{"id":398931,"date":"2026-01-10T08:43:20","date_gmt":"2026-01-10T08:43:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/398931\/"},"modified":"2026-01-10T08:43:20","modified_gmt":"2026-01-10T08:43:20","slug":"are-wnba-players-pushing-a-new-model-for-athlete-pay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/398931\/","title":{"rendered":"Are WNBA Players Pushing a New Model for Athlete Pay?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Brittney Sykes of the Washington Mystics holds a “Pay the Players” sign following the 2025 AT&T WNBA All-Star Game at Gainbridge Fieldhouse on July 19, 2025. (Steph Chambers\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

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Coming out of an All-Star weekend in which the WNBA\u2019s biggest stars wore \u201cPay Us What You Owe Us\u201d shirts<\/a> in warm-ups, the league\u2019s collective bargaining agreement negotiations seem to be on everyone\u2019s minds. <\/p>\n

The players themselves are talking about it \u2014 \u201cWe look forward to negotiating our fair share and our value,\u201d WNBPA president Nneka Ogwumike said. The media is talking about it \u2014 drawing comparisons<\/a> to the U.S. Women\u2019s Soccer Team\u2019s successful fight for equal pay<\/a> earlier in the decade. Even Barstool founder Dave Portnoy, nobody\u2019s idea of a social-justice warrior, says that<\/a> anyone who doesn\u2019t think WNBA players deserve more money is a \u201cmoron\u201d. (I agree!)<\/p>\n

One of the most fascinating aspects of this CBA negotiation<\/a> between league owners (as represented by commissioner Cathy Engelbert) and the players\u2019 association revolves around not just revenue splitting \u2014 which is obviously a contentious issue<\/a>, to be clear \u2014 but also around who gets a piece of the growing pie in terms of how the WNBA\u2019s future value as an asset is perceived.<\/p>\n

The league\u2019s revenue has certainly grown by leaps and bounds in recent seasons. According to Bloomberg<\/a>, total WNBA revenue increased from $102 million in 2019 to roughly $190 million in 2023 \u2014 an average annual growth rate of 17 percent \u2014 and worldwide women\u2019s pro hoops revenue was projected to leap again<\/a> by a whopping 45 percent from 2024 to 2025. Relatedly, league media rights fees are set to rise<\/a> from $57 million this season to at least $200 million \u2014 a 251 percent increase! \u2014 next season, as part of a new broadcast deal signed in conjunction with the NBA. And per-game attendance is the highest it\u2019s ever been, according to Across The Timeline<\/a>:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

So negotiating a greater share of that increasing revenue is important. But the even greater area of growth for WNBA teams has been in their valuations, which exploded by 180 percent<\/a> just since last year and possibly as much as<\/a> 82 percent annually each year since 2021. Likewise, the league\u2019s $250 million expansion fee<\/a> for the new crop of teams joining the WNBA in Cleveland, Detroit, and Philadelphia is a 124 percent annualized increase over what the Golden State Valkyries paid<\/a> ($50 million) in 2023. These increases in valuation, implied or estimated, are even greater than increases in short-term league revenue projections, which is why the players are even more miffed about the frictions in their negotiations \u2014 and why they talk about wanting a piece of the league\u2019s asset growth<\/a>, not just its revenue growth (as the traditional sports-league model has long held<\/a>).<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s interesting that there\u2019s a $250 million expansion fee, and there\u2019s no openness to have that be reflected in revenue share that goes to the players, especially as we\u2019re experiencing growth,\u201d Ogwumike said to the Associated Press before the All-Star festivities in Indianapolis. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t make a lot of sense to me, but we\u2019re hoping we can get some clarity on that in Indiana.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s no secret that tying your economic future to rising asset prices rather than actual production or revenues is a smart idea in modern America. Using data from the St. Louis Fed<\/a>, here\u2019s a plot of yearly nominal values for the S&P 500 (as a stand-in for broad asset-price appreciation), U.S. gross domestic product, median home prices and median household incomes, indexed such that all rated as 100 in 1984: <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

We can see that asset values \u2014 particularly in capital markets like the S&P \u2014 have dramatically outpaced both wages and even economic output itself over the past four decades. In other words, working for a living doesn\u2019t build wealth \u2014 owning assets does. That trend is also true in sports franchise ownership, where Sportico\u2019s Eben Novy-Williams reported<\/a> a 7.3x average value-to-revenue multiple for WNBA teams, which is higher than men\u2019s leagues in MLB (6.7x) and the NHL (6.2x), though lower than the NBA (11x!) or NFL (9.3x): <\/p>\n

\"Image\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It\u2019s not that these leagues aren\u2019t making money \u2014 they\u2019re making a lot of it. But their revenue growth still lags the amount people are willing to spend to buy the teams as an asset (whether to invest for a future sale<\/a>, or simply to appreciate like art).<\/p>\n

This might reflect irrational exuberance<\/a> on the part of rich folks who are anxious to join an exclusive and prestigious club, or it might actually represent accurate revenue expectations for the league in the future. But from the current players\u2019 perspective, there\u2019s no real distinction to be made there.<\/p>\n

Either a future generation of WNBA players will get a cut of the higher revenue the league is laying the groundwork for now \u2014 which is nice for them, but does nothing for current stars \u2014 or the players are putting in the labor to drive up the value of somebody else\u2019s asset, beyond even the revenue they generate. <\/p>\n

That\u2019s why the players seem to increasingly be rethinking the entire economic model of major sports leagues. As Sportico\u2019s Kurt Badenhausen points out here<\/a>, players being able to get in on rising expansion fees (to say nothing of franchise valuations) would be exceedingly rare in modern pro sports. And some of that is due to the complicated nature of WNBA stakeholder structures<\/a>, with money getting split between a web of investors that includes the NBA itself.<\/p>\n

(This is part of why Friend of the Substack Ethan Strauss<\/a> says nobody knows how much to pay WNBA players<\/a> \u2014 because nobody really knows where the NBA ends and the WNBA begins.)<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s also rare because things are written into the various CBAs that way for a reason. And as much as revenues have risen in the television era of major sports, with absurd rights fees spiraling ever upward even in the face of widespread doubts<\/a>, franchise valuations have risen even more. Ted Leonsis bought the Washington Mystics for $10 million<\/a> in 2005, an investment that has increased in value more than twenty fold in the years since \u2014 or 4.2 times as much as if Leonsis had dropped that money in the S&P instead. Owners have been much more willing to dangle the promise of immediate, revenue-based payouts in front of players, as long as they don\u2019t ask for real equity in the leagues they\u2019re helping to grow.<\/p>\n

Will the WNBA change that? It\u2019s tough to say, but this league has a particularly stark split between current revenue \u2014 and perhaps especially profit<\/a> \u2014 and the lofty expectations of future growth and returns implied by those rapidly rising franchise valuations and expansion fees. This, in turn, might make the W a perfect proving ground for new ideas around how players should get paid, and whether increasing the perceived asset value of a league for owners tomorrow ought to be rewarded with increased salaries today.<\/p>\n

Because if the WNBA is growing like a unicorn startup with a high P\/E ratio<\/a>, it makes sense that its players want to stop being paid like they work for a tiny nonprofit.<\/p>\n

Filed under: WNBA<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brittney Sykes of the Washington Mystics holds a “Pay the Players” sign following the 2025 AT&T WNBA All-Star…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":398932,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[99,434],"class_list":{"0":"post-398931","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wnba","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-wnba"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=398931"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398931\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/398932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=398931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=398931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=398931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}