The executive committee for the Women’s National Basketball Players Association held a call Sunday to discuss the WNBA’s latest collective bargaining agreement proposal, which arrived on Friday. The EC wanted to “really understand everyone’s point of view” and “get on the same page about what we’re asking for,” WNBPA vice president Breanna Stewart told CBS Sports in an exclusive interview Monday.
The WNBA’s proposal — the league’s first response to the players’ latest offer, which came more than six weeks ago — “didn’t move much money wise,” Stewart said, but “there were some minimum standard requirements that did come into play.” That was “important,” Stewart added, because “that means that the league heard us on things that matter to us.”
Notably, the league’s latest proposal offered concessions on player housing and facility standards. First-year players and players on a minimum salary would be provided a one-bedroom apartment for the first three years of the CBA, while developmental players would be provided a studio apartment, a source familiar with the negotiations confirmed to CBS Sports. (The league previously agreed to create two new developmental player roster spots, a source familiar with the negotiations confirmed to CBS Sports. Those players would receive a stipend, plus money for each game appearance, but would be limited to a certain number of appearances.)
The WNBA has provided housing for players since 1999. In the most recent CBA, teams were required to offer players a one-bedroom apartment or a stipend for housing costs.
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Key stakeholders from the WNBPA and the WNBA, including multiple owners, met in-person on Feb. 2 for the first time since October. During that meeting, housing concerns and facility standards were two issues the players wanted to resolve. While the players were frustrated that the league did not arrive at that meeting with a counterproposal to the union’s latest offer, the league has since responded with a proposal that satisfied some of the housing and facility questions.
As Stewart noted, however, the league’s response did not address the gap between the sides on revenue sharing — though it did raise the salary cap to $5.65 million in 2026, a source familiar with the negotiation told CBS Sports.
How that rise would affect specific salaries is unclear. The WNBA’s proposal in early December offered a $5 million salary cap and a max salary of about $1.3 million in the first year of the deal. A source close to the situation told CBS Sports that over the course of the proposed deal, the max salary would raise to almost $2 million and that multiple players on each team would be eligible for the max salary. The minimum salary in this deal would start at $230,000 and the average salary would start at $530,000.
All of the above salary figures include a base salary plus a revenue-sharing component that includes both team and league revenue, something players have been asking for. The source estimates this deal would result in players getting about 70% of net revenue — that is, the revenue remaining when league-specified operating expenses are removed from the pot.
For comparison, in 2025, the WNBA’s salary cap was about $1.5 million, the minimum salary was around $66,000 and its supermax was about $250,000.
The WNBPA, however, reportedly countered with a proposal for the players to get 30% of gross revenue, moving the salary cap in 2026 to around $10.5 million with a max salary around $2.5 million.
Last month, the WNBA announced the full schedule for the 2026 season. Training camps are scheduled to begin on April 19, with preseason games to begin on April 25 and opening night set for May 8.
With just over two months until training camps are supposed to open, the two sides not only have to come to terms on a new CBA, but hold a double expansion draft for the Toronto Tempo and Portland Fire, and conduct the busiest free agency period in league history. Aside from Kalani Brown and Lexie Brown, every single player not on a rookie-scale contract is a free agent.
“Time is of the essence,” Stewart said.
Stewart added that she doesn’t know if there’s a drop dead date, at which point the league will no longer be able to start the season on time if there’s no CBA in place. However, she made it clear that everyone knows that they’re running out of time and need to get a deal done soon.
“I think that both sides are very aware that this has gone on way longer than it needed to,” Stewart said. “But hopefully we can really start to be hearing each other and they hear us on things that are non-negotiables.”
