As with most public tension between the league and its players in the past several months, revenue sharing was at the center of everything. Let\u2019s unpack this latest spat and what it means in the context of negotiations.<\/p>\n
Silver\u2019s revenue share comments<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, Oct. 21, Silver did a sit-down interview<\/a> on NBC\u2019s \u201cThe Today Show\u201d about the start of the 2025-26 NBA season. As the interview with Craig Melvin would down, Melvin asked Silver<\/a> whether he believed players should receive a larger share of revenue in the next CBA, citing the 9% figure that has been widely referenced<\/a> in public debate of the topic.<\/p>\n Silver began his answer with a direct answer of \u201cyes\u201d, which is in line with what the WNBPA is fighting for. What raised alarms for the union, however, was how Silver continued his answer.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Following that brief affirmation that players should receive a higher share of total revenue, Silver pushed back on framing it strictly in those terms. \u201cI think share isn\u2019t the right way to look at it, because there\u2019s so much more revenue in the NBA,\u201d Silver continued.<\/p>\n When Melvin interjected to ask how people should view it, if not revenue share, Silver recommended \u201cabsolute numbers\u201d as the basis for assessing the negotiations, noting that the players will deserve to make more and will end up making significantly more in the next CBA \u2014 a factual point but a deflection nonetheless.<\/p>\n The bookends of Silver\u2019s answers \u2014 that revenue share should be higher than 9%, and the players deserve the raises they will receive \u2014 are something both sides would agree with, particularly on the raise front.<\/p>\n It doesn\u2019t take a math whiz to see the incoming surge in TV revenue \u2014 which will approximately quadruple beginning next season \u2014 and conclude that the players deserve \u201ca big increase,\u201d as Silver puts it. The few hard numbers the league has offered players that have been reported are roughly in line with the growth in TV money: a starting point of around $850,000 for supermax contracts and $300,000 for minimum contracts, first reported<\/a> by Annie Costabile at Front Office Sports. That\u2019s up from $249,244 for supermax contracts and $70,103 for the lowest-salaried minimum contracts.<\/p>\n But the friction here lies in the details of what that guaranteed raise looks like and the mechanisms for continuing to align the league\u2019s finances with compensation across the life of the next CBA. The WNBPA did not appreciate Silver maintaining the party line about focusing on absolute numbers rather than relative share.<\/p>\n The IX Basketball, a 24\/7\/365 women\u2019s basketball newsroom powered by The Next A poor choice of words<\/p>\n Individual players and statements from the WNBPA have made it very clear for quite some time that they view a salary cap tied directly to league revenue as a necessity. Meanwhile, recent reports say the league has not flinched from its position that revenue sharing should be a stand-alone system, not tied to the salary cap.<\/p>\n In a statement to The Athletic<\/a>, WNBPA executive director Terri Jackson took issue with the insistence on downplaying revenue share and including it in the salary cap, the central pillar of the union\u2019s platform in negotiations.<\/p>\n \u201cYou know they know it\u2019s bad when the best they say they can do is more of the same,\u201d Jackson said. \u201cA fixed salary system and a separate revenue-sharing plan that only includes a piece of a piece of the pie, and pays themselves back first.\u201d<\/p>\n In the statement, Jackson also made multiple references to the word \u201cuncapped\u201d, alleging that the league has misleadingly positioned its latest proposals as having uncapped revenue-sharing potential. Without knowing the actual mechanisms and formula for revenue sharing that the league has proposed, it is impossible to prove or disprove that allegation with absolute certainty. <\/p>\n However, using the 2020 CBA as a comparison casts doubt on such a claim. As we have broken down before here at The IX, the current CBA\u2019s revenue-sharing mechanisms<\/a> are, in fact, uncapped, as players would receive 35% of any dollar above the cumulative revenue targets with no upper limit. <\/p>\n Jackson\u2019s imprecise choice of words has proven to be an unforced error for the union. More effective messaging could have highlighted the pitfalls of the current CBA\u2019s system, which allows for deeply adverse outcomes for players and their compensation.<\/p>\n For example, consider a scenario in which the COVID-19 pandemic does not happen and revenue exactly meets each season\u2019s targets for six straight years. By the end of 2025, league revenue would have tripled from the 2019 starting point. In that scenario, the salary cap rises 3% each season for a total of 19% from 2020 to 2026, but the players would not receive a penny of revenue sharing to show for it.<\/p>\n So while there is indeed no upper limit to the current system, it was designed with the risk of falling even further behind in revenue sharing.<\/p>\n Want even more women\u2019s sports in your inbox?<\/p>\n Subscribe now to The IX Sports<\/a> and receive our daily women\u2019s sports newsletter covering soccer, tennis, basketball, golf, hockey and gymnastics from our incredible team of writers. That includes Basketball Wednesday from founder and editor Howard Megdal.<\/p>\n Readers of The IX Basketball now save 50% on their subscription to The IX.<\/p>\n League office capitalizes on misstep<\/p>\n Instead, the use of the word uncapped became a central piece of a WNBA statement<\/a> that refuted that point.