A fan holds a sign urging WNBA owners to pay their players better wages during the second half as the Valkyries played the Indiana Fever at Chase Center on Aug. 31.
Carlos Avila Gonzalez/S.F. Chronicle
Seattle Storm forward Nneka Ogwumike has been the president of the Women’s National Basketball Players Association since 2016.
John Locher/Associated Press
WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert speaks before a playoff series between the Las Vegas Aces and the Phoenix Mercury on Oct. 3 in Las Vegas.
John Locher/Associated Press
Early Wednesday morning, the WNBA and its players came to a labor agreement. Their historic settlement came complete with a soundtrack:
The sound of sighs of relief in the front offices of forward-thinking, dynamic teams like the Golden State Valkyries, places where sensible people understood how disastrous a work stoppage would have been.
The sound of corks popping for the players, who fought for themselves through hard negotiations and will be getting a tremendous, long overdue upgrade in their compensation and working conditions. Players association vice president Breanna Stewart called the deal “transformational.”
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And, finally, a loud round of applause from fans everywhere because utter idiocy was avoided. League play will not be interrupted. Momentum will not be derailed. A dark cloud will not hang over the WNBA.
Details of the collective bargaining agreement, which was reached after nine days of intense negotiations, have not been revealed. The agreement needs to be ratified in the coming days. But Commissioner Cathy Englbert said that, despite her previous threats, the season will start on time.
And everyone can’t wait to get going.
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“We’re prepared and ready,” Valkyries president Jess Smith said Wednesday. “We’re excited and we know our fans are ready.”
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The Valkyries waited patiently through the offseason of negotiations — oftentimes contentious — to get a deal done.
“This moment in time is hard to get right,” Smith said. “We’ve experienced so much growth and we want to continue to grow.
“We’ve had patience knowing that the long-term impact is the most important thing.”
The Valkyries were exhibit No. 1 for the new power and momentum of the league. In their first season, the league’s first expansion team in 17 years sold out every home game in an NBA-sized arena — no curtained-off sections required. Their valuation increased tenfold, from the $50 million expansion fee paid by Joe Lacob and Peter Guber in 2023 to an estimated $500 million just six weeks into their inaugural season. They made the playoffs in their first season. Their merchandise jumped off the shelf.
They proved you didn’t need a long runway or proven stars or gimmicks besides great basketball, smart marketing and committed ownership to have wild success.
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Now we’re about to see a flurry of significant events. Once the deal is ratified, and the details are known, the expansion draft will happen. Some of the players whom Valkyries fans fell in love with last year will be left exposed in the draft and will end up on one of the two new expansion teams, Portland or Toronto, two teams that have been waiting to build their rosters.
Next comes the free-agency period, hugely significant as about 80% of the players in the league are free agents, having let their contracts expire in sync with the end of the last collective bargaining agreement. That will be followed by the rookie draft in mid-April.
Training camp is scheduled to start April 19 and the Valkyries’ first preseason game will be April 25. Their season opener is May 8.
Though the team hasn’t been able to move forward while negotiations stalled, one can assume there are detailed plans and charts filling many, many whiteboards in the front office, with wish lists of players and possibilities. As Smith pointed out, general manager Ohemaa Nyanin proved her creativity, adaptability and attention to detail with last season’s masterful roster assembly.
Smith said the team has increased its staff size. She said season-ticket holders renewed at an over 90% rate.
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“That’s a great testament to the Bay,” Smith said.
And a testament to the power of the WNBA. The league has taken off in the past few years. The players have become well-known stars, the sponsorships have rolled in, the new media rights deal for $2.2 billion is game-changing. All of the growth came through the hard work of the players and it was frustrating to see the league attempt to play hardball even though it was clear the time had come for a significant deal, that the old threadbare mentality of the league needed to be discarded.
As union executive committee member Alysha Clark told reporters after the deal was reached, players opted out of their contract in October because “what we were giving to this league and what we were getting back didn’t match. You could feel the growth everywhere, but it wasn’t showing up for the players the way it should.”
A sticking point was whether the players would share gross or net revenue. In the hours after the deal was struck that detail was not revealed, but the players sounded happy.
“For the first time player salaries are tied to a truly meaningful share of league revenue, driving exponential growth in the salary cap, increasing average compensation beyond half a million dollars and raising the standard across facilities staffing and support,” players association president Nneka Ogwumike said after the deal was reached.
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“This is historical for women’s sports,” she added.
If a deal hadn’t been struck, and a work stoppage happened either through a lockout or a strike, it would have cast a cloud over a league that has only been basking in good news in recent years. It would have turned off fans, halted momentum and been a black mark.
Instead, the deal is cause for celebration. For Champagne, applause and sighs of relief.
And it comes with a nod to the Valkyries, who proved in just one season what the future can look like.