NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said on Tuesday he expects WNBA players will get big raises when they eventually strike a deal on a new collective bargaining agreement.<\/p>\n
Appearing on NBC’s “Today” show ahead of the NBA season-opening double-header on Tuesday, Silver was asked if players from the Women’s National Basketball Association deserved a higher share of the league’s revenue.<\/p>\n
“Yes,” said Silver. “I think ‘share’ isn’t the right way to look at it because there’s so much more revenue in the NBA,” said Silver.<\/p>\n
“I think you should look at it in absolute numbers in terms of what they’re making, and they are going to get a big increase in this cycle of collective bargaining, and they deserve it.”<\/p>\n
The NBA owns 42% of the WNBA, whose commissioner reports to Silver.<\/p>\n
The current CBA between the WNBA players’ union and the league is set to expire on October 31. That labor pact was once seen as a landmark deal for women’s sports but is now viewed by many players as woefully inadequate amid a surge in popularity of the WNBA.<\/p>\n
Players are not seeking salaries that are equivalent to NBA players but rather a bigger share of the league’s revenue that’s roughly equivalent to their NBA counterparts.<\/p>\n
WNBA players used the spotlight of the league’s All-Star game in July to champion their cause, warming up in T-shirts bearing slogans such as “Pay Us What You Owe Us,” and fans began cheering “Pay them!” after the final buzzer sounded.<\/p>\n
Any disruption to the 2026 season stands to dent the tremendous momentum the league now enjoys, with two new clubs set to debut next year in Portland and Toronto. REUTERS<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said on Tuesday he expects WNBA players will get big raises when they eventually…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":229971,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[49,48,82,630],"class_list":{"0":"post-229970","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wnba","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-wnba"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=229970"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229970\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/229971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}