The WNBA has floated a March 10 deadline for the framework of a brand new collective bargaining settlement to avoid an impact to the 2026 season, a supply confirmed to Yahoo Sports’ Cassandra Negley Monday.
Per Negley, the league “suggested March 10 as a date after which the season schedule could start being impacted” in a digital assembly that included league officers and greater than 50 gamers.
Advertisement
ESPN’s Alexa Philippou first reported the league’s proposed deadline Monday afternoon.
That information arrives amid high-stakes and steadily publicly contentious negotiations between the WNBA and the WNBPA over a brand new CBA that may form the way forward for the league when and if the 2 sides attain an settlement.
Amid explosive progress in ladies’s basketball and league income, the gamers affiliation is demanding historic modifications from the earlier CBA that capped the league’s supermax salary at roughly $249,000 with a minimum salary of $66,000 in 2025. The WNBPA opted out of that CBA in 2024, and it expired on the conclusion of final season.
The WNBA’s 2026 schedule is weeks away from being impacted by ongoing CBA talks.
(Icon Sportswire through Getty Images)
The two sides have reopened talks in current days following a weeks-long stalemate and multiple extensions to a deadline to attain a brand new CBA. The 2026 WNBA season is scheduled to tip off on May 8. Per Monday’s information, that begin date is in danger if the 2 sides do not agree to a brand new CBA in two weeks.
Advertisement
Where negotiations stand
In the latest round of publicly reported negotiations, the WNBA supplied a counterproposal that addressed participant calls for for housing and agreed to provide crew housing for all gamers by way of the 2026 season. That was on Saturday.
Days earlier, the WNBPA reportedly supplied a proposal with concessions to its revenue-sharing calls for, decreasing its asks from a median of 31% of gross income to 27.5% over the course of the settlement. The union decreased its demand of a 10.5% wage cap to lower than $9.5 million. The wage cap in 2025 was roughly $1.5 million.
The league scoffed at that proposal, calling it “unrealistic” and declaring in a press release that it might “cause hundreds of millions of dollars of losses for our teams.”
Advertisement
Per ESPN, the league has proposed as an alternative that gamers obtain 70% of web income — which provides up to lower than 15% of gross income — whereas proposing a $5.65 million wage cap.
Under that proposal, the supermax wage would enhance from $249,000 to $1.3 million in 2026 and would undertaking to almost $2 million by 2031. The common participant wage would enhance from $120,000 to $540,000 in 2026 with a projection of $780,000 by 2031, in accordance to ESPN.
Those proposals remained largely unchanged within the league’s newest counter, per ESPN, and the 2 sides seem to stay far aside on these elementary points. The union’s government committee beforehand authorized players to strike.
Despite the obvious hole, WNBPA vp and All-WNBA Minnesota Lynx ahead Napheesa Collier sees room for optimism. She supplied hope final Wednesday that “I think negotiations are trending in the right direction.”
Advertisement
“You want movement,” Collier mentioned on Yahoo Sports’ Hoops 360 podcast. “You don’t want to be in a stalemate. You want there to be hope for the future, and I do have that. I think there has to be a lot of movement in a lot of places in the CBA, but the fact that we are moving, I think, is really hopeful.”