the start of the season on Oct. 21. Later on, others such as FanDuel, Fanatics, and Yahoo Sports will also roll out Tap to Watch, and the function will be localized, allowing fans to access teams in their market.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to be Pollyanna-ish about it. There\u2019s going to be disruption for our fans,\u201d NBA commissioner Adam Silver said last month at the Front Office Sports Tuned In summit<\/a> regarding the new set of media-rights deals. \u201cI recognize that I\u2019m going to be sitting on some stage a few months from now and people are going to be complaining, that you have three partners now and it\u2019s hard to find the games. So the NBA app is going to be a front door to all those services. \u2026 And over time, technology will make this easier.\u201d<\/p>\n

The NBA now has full control of its in-house platforms<\/a> after a dramatic reworking of its deal with TNT Sports.<\/p>\n

Bigger Concerns<\/p>\n

The fragmentation issue has become much more prominent across sports in recent years as many major pro leagues beyond the NBA have struck rights deals with an increasing number of outlets. That strategy allows games to be shown across a wide number of platforms in an effort to reach fans where they are, but also makes games more difficult to find on a night-to-night basis.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s never been a better time [to be a fan] because, let\u2019s face it, every sport in the world is available in some fashion or another to watch. That wasn\u2019t the case not that many years back,\u201d Apple SVP of services Eddy Cue said this week at the Autosport Business Exchange NYC conference. \u201cWe can all watch everything, but it\u2019s very hard to find. You have to sign up for 1,200 subscriptions around them. And if you\u2019re traveling, you\u2019re screwed. It\u2019s not a great experience for customers.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

MLB commissioner Rob Manfred, also speaking last month at the Tuned In summit<\/a>, similarly acknowledged a need for that league to simplify access to games for fans. As a result, MLB is pursuing a more centralized media strategy beginning after 2028, when its current national-rights deals expire.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf there\u2019s a centralized approach, it\u2019s a lot easier to get into a world where a fan has a reduced number of places to look for a particular game,\u201d Manfred said. \u201cWhen you have to pause and think about where a game might be, that\u2019s not ideal from a fan\u2019s perspective.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\"Sep
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

North Carolina plays at Cal on Friday in front of a national TV audience on ESPN (albeit at 10:30 p.m. ET), but the focus on the football program in the lead-up to the game has once again strayed to off-field endeavors.<\/p>\n

As questions and concerns continue to mount<\/a> during Bill Belichick\u2019s debut season in Chapel Hill, the latest development in the soap-opera-like saga is the revelation that UNC GM Michael Lombardi traveled to Saudi Arabia earlier this year\u2014and confusion about whether the trip was on official school business and what correspondence there was with the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI can confirm that Michael Lombardi did travel to Saudi Arabia at the request of a Saudi national who is a college football fan, interested in supporting Coach Belichick,\u201d UNC vice chancellor for communications and marketing Dean Stoyer told Front Office Sports on Friday. \u201cSeparately, I\u2019d be remiss not to share that earlier reports of meeting with the PIF or investing in UNC are inaccurate.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Stoyer told The Athletic that \u201cthe Saudis\u201d paid to host the trip, and that neither UNC athletics nor university funds were used to pay for the trip.<\/p>\n

With a salary of $1.5 million a year, Lombardi\u2014a longtime Belichick confidant who worked for the Patriots from 2014 to 2016\u2014is the highest-paid GM in college sports.<\/p>\n

A request for comment from the PIF, which is the financial backer of LIV Golf, was not immediately returned.<\/p>\n

Game of Telephone<\/p>\n

News of Lombardi\u2019s trip was broken by journalist Pablo Torre, who posted on X\/Twitter on Thursday afternoon<\/a>, \u201cMultiple sources tell me that UNC general manager Mike Lombardi left the team in August, two weeks before the season-opener, to fundraise in Saudi Arabia.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Torre promised to reveal more information on Friday\u2019s episode of his show, Pablo Torre Finds Out, which is part of The Athletic Podcast Network. In that episode<\/a>, Torre said, \u201cJust to give you a sense of what Carolina\u2019s general manager has been quietly up to: This was, I\u2019m told, two weeks before the season opener against TCU\u2014what multiple sources tell me is that Mike Lombardi, with his assistant general manager, Lance Thompson, was in Saudi Arabia to try and fundraise over there.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

