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Kevin Pelton
multiple authors
Although the WNBA and its players union have a long way to go before reaching a new collective bargaining agreement, after months of contentious negotiations, one thing seems certain:
For the first time in WNBA history, a player will receive a $1 million salary in 2026.
The league’s most recent proposal calls for a $5 million salary cap – a whopping 230% increase – which would produce some of the largest contracts for American female professional athletes in any sport.
The proposed 20% cap salary for individual players would produce a base salary of up to $1 million, with additional escalators based on league revenue the WNBA estimates would bring his full value to $1.3 million.
And those numbers may continue to climb. While talks are ongoing, revenue sharing is still a major issue between the two sides. But if the $5 million cap is the baseline, the increased salary that comes with it would be one of the major wins of this CBA.
With that in mind, let’s take a closer look at the history of the WNBA and other leagues — including the NBA, which owns and oversees the WNBA, and soccer’s NWSL — to put those raises into context, as well as understand why players still don’t think they’re being offered what they deserve.
WNBA salary cap history
Although the WNBA is heading into its 30th season, the league only adopted a salary cap in 2003 as part of lengthy negotiations over the league’s second CBA. Before that deal, the league signed players to their own contracts. From that point, individual teams agreed to contracts as part of the beginning of free agency.
The first salary cap was $622,000 per team, which would barely be higher than the WNBA projects average The player builds in 2026 under his proposal. However, it took years of slow progress to get there. The 2003 CBA defined an annual increase of 4%, while a new CBA signed with less fanfare in 2008 increased it to 6% that season and 3% or 4% in subsequent years. By 2014, the WNBA had become financially stable – the salary cap actually moved back at the start of a new deal and increased only 2% annually. In 2019, the WNBA’s salary cap was still under $1,000,000.
This changed significantly in the most recent CBA, which was agreed in January 2020. The cap increased by 30%, the largest single-season increase in league history up to that time, although it only increased by 3% each year of that deal. A revenue sharing component based on cumulative league revenue – whose goal was based on the 2019 season – never took off on a large scale, as the WNBA went without ticket sales during the 2020 campaign, playing in bubble campuses due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and played in front of reduced crowds in several markets to start 2021.
In that context, the huge bump in the WNBA salary cap in this deal is really a case of the league catching up to growth. In 2025, the WNBA broke his single-season attendance recordFirst established in 2002 when there were 16 teams. Additionally, new national TV deals are scheduled to begin in 2026 and will be signed jointly with the NBA’s existing deal. Annual revenue over $200 million That’s an eight-fold increase over what was reported in 2019, before counting WNBA-specific deals with Versant and ION When the last CBA was negotiated.
First $1 million WNBA salary
The WNBA has had a maximum salary since its inaugural CBA, although the ratio of the cap has changed dramatically during that period.
Initially, the maximum salary of $85,000 was set at 13.7% of the range in 2003, but the increase failed to keep pace. Until the end of the 2008–13 CBA, players were limited to less than 12% of the cap, a limit that remains in place as of 2019. It made the WNBA superstar Easily the best value in the game. It also compressed the pay scale for veterans – a large percentage of the league’s starters who reached free agency earned the maximum.
This changed in the current CBA, which increased the WNBA’s so-called “supermax” for qualifying players – those who re-signed with their team or changed teams via sign-and-trade – to 16.5% of the cap. In the current proposal, the maximum salary is projected to increase even more: the supermax will be 20% of the cap going forward.
Compared to the NBA’s maximum salary (which ranges from 25% to 35% of the range depending on years of service), this seems modest. But it’s important to remember that the NBA has a soft salary cap compared to the WNBA’s hard salary cap, meaning most teams go over it. WNBA teams can cross the limit only in extreme circumstances.