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is incorrect and surprising that the Players Association is claiming that the WNBA has not offered an uncapped revenue sharing model that is directly tied to the league\u2019s performance,\u201d the statement reads. \u201cThe comprehensive proposals we have made to the players include a revenue sharing component that would result in the players\u2019 compensation increasing as league revenue increases \u2014 without any cap on the upside.\u201d<\/p>\n Had Jackson centered the complaint around a perceived deception of what the proposal would actually mean for player compensation, the league would not have had the same footing to plainly \u2014 and likely correctly \u2014 decry it as incorrect.\u00a0<\/p>\n Without the misstep, the league may also not have gone as far with a second claim in the statement \u2014 or have felt the need to issue the statement at all.<\/p>\n \u201cWhile we have delivered comprehensive proposals that seek an agreement that will benefit all,\u201d the statement continued, \u201cthe Players Association has yet to offer a viable economic proposal and has repeatedly refused to engage in any meaningful way on many of our proposal terms.\u201d<\/p>\n That the league claims the PA\u2019s proposals are not even \u201cviable\u201d financially is perhaps the strongest and most pointed public rebuke of the players to emerge in these negotiations.<\/p>\n Order \u2018Rare Gems\u2019 and save 30% If you enjoy Megdal\u2019s coverage of women\u2019s basketball every Wednesday at The IX Sports, you will love \u201cRare Gems: How Four Generations of Women Paved the Way for the WNBA.\u201d Click the link below to order<\/a> and enter MEGDAL30 at checkout to save 30%!<\/p>\n Where do negotiations go from here?<\/p>\n In some ways, it\u2019s a repeat of the news cycle Collier ignited with her statement at Lynx exit interviews in late September. But while this spat was less personal, it\u2019s also coming much closer to the Oct. 31 expiration of the CBA. There\u2019s a chance that deadline can be worked around, extended or even just simply ignored for a while. But with just one week to go until that date, tensions are clearly rising and the gap between parties isn\u2019t appearing to get any smaller.<\/p>\n And there\u2019s clearly a lot of mistrust from the players towards the league. In\u00a0an interview with Forbes<\/a>\u00a0over the summer, WNBPA president Nneka Ogwumike<\/a> accused the league of \u201ca lack of transparency\u201d about its financials and said the WNBPA goes off of \u201ceducated estimations\u201d on how much revenue the league makes.<\/p>\n Later in the summer, a league spokesperson refuted any accusation about the lack of transparency to The IX Basketball: \u201cWe annually provide the WNBPA with audited financial statements and records for the league, so there is full transparency on whether revenue sharing is triggered.\u201d<\/p>\n But what revenue should and shouldn\u2019t be considered is, itself, up for debate. According to Costabile, the league\u2019s current proposal only accounts for league office revenue and not any revenue generated by individual teams. As Jackson\u2019s statement said, the union views that as \u201ca piece of a piece of the pie.\u201d<\/p>\n In spite of all of the protracted negotiations and seeming hostility, there is also reason to be optimistic, and it is tied to the very source of this saga. After all, the reason there is so much fervent debate about how to allocate revenue is that there is more revenue than ever before.<\/p>\n When appropriately tuned, either system can yield advantageous results for either side of the negotiations. That\u2019s the nice thing about talks like this, where the subject being fought over is basically just an algebraic equation. Between the two proposals lies an endless combination of inputs, and plenty of opportunity for modifications on top of them.\u00a0<\/p>\n The players could sacrifice some money up front in exchange for elevating percentages of direct revenue over the course of the agreement. The owners could significantly raise their salary cap figures to a point where the players can stomach the risk of a regressing revenue share. Or the owners could tune their current system to eliminate that risk entirely, if they haven\u2019t already. <\/p>\n There has never been more room to maneuver in negotiations. But with so much at stake for both sides, finding a middle ground is sure sounding a lot easier said than done.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As with most public tension between the league and its players in the past several months, revenue sharing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":238101,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[23867,49,48,11628,4233,4653,82,112336,630,27804,56438],"class_list":{"0":"post-238100","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wnba","8":"tag-adam-silver","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-cathy-engelbert","12":"tag-cba","13":"tag-nneka-ogwumike","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-terri-jackson","16":"tag-wnba","17":"tag-wnba-collective-bargaining-agreement","18":"tag-wnbpa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238100","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=238100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238100\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/238101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
The IX Basketball<\/a>: A basketball newsroom brought to you by The IX Sports<\/a>. 24\/7\/365 women\u2019s basketball coverage, written, edited and photographed by our young, diverse staff and dedicated to breaking news, analysis, historical deep dives and projections about the game we love.<\/p>\n
Howard Megdal, founder and editor of The IX Basketball and The IX Sports, wrote this deeply reported book. \u201cRare Gems\u201d follows four connected generations of women\u2019s basketball pioneers, from Elvera \u201cPeps\u201d Neuman to Cheryl Reeve and from Lindsay Whalen to Sylvia Fowles and Paige Bueckers.<\/p>\n