{"id":543216,"date":"2026-03-17T22:24:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-17T22:24:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/543216\/"},"modified":"2026-03-17T22:24:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T22:24:09","slug":"former-nbpa-head-tamika-tremaglio-discusses-the-wnba-labor-battle-and-the-art-of-bargaining","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/543216\/","title":{"rendered":"Former NBPA Head Tamika Tremaglio Discusses The WNBA Labor Battle And The Art Of Bargaining"},"content":{"rendered":"

For a seventh straight night, the WNBA and players’ union left an all-day collective bargaining session Monday without a deal in place. The two sides have spent around 90 hours in in-person meetings since last Tuesday. Union president Nneka Ogwumike told reporters this past weekend<\/a> that the big issue to resolve remains revenue sharing, namely how to divide the huge sums of money coming into the league from a new $2.2 billion media rights deal, an ongoing slate of expansion, and growing corporate sponsorship interest. Players have consistently sought a salary system tied to gross league revenue, akin to the NBA\u2019s, which grants players 51 percent of all \u201cbasketball-related income.\u201d\u00a0The league\u2019s proposals, meanwhile, have only offered players a share of \u201cnet revenue,\u201d revenue after expenses.<\/p>\n

On Monday afternoon, I spoke with Tamika Tremaglio, who was an advisor to the WNBPA during the 2020 collective bargaining agreement negotiations and later served as executive director of the National Basketball Players Association\u00a0from 2021 to 2023, leading the negotiation of their seven-year CBA finalized in 2023. We discussed the origins of today\u2019s revenue-sharing fight, the role public opinion plays in labor negotiations, the value of all-day bargaining sessions, and the quirky accounting practices common in sports. Our conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.<\/p>\n

For the last week, there have been these marathon negotiating sessions lasting late into the night. Maybe that\u2019s something that you dealt with in your negotiations.<\/p>\n

Yes. When things are intense and you feel like you\u2019ve gotten in a rhythm and you\u00a0may\u00a0get it done and you\u00a0might\u00a0get to conclude it, you want to keep going. You don\u2019t want to lose the momentum, because the pause you take allows people to go into another dimension. They\u2019ll go back home, or they\u2019ll get into other meetings, and you don\u2019t keep that momentum going. Absolutely, we had many nights like that. Many. But I will say that towards the end, we certainly didn\u2019t go on, like\u2014this has been a week, right?<\/p>\n

I think we\u2019re on Day 7 of the all-day sessions.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a lot. We would definitely have all-day sessions. But especially if we knew we were coming back tomorrow anyway, we would stop at a normal hour. So it leads me to believe that they\u2019re really close. Otherwise, you would just call it and come back the next day. I think it must be that they\u2019re close or close on particular issues.<\/p>\n

Brianna Turner, who\u2019s on the executive committee, posted a photo of the hotel conference room where this is all happening. It\u2019s got the big classic boardroom table and notepads and everything. It\u2019s easy for me to understand the other day-to-day work of a player rep, taking the temperature of other players, being in locker rooms. But I wondered\u2014now that we\u2019re at the stage of lawyers typing stuff back and forth, what\u2019s the role of players in these meetings? What voice do they have?<\/p>\n

Now it\u2019s more important than ever, because you really are coming down to where the final decisions are being made. Throughout the negotiations, there have been particular issues that you\u2019ve addressed. They were sending a document back and forth, so you could go to the executive committee. They then go to the players, a player rep has a discussion with their respective team and then brings it back\u2014you have time to talk through and walk through issues. Now we\u2019re at the point where you don’t have that time. You really need to have players present so you can make those final decisions. That\u2019s precisely what happened with the men, and you\u2019re seeing it now with the women as well. For us, we were down to one or two issues at the end and had the players on call so that they would all be there to be able to respond to stuff, because we were in the middle of the season. Now they\u2019re all out of season. The fact that they can be there and be present, I think, is significant and helps a lot to get to the end of this.<\/p>\n

It feels like the seeds of the rev share discussion were planted in the 2020 CBA, which says players could receive a portion of revenue above a certain threshold\u2014money they unlocked for the first time this year, we learned recently<\/a>. What do you remember about the discussion of revenue sharing at the 2020 negotiations and how it set up the current battle?\u00a0<\/p>\n

The real issue in all of this is the lack of transparency and the trust that the players have in the league. If you trust that when you get to net income, they\u2019re going to take out the costs that they should be taking out, or the financials are going to be reported the way in which they really occurred\u2014if that was really happening and you trusted that it would happen, we would not be here. That\u2019s what this is about. It\u2019s really the breakdown of trust. That\u2019s why it\u2019s taking so long, not just because we can\u2019t come down to 40 percent or 26 percent of gross revenue. It\u2019s because there’s this lack of trust that they really have their best interest at heart. That\u2019s what’s causing the challenges here.<\/p>\n