But before that episode was released Friday morning, The Athletic reported Thursday<\/a> that Lombardi went to Saudi Arabia to seek an investment from the PIF. The Athletic later issued a correction to the story, saying Lombardi met with a Saudi national only about general fundraising for the team.<\/p>\n

To date, the PIF is not known to have invested in any collegiate athletic operations, so it\u2019s unclear what would be allowed if any deal were to progress, and what sort of university and NCAA approvals would be necessary to facilitate such an arrangement.<\/p>\n

Saudi Sojourns<\/p>\n

Regardless of Lombardi\u2019s intentions, he is not the first college football official to travel to Saudi Arabia on a potential fundraising mission.<\/p>\n

In 2024, former Colorado special teams coordinator Trevor Reilly took a trip to the Middle East<\/a> in an attempt to secure funding from the PIF. Reilly and Colorado said he acted on his own, and not on official school business. Reilly resigned from his position on Aug. 1, 2024, a few weeks before his Middle East trip was made public<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Read more about UNC\u2019s woes in David Rumsey\u2019s story<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"\/<\/p>\n

Formula One and Apple agreed to a five-year, $700 million deal for Apple TV to stream F1 races in the U.S. The league has had a broadcast deal with ESPN since 2018. FOS newsletter writer David Rumsey explains why this move made sense for the world\u2019s most popular racing league, and how this positions Apple TV in the arms race for live sports rights.<\/p>\n

Plus, former Alabama running back Damien Harris joins to preview the \u201cThird Saturday in October\u201d game between Alabama and Tennessee, and explain why the days of a clear top dog in college football could be behind us.<\/p>\n

Also, FOS reporter Colin Salao preps us for the upcoming NBA season, Curt Cignetti gets a big payday from the Indiana Hoosiers, and Joe Flacco does it again.<\/p>\n

Watch the full episode here<\/a>.<\/p>\n


\n\"Aug
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

Barcelona \u2b07 Unrest continues around the LaLiga club\u2019s plan to play a match at Hard Rock Stadium near Miami on Dec. 20 against Villareal. The international game was finalized after years of conflict between LaLiga and UEFA and FIFA, recently resolved when UEFA reluctantly withdrew its objection to the plan. Despite strong interest in the trip among LaLiga and Barcelona leaders, the team\u2019s coaches and players remain upset about traveling more than 4,000 miles for the match, echoing widespread concerns among fans. \u201cMy players are not happy. I am not happy, but LaLiga decided that we will play this game,\u201d Barcelona coach Hansi Flick said<\/a> Friday. <\/p>\n

Phillies \u2b06\u2b07 As the Yankees are searching for answers<\/a> after an early playoff exit, so, too, are the Phillies. Despite increasing regular-season win totals each of the last four seasons, the postseason departures have grown progressively earlier for Philadelphia. President of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski, however, said he will not be radically changing a team that had the No. 4 highest luxury-tax payroll this year at $308 million. \u201cI don\u2019t think you just break up clubs,\u201d because of repeated playoff losses, he said. \u201cWe have a very substantial big-league payroll, and I don\u2019t see that that\u2019s going to change. \u2026 I don\u2019t think we\u2019re going to have a $400 million payroll [though]. I just don\u2019t think that\u2019s a practicality.\u201d<\/p>\n

Graham Neff \u2b06 Clemson has signed its athletic director to a contract extension<\/a> through July 2031, increasing his base salary from $850,000 to $1 million this year, and up to $1.5 million by 2030. Neff joined the Tigers in 2023.<\/p>\n

FIFA World Cup \u2b06 More than one million tickets have already been sold for next summer\u2019s soccer tournament in North America. With the men\u2019s World Cup expanding to 48 teams, fans from 212 countries and territories purchased tickets in a presale draw that ran from mid-September to mid-October.<\/p>\n

<\/a>ESPN has broadcast F1 in the U.S. since 2018.<\/a>777 Partners failed to complete its purchase of Everton in 2023.<\/a>Cignetti signed a new contract five days after Indiana upset Oregon.<\/p>\n