As first reported by ESPN’s Katie Barnes, the WNBA’s revenue-sharing mechanisms have been triggered for the first time in league history. Players will receive a total of $8 million in direct payments, with an equal amount added to the pool of money the league must spend on signing players to league marketing agreements (LMAs).
This comes from the 2020 WNBA collective bargaining agreement (CBA), which remains in effect during the ongoing status quo. Despite being in every CBA in some form since 2003, growth targets had consistently outpaced actual outcomes. Until the 2020 CBA, revenue-sharing targets consisted only of ticket sales.
With that, two things delayed this historic moment for the league. First, the CBA began with the 2020 Covid season, when no fans could attend games because the league played its entire season in a “bubble” in Bradenton, Florida. Then, even after the league regained steam, the 2020 CBA’s revenue growth targets were aggressive, compounding the slow start caused by the pandemic.
Now, based on the final season played under the 2020 CBA, the payments will increase total player salary from the 2025 season by 42.5%, raising the average compensation per team from just under $1.45 million to more than $2 million, per Her Hoop Stats.
For a full refresher on how the calculation of revenue sharing works, read this explainer. Otherwise, the short version is this: In the 2020 CBA, revenue targets were set based on 2019 league revenue. No team revenue is counted.
That 2019 revenue baseline was increased by 20% each season, and then added together to make a cumulative target after each season. For every dollar of revenue above the cumulative target, players receive 17.5 cents in direct payments and 17.5 cents toward minimum LMA spending1. The league retains the other 65 cents.
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What can we learn about the league?
There are a few new things we can glean, even as the most important datapoints remain unknown. First, we know with some certainty how much the league’s cumulative revenue surpassed the cumulative target.
As the $8 million figure equates to 17.5% of what the CBA calls “net overage”, this tells us the full net overage was in the vicinity of $45.7 million2. Representatives for the union declined to provide The IX Basketball with a more precise figure than $8 million, which means the net overage could range from $42.8 million to $48.5 million, depending on the unrounded amount distributed to the players.
Pair that with Bloomberg’s 2023 report that the 2019 league revenue baseline was $51.8 million according to internal WNBA documents, and a rough estimate for 2025’s cumulative revenue comes into view. The WNBA has not responded to a request to confirm the 2019 revenue figure as of publication.
With 20% compounding growth, the estimated cumulative revenue target for 2025, given a 2019 league revenue of $51.8 million, would be about $617.2 million3. Tack on the $45.7 million net overage calculated earlier, and you get a rough estimate for the league’s non-team revenue since 2020: $662.9 million.
It is also known that the 2026 season would have generated an even larger revenue-sharing payout if the 2020 CBA had continued for an additional season. The league’s 11-year, $2.2 billion TV contract and smaller contracts with additional networks like CBS and ION were estimated to bring annual TV revenue upwards of $260 million, up from around $60 million in 2025.
That increase alone would more than outpace the extra revenue added to 2026’s cumulative revenue target. Just how much the 2020 CBA’s revenue-sharing could have generated in 2026, though, is not yet calculable. Both the league and the union declined to comment on the methods used to split overall revenues between league and team revenue.
For example, The IX Basketball can confirm the frequently cited Bloomberg report that league and team revenue in 2019 was approximately $102 million — it was actually $101.7 million, per internal WNBA documents. The IX Basketball cannot, however, account for how that $101.7 million breaks down between the league and its teams, resulting in $51.8 million in league revenue and an implied $49.9 million in team revenue.
The limited information available also illustrates the improvements in player compensation that the league’s latest proposal would yield. Even if the union made no further gains in negotiations, effectively any level of revenue in 2026 would yield more total compensation than under the old system.
It would take approximately $600 million3, excluding team revenues, to match the projected compensation under the league’s latest offer. Even in that scenario, the league’s projections would be comfortably exceeded, increasing players’ end-of-season payments in the new system and remaining ahead of the old system.
After more than two decades of targets being out of reach or, more recently, something to discuss in the future tense, revenue sharing is now here. Exactly how it will work moving forward, and how transparent it will be to anyone without access to league books, remains up in the air. But it is here to stay.
Howard Megdal and Jackie Powell contributed reporting to this story.
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Footnotes
- Shared revenue is 70% of the net overage. Players receive 50% of shared revenue, equal to 35% of net overage. Of the players’ 35%, half are direct payments, and half are added to the LMA pool. ↩︎
- $8 million ÷ 17.5% = $47.5 million net overage ↩︎
- $62.16M + $74.59M + $89.51M + $107.41M + $128.89M + $154.67M = $617.2M ↩︎
- The league’s latest proposal includes an average salary of $530,000 in 2026 after projected revenue sharing, equivalent to $6.36M per team.
a. The gap between $6.36M and the 2026 cap: $4.8M per team, $72M total
b. $72M ÷ 17.5% = $411.4M net overage
c. $411.4M net overage + $47.5M 2025 overage = $458.9M 2026 overage
d. $458.9M + $802.9M 2026 Target = $1,261.8M league revenue through 2026
e. $1,261.8M – $662.9M = $598.8M league revenue in 2026 ↩︎