Ownership treating the players as partners in the growth rather than this cost that needs to be managed\u2014that\u2019s when you’re in a position that the entire league benefits, not when you’re treating them like they are an employee only. When you erode trust, you can\u2019t get any of the other things done.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Because you brought up financial reporting, am I correct that your first role in sports union negotiations was forensic accounting?<\/p>\n

That\u2019s correct.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d love to learn a little more about that work. What information do players get, what don\u2019t they get, and how do you help them make sense of it?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Forensic accounting is essentially looking behind the numbers to understand what they mean. When you\u2019re thinking about audit, you\u2019re sort of relying on management’s representations. When a company is audited, you\u2019re looking on the surface. As a forensic accountant, you\u2019re looking behind the numbers so that you can truly understand why something happens the way in which it happens.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For example, in 2024, if you see that expenses have increased by $200 million, you want to understand why those numbers go up so much. Why was there this huge jump? We know that a lot of the expenses in that time period were to prepare for this media deal that will bring future revenue of significance to the players. You need to have somebody explain to you,\u00a0That’s why this occurred,\u00a0or\u00a0That’s why this happened,\u00a0or\u00a0Oh, by the way, we decided to pay one of the coaches three times their salary last year, so that\u2019s why this team took a loss. All of those things are critically important.<\/p>\n

That stuff then kind of gets lost in translation. So many people think the WNBA is losing X amount of money every year, not understanding how creative accounting can get. But those numbers still drive the conversation.\u00a0So often in these labor negotiations, I\u2019ll hear things classified as \u201ca PR win\u201d or \u201cmedia posturing.\u201d The fact that the players were wearing those\u00a0Pay Us What You Owe Us shirts at All-Star weekend<\/a>\u00a0suggests to me that they do see the PR battle as one worth fighting. But how much does public opinion actually matter? At the end of the day, these are people locked in a conference room. Do the billionaires care what the average Joe thinks about the WNBA or whether WNBA players should be paid more?<\/p>\n

Absolutely matters. There is no question. Companies actually put value on that. Quite frankly, public opinion feels like the W is doing so exceptionally well. How could they\u00a0not\u00a0be making more money? And so if you tell someone in a sold-out arena\u2014let\u2019s say the person they\u2019re coming to see is Caitlin Clark\u2014that she\u2019s making $77,000 a year, less than $2,000 for a game that just brought in millions of dollars, that\u2019s a little hard to explain to most people. The fact that public opinion believes that\u2019s not fair and not equitable, that absolutely is weighing on it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On the flip side, public opinion also believes that they should actually have a deal done by now. That\u2019s weighing on the PA side, on the women. They\u2019re trying to respond to public opinion too, because it does seem like this has been a long time\u2014are they just trying to be difficult? We know that\u2019s not the case. They are setting a precedent. They have a lot of weight on their shoulders because this not only impacts how the W will be viewed out into the future, it\u2019s going to impact how women’s sports is viewed into the future.<\/p>\n

It bothers me that people don\u2019t understand the significance of gross vs. net, and that they\u2019ve heard for years that the W is losing money because there are so many things from an accounting perspective that you can do. How many people come in under budget by millions of dollars? They just don\u2019t, because when you get to the end of the month or you get to the end of the quarter, you find a way to spend that money. It\u2019s no different when you\u2019re working in a way in which you know that you\u2019re going to have to give that money up or give it to players when you know that you have a capital expenditure or something like that that you could use the funds for.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That\u2019s exactly what we hear from players, that they\u2019re worried about what costs might suddenly turn up if they were to adopt the league\u2019s proposed revenue sharing system based on revenue minus\u00a0costs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It costs [the NBA and NBPA] millions of dollars to do audits, every year, of BRI, on both sides. If you think about a league with a salary cap of even what the league proposed\u2014of $6.2 million\u2014and it\u2019s going to cost you several million to do an audit, that just doesn\u2019t make sense.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The reality is we probably wouldn\u2019t have as much of an issue between gross and net if the players trusted the league to be fully transparent. That\u2019s the first thing. The second is that it is incredibly costly to audit the teams and the league. You\u2019re basically setting them up to not be successful. If the league actually set it up such that they would pay for the auditing to be done, even though it\u2019s independent, I think that would play to show that they really do want to move in a place that allows for transparency, because right now they\u2019re placing the burden solely on the players.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m an NBA fan, but I find the CBA a bit byzantine, so this may be oversimplified. But from my understanding, the big win of the NBA\u2019s last CBA was getting the definition of BRI expanded so that other things, like licensing money, were included in the pool of \u201cbasketball-related income.\u201d The actual pie got bigger, so to speak.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Making the pie bigger in terms of BRI\u2014what happened there is that the definition has been more strictly applied. It now does apply to mixed-use development, for example. Is this restaurant open on a certain day, or is it closed other days? It\u2019s only open when there are games? Well, then part of that becomes basketball-related income, because but for the players playing, you wouldn\u2019t receive the income. So it’s not a\u00a0new\u00a0rule. It\u2019s just how it\u2019s being applied.<\/p>\n

