WNBA players received 9.3% of league revenue in 2024. NBA players received roughly 50%. That is not a gap. That is a different sport played on a different planet with a different set of rules for how value gets distributed. And right now, as the two sides grind toward a March 10 deadline to save the 2026 season, the math at the center of these CBA negotiations tells you more about the state of women's sports pay than any inspirational Nike ad ever will.
This is a math problem, not a vibes problem.
The Revenue Is Real. The Share Is Not.
You already know the topline numbers from the Shared Facts section. Revenue is surging. Viewership is up. The new broadcast deal is an eightfold increase. All true, all encouraging. But here is the number nobody is talking about: the league's offer of 70% of net revenue would amount to less than 15% of gross revenue going to players. The players are asking for 27.5% of gross. The league says that's "unrealistic" and would cause hundreds of millions in losses.
Let me translate. NBA players get 49% of basketball-related revenue. NFL players get 48%. MLB gets 40%. The NHL is at 50%. MLS and NWSL players get about 20%. The WNBA players, who generated a record season in 2024, are being offered something in the neighborhood of 15% of gross. Even the WNBA players' own ask of 27.5% would put them well below every major men's league.
So when someone tells you the pay gap is closing because the proposed supermax might hit $1.3 million, zoom out. The league's own proposal projects an average salary of $540,000 in 2026 and $780,000 by 2031. Those are real increases. They are also structurally decoupled from revenue growth. Players have criticized this approach, noting that salary caps tied to fixed rates rather than revenue percentages mean that as the WNBA becomes more profitable, the gap between players' earnings and overall revenue will widen. In analytics terms, the coefficient on salary growth is lower than the coefficient on revenue growth. Over a long enough timeline, the players fall further behind, not closer.
The Accounting Trick You Should Know About
Gross versus net. This is the structural crux. The WNBPA is fighting for a share of gross revenue, while the league is offering a share of net revenue, the revenue remaining when league-specified operating expenses are removed. The difference matters enormously. Net revenue lets the league define what counts as an expense before players see a dollar. It's the sports equivalent of Hollywood accounting, where the biggest blockbusters somehow never turn a profit.
The WNBA hit a record $200 million in revenue in 2024 but reported a $40 million loss. How does that work? The WNBA is mostly owned by NBA team owners. The NBA collectively owns 42% of the WNBA outright, individual WNBA team owners (many of whom are NBA owners) hold another 42%, and other investors hold 16%. The financial relationship between these two leagues is so intertwined that evaluating revenue is notoriously tricky because sports accounting includes sleight-of-hand, and the WNBA's relationship with the NBA makes it hard to decipher where one league's revenue ends and the other's begins.
The WNBA has collected more than $1 billion in expansion fees as it grows from twelve teams to eighteen by decade's end. None of those fees go to players. It has been argued that the broadcast deal substantially undervalued the WNBA's media rights, effectively transferring billions in value to the NBA. When you control the definitions of both revenue and expenses, you control the outcome. The model says: the structure is doing exactly what it was designed to do.
Progress Is Real, but Regression Lurks
I am not here to tell you nothing has changed. It has. The WNBA generated enough revenue in 2025 to trigger revenue sharing for the first time in league history, producing $8 million to split among players. That's a genuine milestone. Sponsorships across women's sports grew 12% year over year, outpacing the 8% rise across men's pro leagues. And 86% of brands say their women's sports sponsorships met or exceeded ROI expectations. The demand side is healthy.
But demand doesn't equal equity. Fifty-eight percent of female athletes earn less than $25,000 annually from their sport, below the 2023 U.S. median individual income. When Parity surveyed 500 professional women athletes, half reported no net income from their sport after expenses. These aren't marginal athletes in niche sports. These are professionals. The WNBA's growth story is real, but it sits on top of a global women's sports economy where the average female soccer player makes $10,900 a year.
When a team overperforms its expected record, my default is: regression is coming. The same instinct applies here. Economist David Berri projects the WNBA will make at least $500 million in revenue in 2026. The new TV deal alone nearly doubles the league's revenue overnight. If that money flows through a CBA that caps player compensation at a fixed rate disconnected from revenue, then the headline salaries go up while the revenue share percentage stays flat or declines. That's not closing a gap. That's PR.
Rook will tell you the momentum is undeniable, that this is a watershed moment for women's sports. He's not wrong about the cultural shift. I just think culture without contractual structure is a story that ends the same way it always does: the people generating the value get a nice quote in the press release and a smaller slice of the pie.
The union voted 98% to authorize a strike. That number is not random noise. In collective action research, supermajority authorization votes that high correlate strongly with willingness to follow through. The model says: take that number seriously.
Here is my prediction, and I will put it on the record. If the WNBA settles this CBA at or near the league's current offer of ~15% of gross revenue, the absolute dollar increases will make great headlines. Average salary up 350%. Supermax crossing $1 million. But within five years, as the league's revenue potentially clears $500 million and approaches $1 billion with continued expansion, that 15% will look like a ceiling, not a floor. The gap in revenue share between WNBA players and their peers in every other major American professional sports league will have widened, not narrowed. The pay gap in women's sports will have gotten flashier at the top while staying structurally identical underneath.
That's not closing a gap. That's decorating one.
