{"id":548027,"date":"2026-03-20T02:01:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-20T02:01:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/548027\/"},"modified":"2026-03-20T02:01:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-20T02:01:08","slug":"wnba-season-poised-to-expand-to-52-games-over-course-of-cba","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/548027\/","title":{"rendered":"WNBA Season Poised to Expand to 52 Games Over Course of CBA"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThe WNBA<\/a> season is poised to expand to 52 games over the span of its next collective bargaining agreement with players, according to people familiar with the matter, an 18% increase from its current slate of 44 regular season games.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe season expansion is one dimension of the verbal agreement between WNBA owners and players, solidified in the early hours<\/a> of Wednesday morning after more than a week of nonstop negotiations. The details are still subject to ratification by both sides, and as of late Thursday, a term sheet on the proposed new CBA<\/a> had not yet been completed.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe 2026 WNBA season, which the league has said will begin on time on May 8, is scheduled with 44 games. The verbal agreement allows for the season to expand to 50 games and eventually 52 games over the length of the bargaining agreement, according to one of the people.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe WNBA currently has media rights<\/a> agreements<\/a> with Disney, NBC and Amazon worth $2.2 billion through the 2036-2037 season, and separate agreements with CBS and Scripps\u2019 Ion<\/a> Television, the latter of which was renewed<\/a> for undisclosed terms last year.<\/p>\n

\n\tWNBA players are poised to receive transformational raises and receive revenue sharing for the first time under the terms of the verbal agreement. Maximum contracts are expected to be over $1 million, up from roughly $250,000 in 2025, while minimum salaries are poised to start at over $300,000, more than four times the 2025 minimum of $66,000, according to agreement terms<\/a> reported by ESPN.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The WNBA season is poised to expand to 52 games over the span of its next collective bargaining…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":548028,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[49,48,4233,40763,82,630,56438],"class_list":["post-548027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cba","tag-media-rights","tag-sports","tag-wnba","tag-wnbpa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548027","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=548027"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548027\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/548028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=548027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=548027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=548027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}