The big news with the new WNBA CBA for this season is the increase in player salaries, which will now be completely calculated based on revenue as opposed to a fixed scale with the potential for bonuses that was in place in the previous agreement. In order to accomplish this, there are a number of mechanisms to calculate and allocate payments to players. There are separate rules that govern the salary cap itself, which is likely to be completely separate from the actual amount of money that will be going to players assuming continued revenue growth, and those are the rules that are going to be affecting player movement around the league.
Revenue Sharing
As can be expected, there are a number of detailed rules used to calculate the Shared Basketball Revenue for each year which is then used for the advertised 20% revenue split to the players in the agreement. The formula includes differentiation between centralized League Revenue and the Team Revenue earned by teams directly. It is unlikely that the public will really get full insight into what is happening with these figures on a yearly basis just as nobody publicized details regarding the revenue share that resulted from last year under the old CBA. As long as that Shared Basketball Revenue growth exceeds 13% in the first year and 10% in each of the following years, the salary cap will increase by the maximum amount and then there will be additional payments to players to get to the final revenue split. Expansion team success, additional broadcast deals, and the bump in the number of regular season games should make it easier to achieve the maximum growth in each year.
Salary Cap
One of the wildest offseasons in American sports history was the NBA’s 2016 free agency period that summer. The league had their salary cap based on a percentage of revenue and new media deals spiked that amount that year. Players who were free agents benefited greatly while players who were under contract suddenly found that those deals were taking up a significantly smaller portion of the team salary. The uncertainty of how the WNBA salary cap would be set led to agents and players taking lessons from that year with nearly all veterans with control over the length of their contracts timing them to end after the 2025 season. While some parties had anticipated the problems that would arise in the NBA and proposed solutions, no mechanism was actually put into place until the 2023 offseason that addressed it. Their 10% maximum salary cap increase per season is obviously similar to what the WNBA is adopting for this new CBA.
Floating Amount Contracts
The CBA allowed a new type of contract that NBA fans in particular have been calling for for years, but had not been added because of the risk and variability for both sides. Contracts for the maximum salary, either the most that another team can offer a player on the open market, also known as the market max, or the maximum that a player’s existing team can offer in certain circumstances, also known as the supermax, can now be pegged to the salary cap itself as a percentage instead of being limited by the annual raises allowed in the agreement. Teams have been reluctant to have this be an option because of the difficulty of planning for future seasons, while players have preferred the certainty of raises in the event of the salary cap not growing by that much. With the likelihood of maximum salary cap increases, it is less of an issue for both sides in the WNBA and encourages the signing of longer-term contracts instead of giving players reasons to sign a shorter deal so that they can get raises in future contracts.
There were four contracts signed with this feature in this offseason. New York locked in their core trio for the next three years starting at the market max. Jonquel Jones signed the version of the contract with fixed raises at 5%. Breanna Stewart and Sabrina Ionescu signed the next type of contract with the floating amounts instead, opening them up to those larger raises, which would be around 7% higher than the fixed raises with maximum salary cap growth. A’ja Wilson signed the supermax version of this contract, which could top out at over $4.72 million over the three years or over 17% above the market max version. Aliyah Boston signed a new type of contract as well that allowed her to negotiate this year’s salary up to $1 million and also lock in three years at the floating supermax starting next year. Those three years could total nearly $5.24 million with maximum salary cap growth. The important thing to remember is that these are salary cap figures and, with even more revenue growth, the actual amount paid to these players could be even greater.
Minimum Contracts
The base minimum salary for players is in the CBA with a fixed scale for each year instead of being set as a percentage of the salary cap. There are increases of 4% for each year rounded to the nearest hundred dollars, which means that while they could theoretically increase more than the cap, they are instead more likely to take up less of a percentage of the salary cap each year. Under the existing scale, the minimum salary would grow by slightly over 8% from 2026 to 2028 while the overall salary cap could grow by 24.3% over that time. This section of the CBA does have a paragraph that opens up these amounts for negotiation if there are two years of maximum salary cap growth. How such a negotiation would go will be of great interest if those targets are hit as there are likely to be a wide range of views among all parties involved about what would be appropriate.
(e) In the event that, beginning with the 2027 Salary Cap Year, in two consecutive Salary Cap Years the Salary Cap for the applicable Salary Cap Year increases over the Salary Cap for the immediately preceding Salary Cap Year by the maximum amount permitted pursuant to Article VII, Section 1(a)(ii), then the WNBA and Players Association will discuss in good faith potential modifications to the amounts set forth in Section 7(a) above, with any such modifications to take effect no sooner than the Salary Cap Year following the second of such consecutive Salary Cap Years.
Rookie Scale Contracts
The rules for rookie scale contracts have changed significantly in the new CBA and some of those differences may already have influenced team decisions. The contract for drafted players still has a four-year term, with raises of 4%, 10%, and 13% built in between seasons. There is also much greater stratification in salaries in the first round with getting picked one spot earlier in the draft among the top nine picks leading to around a 7% salary bump. The rest of the first round matches that ninth pick, which is exactly 7% higher than the amount for later picks and undrafted players. There is more potential stratification over time assuming continued growth as well. The salary for first round picks in future drafts scales with the salary cap while non-first round picks have set increases each year at 4%. For this year’s Draft the contract for pick 15 is 7% more than for pick 16. In the 2028 Draft, pick 16’s salary could be 23% higher than pick 17’s salary. Given that the talent disparity between players available at that point is not likely to be large, this change could make early second round picks worth more and late first round picks worth less even before taking into account other differences in the contract.
Rookie scale contracts have historically contained no guaranteed salary until the fourth-year option was picked up during the third season of the deal. As a result, teams have generally had no issue waiving even their earlier draft picks if they felt that they had better choices. The new CBA has made the first season of lottery pick contracts be guaranteed immediately upon signing while the first season for the rest of the first round picks guarantees if they are still on the roster as of opening day. Ironically, that might make it tougher on late first round picks to make it through training camp if teams are wary of locking themselves into the deal for the year. The other big change applies to all draft picks, as the second year of their contract becomes guaranteed if they make it to opening day of that season. While this was probably viewed as a positive for players too, it could also lead to some players in borderline roster contention getting waived prematurely if their teams value flexibility over continuity. Teams that can find value from undrafted players or free agents will have an advantage in building the back end of their rosters.
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