Caitlin Clark, Sabrina Ionescu and the league\u2019s top players want to be paid like the superstars they are following the highest-rated season in women\u2019s basketball history. Other leagues are watching closely.<\/p>\n
Four athletes, two coaches, one owner and a top agent from women\u2019s basketball made it onto Forbes\u2019 2025 list of America\u2019s Most Powerful Women in Sports<\/a>, more than any other league or sport.<\/p>\n Given the WNBA\u2019s surging cultural and financial clout in the last few years, this relative dominance makes sense. An 11-year, $2.2 billion media rights deal will begin with the 2026 season, quadrupling<\/a> the value of the league\u2019s previous contracts. Teams that were purchased for $2 million at the beginning of this decade\u2014like the Las Vegas Aces, which earlier this month took home its third championship in four years\u2014are today worth more than $300 million. In fact, the franchises on the Forbes list of most valuable WNBA teams<\/a> carry a $272 million average valuation, a figure that is 14.4 times average revenue\u2014far higher than the multiple in the National Women\u2019s Soccer League (8.8x<\/a>) as well as in men\u2019s leagues like the NBA (11.7x<\/a>), MLS (9.3x<\/a>) and the NFL (9x<\/a>).<\/p>\n Those numbers go a long way to explain why W stars like Caitlin Clark and Sabrina Ionescu proudly wore \u201cPay Us What You Owe Us\u201d shirts during the 2025 WNBA All-Star Weekend this summer\u2014and why power players across all of women\u2019s sports are watching to see what happens when the W\u2019s collective bargaining agreement (CBA) expires on October 31.<\/p>\n According to NBA commissioner Adam Silver, a big pay raise is coming. \u201cThey are going to get a big increase in this cycle of collective bargaining,\u201d Silver said on the Today show Tuesday<\/a>. \u201cAnd they deserve it.\u201d However, Silver also noted that revenue share \u201cisn\u2019t the right way to look at it because there\u2019s so much more revenue in the NBA. You should look at it in absolute numbers in terms of what they\u2019re making.\u201d<\/p>\n The WNBA\u2019s current CBA, signed in 2020, was historic in its time; it raised the average playing salary to $130,000<\/a> and added maternity and childcare benefits, laying the groundwork for the league\u2019s current stage of growth. But it predates the rise of talents like Caitlin Clark (No. 4 on the Forbes Power list), and both sides are now negotiating in a dramatically different environment. Despite record revenues, WNBA players still receive just 9.3% of league income, according to Bloomberg<\/a>\u2014compared with roughly 50<\/a>% for NBA players and 48%<\/a> for the NFL.<\/p>\n Napheesa Collier #24 of the Minnesota Lynx speaks to the media prior to the 2025 AT&T WNBA All-Star Game (Photo by Michael Hickey\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n Getty Images<\/p>\n \u201cThe league has a buzzword that they\u2019ve rolled out as talking points for the CBA as to why they can\u2019t pay the players what we\u2019re worth, and that word is sustainability,\u201d Minnesota Lynx star Napheesa Collier said during her barn-burner of a season-ending press conference<\/a> earlier this month. Collier, along with her Unrivaled league cofounder and New York Liberty forward Breanna Stewart, sits at No. 9 on the Forbes Power list because of their combined influence in the market as players and cofounders. (Full disclosure: Forbes EVP Moira Forbes invested in an early fundraising round for Unrivaled, and Ally Financial, which sponsors the Most Powerful Women In Sports list, was an early investor in the league but had no input in this inaugural ranking.)<\/p>\n \u201cWe have more leverage now than we ever had as women\u2019s athletes, and [are] using that to our advantage,\u201d Collier said at a CNBC event in May<\/a>. \u201cWe\u2019re preparing ourselves in that we know our worth, and we know when to put our foot down.\u201d<\/p>\n Collier and her peers know their worth because of the way they\u2019ve seen the money flow in recent years. WNBA executives see it, too.<\/p>\n \u201cThe power that this league holds is one of the most powerful sports leagues in the world, let alone a women\u2019s sports league,\u201d Jess Smith, the president of the Golden State Valkyries, tells Forbes. The Valkyries are the W\u2019s newest franchise and already poised to become its most valuable club, with revenue for its first year hitting $55 million<\/a> (not including income from national media and sponsorship deals or merchandise sales). That sum is higher than what eight teams from the MLS, a more established men\u2019s league, recorded last season.<\/p>\n \u201cFor years, people have been asking for more from this league,\u201d Valkyries president Jess Smith tells Forbes. \u201cAs the first expansion team, we were the first answer to more.\u201d<\/p>\n Elsa\/Getty Images<\/p>\n While pay negotiations aren\u2019t unique to women\u2019s basketball, the WNBA\u2019s moment has become a benchmark for the broader women\u2019s sports landscape. Tori Huster, deputy executive director of the NWSL Players Association, helped negotiate two landmark NWSL CBAs, including a 2024 deal<\/a> that abolished the draft, established unrestricted free agency and increased player compensation. \u201cCertainly because of the growth of women\u2019s sports\u2014and you have so many of the players elevating visibility and viewership\u2014it\u2019s obvious that coming back to the table is in everybody\u2019s best interest,\u201d she says. \u201cThe [W] just needs to realize that.\u201d<\/p>\n Huster also says that other players\u2019 unions look to the WNBA as a blueprint for collective action. \u201cThe W has been around for so long, and they are a fierce collective group,\u201d Huster says. \u201cWhen we are looking at trying to have solidarity amongst our members, they are a prime example. No matter how many Caitlin Clarks or Breanna Stewarts have made their own name, they are stuck together, and they do an excellent job of understanding what the collective needs of their members are.\u201d<\/p>\n The league\u2019s success and the players\u2019 power to command attention have made tension between the two camps difficult to ignore. But Smith, the Valkyries\u2019 president, cautions against drawing too many conclusions about all women\u2019s sports leagues from the ins and outs of bargaining at the W.<\/p>\n \u201cFirst and foremost, no one is like, \u2018Well, the NFL\u2019s success is dependent on the NBA\u2019s success,\u2019\u201d Smith says. \u201cThere can be multiple women\u2019s sports leagues that are successful in many different and measurable ways. \u2026 The WNBA is already one of the most powerful sports leagues in the world, and by far, in my opinion, leading the charge for how to commercialize the business around women\u2019s sports.\u201d<\/p>\n \nMore from ForbesForbesInside Michele Kang\u2019s Plan To Revolutionize Women\u2019s Soccer: \u2018Not Some Corporate DEI Project\u2019By Justin Birnbaum<\/a>ForbesMeet Billionaire Tennessee Titans Owner Amy Adams Strunk\u2014And Nine Other Women Changing The Game In The NFLBy Amy Feldman<\/a>ForbesThe World\u2019s Highest-Paid Female Athletes 2024By Brett Knight<\/a>ForbesDawn Staley Asserted Her Value – And Has Found Her Purpose As Coach<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Caitlin Clark, Sabrina Ionescu and the league\u2019s top players want to be paid like the superstars they are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":231671,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[49,48,82,630],"class_list":{"0":"post-231670","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\/231670","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=231670"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231670\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/231671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}