The whole time, though, the issue of adjusting the BRI percentages wasn\u2019t really on the table, right? The 51-49 player-owner split hasn\u2019t changed in the last two CBAs now, so there were some different and interesting distributional questions. The new luxury tax system was basically both sides deciding to divide their pools differently\u00a0among themselves, and it\u2019s led to new team-building strategies, where certain contracts are more valued than others. This issue seems to come up every time I read about sports labor negotiations: “stars vs. role players.” How do you balance everyone’s interests?\u00a0Should\u00a0you balance everyone’s interests? It\u2019s true that LeBron James or Caitlin Clark are always going to be underpaid in a salary cap league.<\/p>\n

The great thing about the players is they are team players. They recognize that the salary cap is not going to be enough for LeBron or Caitlin Clark, but they\u2019re able to get additional funding from their own branding, their own licensing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There was\u00a0a story last year about MLB commissioner Rob Manfred at a Braves investor meeting<\/a>, explaining his strategy of doing these clubhouse tours ahead of their CBA negotiations, and trying to find a \u201cyounger player\u201d\u00a0to pit against the \u201chigh-earning guy.\u201d But I think something that\u2019s less discussed is that owners aren\u2019t always aligned either. Is a union hunting for those differences the way the other side clearly is?<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the art of negotiation. You\u2019re looking for the weaknesses and where you can do that. But a committee is sitting at the collective bargaining table on behalf of the owners because they designate owners from the W teams to be on the CBA committee, just like they did for the men to be in that committee. And they usually have a united front. No matter what has happened in the background when they show up at these meetings, they\u2019re all on the same page. I think the same is likely true when you\u2019re dealing with the women, that they\u2019re all on the same page, even though you can be aware that someone thinks\u00a0I think it’s OK that housing is X, Y, or Z, they\u2019re probably not going to show up at the table and discuss it in that way. They’re going to appear to be very united.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Are owners typically good at doing that?<\/p>\n

Oh yes, they are especially good at doing that. I think the players are getting better at it, being on the same page and being united, but everyone does have different circumstances that they may talk about in a certain way when they\u2019re being interviewed, which is why it’s probably a little more that you can see where there may be differences.\u00a0<\/p>\n

We talked about public opinion, but I\u2019ve wondered about the role of media and journalists specifically also. Commissioners like to say they don\u2019t want to \u201cnegotiate through the media.\u201d There was actually an incident the other day where an ESPN reporter copied and pasted some of the numbers from the WNBA\u2019s latest proposal into a tweet, but\u00a0forgot to delete the part of the message<\/a>\u00a0that said, \u201cJust so you have on background-no attribution to me or the league.\u201d They\u00a0are\u00a0doing some negotiating through the media. On the union side, what kind of relationship did you try to have with the media, or did you really feel the need to have one at all? Sports media is in an interesting place, too, where we\u2019re all wondering if we even matter when Aliyah Boston or Draymond Green can just go talk to people directly on their own podcasts.\u00a0<\/p>\n

From a union perspective, the media was incredibly important to them and incredibly important to me as well. I fortunately had really good relationships with the media. I provided information to the extent that I could, I asked for their opinions on things to the extent that I could. I didn’t know everything, and I had a pretty daunting task to get done in 18 months. I had to rely on media a lot for different things and they were always willing to help me, and in turn, I was always willing to help them. I think there was a mutual level of respect. I think this is not something that someone who is doing a podcast can replace, quite honestly. I think that there is still a huge need. I\u2019m grateful, as I know many of the players were as well.\u00a0<\/p>\n

With the media, did you play offense or defense during a negotiation? Would you want to proactively send these texts out, or was it just responding to questions as they came in?<\/p>\n

No, for me, I was being reactive. I didn’t utilize the media in that way. In fact, I sort of learned\u00a0at\u00a0the PA that people do that: They leak information, but it’s not really\u00a0leaked. Somebody\u2019s actually really told someone something that they knew could change a trajectory. That’s not what I did. For me, it was: If someone asked a question and needed a response, I responded. I didn\u2019t use them proactively. I don\u2019t think that\u2019s really what the initial intent is for media. It\u2019s to inform, not to stir up a controversy, but to report on a controversy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Recommended<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For a seventh straight night, the WNBA and players’ union left an all-day collective bargaining session Monday without…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":543217,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[49,48,82,630],"class_list":["post-543216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543216","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=543216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543216\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/543217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=543216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=543216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=543216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}