The NBA’s luxury tax line is a more appropriate point of reference. On average, NBA teams typically spend the same percentage of tax money as the WNBA spends on the hard salary cap. The WNBA’s 20% cap would be equivalent to about 24% of the NBA luxury tax line, which is the same as the maximum for players with six years or less of experience. (That’s still nowhere close to the most experienced, highest-paid players.)
Another notable comparison between leagues is the spread between maximum and minimum. The NBA’s ratio of highest paid players to lowest paid players is 42.5:1. With the WNBA’s most recent proposal, the ratio of maximum salary to minimum salary would be approximately 5:1. That’s certainly higher than it once was (before the 2020 CBA, the WNBA’s highest salary was less than three times the smallest) but not even close to the NBA.
It’s worth remembering that the NBA’s salary cap was not implemented until the league had been around longer than the now-defunct WNBA (about four decades, starting with the predecessor to the BAA). Its development has continued for decades. Progress continues to be made on the WNBA’s finances, and the outcome of these CBA negotiations will be the biggest step forward yet.
Comparison with other leagues
Earlier this winter, soccer’s NWSL beat out the WNBA to achieve the first $1 million salary cap for women in American pro team sports. Sophia Wilson portland thorns become first When he exercised a player option for 2026 in December. The NWSL approved a “high-impact player” rule this offseason to help teams exceed the $3.5 million limit by paying stars more after many of the league’s top players left for higher salaries in Europe. trinity rodman The Washington Spirit were the first to take advantage of that rule, Signed deals worth more than $2 million annually Her agent Mike Senkowski told ESPN that this makes her the highest-paid female soccer star globally.
Under the current proposal the WNBA’s salaries would not be as high as the NWSL’s due to the league’s maximum salary despite having a larger salary cap than the NWSL, but the salaries of players who exceed that cap would still be symbolically significant.
Athletes in men’s team sports first began earning more than $1 million per year in the late 1970s, after the advent of free agency, but before the NBA salary cap. nba stars moses malone And Bill Walton reached the mark in 1979–80, the same time Nolan Ryan became MLB’s first million-dollar player.
The modern history of the NBA salary cap begins in 1984–85, when it was first introduced and set at $3.6 million. This occurred amid the rapid growth of the league by stars such as Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, and Michael Jordan, as well as the advent of cable television as a source of revenue. Since then, the largest relative single-season increase in the NBA’s salary cap came in 1995–96, when a new CBA increased it by 44%. 2016 cap spike allowed Golden State Warriors submit Kevin Durant And creating a super team resulted in a smaller increase, 34.5%, although at $24.1 million, it was easily the largest change in dollar terms.
The major difference between the WNBA compared to the NBA and previous NBA seasons in the 1980s is that the league’s revenue sharing model, which defines the cap as a percentage of so-called “basketball-related income”, allowed for rapid increases in consecutive seasons. So from 1984–85 to 1990–91, the first years of the NBA on NBC, the salary cap increased a collective 230%, which is almost identical to the WNBA’s current proposal relative to 2025.
The WNBA’s proposal would introduce a model similar to the NBA’s, where players receive 50% of net revenue after expenses are deducted. The big difference is that fixed costs such as travel, support personnel and arena rentals make up a higher percentage of income in the WNBA than in the NBA.
As a result, the WNBPA estimates that the WNBA’s proposal would provide them less than 15% of gross revenues. The WNBPA has opposed the proposal demanding 30% of gross revenues before expenses are considered. WNBA projects that result in $700 million in operating losses during the new CBA. The players countered, saying those losses would be offset by revenue from expansion fees as Cleveland, Detroit and Philadelphia are scheduled to enter the league by 2030.
Like their major pro sports counterparts, WNBA owners have benefited from skyrocketing team valuations during the current CBA. They have multiplied the relative amount of player salary increases. For most of the WNBA’s history, $10 million was the official sale price for the franchise, and even less cash was actually on hand. in may, new york liberty Sold minority shares at a valuation of $450 million, representing an increase of approximately 4,400%.
