Kelly Krauskopf, President of the WNBA\u2019s Indiana Fever and a member of the WNBA\u2019s labor committee, was asked about the ongoing collective-bargaining agreement (CBA) negotiations during USC\u2019s National Girls and Women in Sports Day event on Monday. <\/p>\n
USC Annenberg Dean Willow Bay brought up the labor strife early, asking how the league will align the needs of the sport with the tension it has with the players.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re in the first era\u2026where there\u2019s a specific rights fee,\u201d Krauskopf answered. \u201cWe\u2019re scaling the business as quickly as we can, and it\u2019s happened quickly. You need more teams, you need more games\u2026you need more talent. There are a lot of things happening very quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n
It would\u2019ve been difficult for Dean Bay to avoid asking questions about the ongoing labor negotiations. Early on Monday<\/a>, the WNBA met with the Players\u2019 Association (WNBPA). After two deadline extensions, the two have yet to come to terms for a new CBA framework. While the players\u2019 union submitted a proposal in December, the league did not come to the table with a counteroffer or a response. <\/p>\n The two sides are struggling to agree on revenue sharing and how high a salary cap should be<\/a>. The league wants revenue sharing to be calculated by net revenue, while the players\u2019 union proposal builds a revenue sharing model around gross revenue. The WNBA claims that such a proposal would threaten the league\u2019s financial stability. The relationship between players and the league grew even more tense when Minnesota Lynx forward Napheesa Collins publicly shared comments made by WNBA commissioner Cathy Englebert, including disparaging comments aimed towards the Fever\u2019s own star guard Caitlin Clark. Collins is both vice president of the players\u2019 union and co-founder of the competing women\u2019s league, Unrivaled. Engelbert\u2019s comments did not sit well with some of the players around the league.<\/p>\n When asked if the league was willing to lose games in 2026 in order to guarantee its preferred terms, Krauskopf said, \u201cI wish I could answer any question around the CBA, but I just can\u2019t. I don\u2019t think anybody wants to lose games next season, so that\u2019s a personal thought for me.\u201d<\/p>\n Earlier in the discussion, Krauskopf spoke about how much the WNBA has grown during her tenure with the Fever, and how the organization had to scale up its staff after Clark joined the team in 2024. The significance of the WNBA\u2019s growth is not lost on Krauskopf.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re building another pillar in American culture\u2026we have not seen anything like this,\u201d Krauskopf said. \u201cIt happened quickly, with brands aligning with women athletes\u2026because of the authenticity\u2026it\u2019s fresh, it\u2019s new.\u201d<\/p>\n Krauskopf<\/a> has been a part of the WNBA, or \u201cthe W\u201d, since the late 1990s, when she became the league\u2019s director of operations. She then became the Fever\u2019s general manager in 2000, a position she would hold for 17 years. After a shorter stint with the NBA\u2019s Indiana Pacers, Krauskopf returned to the Fever as team president in 2025.<\/p>\n Generally, Krauskopf seemed optimistic about the future of the WNBA, and its place in both sports and American culture. With growing revenues and increasing viewership, that optimism is well-founded. However, if there is anything that could quash this momentum, it is a fragile relationship between players and the league finally snapping<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kelly Krauskopf, President of the WNBA\u2019s Indiana Fever and a member of the WNBA\u2019s labor committee, was asked…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":455555,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[49,735,48,2803,186952,186953,82,6405,630,8811,56438],"class_list":["post-455554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-ca","tag-caitlin-clark","tag-canada","tag-indiana-fever","tag-kelly-krauskopf","tag-national-girls-and-women-in-sports-day","tag-sports","tag-usc","tag-wnba","tag-wnba-cba","tag-wnbpa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/455554","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=455554"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/455554\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/455555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=455554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=455554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=455554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}