NBA commissioner Adam Silver said Tuesday that WNBA players will get a “big increase” in salaries in their new collective bargaining agreement, but pointed to “absolute numbers” as the way to measure that growth as opposed to share of revenue.
“I think share isn’t the right way to look at it because there’s so much more revenue in the NBA,” Silver said on the “Today Show.” “I think you should look at absolute numbers in terms of what they are making. They are going to get a big increase in this cycle of collective bargaining and they deserve it.”
The WNBPA opted out of the current collective bargaining agreement a year ago this week and has since been negotiating a new one with the current deal set to expire in less than two weeks on Oct. 31.
On an Instagram story, the WNBPA reposted a clip of Silver’s comments featuring him repeating on a loop, “I think share isn’t the right way to look at it” and the caption, “Don’t want to share?” while tagging Silver.
A big holdup in negotiations, players have said, has been the different ways each side believes players’ salaries should be determined amid a tremendous era of growth for the league.
Players are pushing for a system in which the percentage of revenue that goes toward salaries grows with the business — more akin to the NBA, where the salary cap is determined by the basketball-related income (BRI), with players taking in about half of that mark as dictated by their CBA.
Players say the league’s proposals, by contrast, have featured a salary cap that increases by a fixed rate over time, as it is in the current CBA, where the cap increases by 3% annually.
The Phoenix Mercury‘s Satou Sabally said during the WNBA Finals that a recent proposal from the league makes the players feel as if “we’re not part of the growth of the league.”
“If we continued with this CBA, we would, percentage-wise, go down on our [compensation],” Sabally said.
The league’s salary cap was $1,507,100 in 2025, with a super-maximum of $249,244 and minimum of $66,079.
The WNBA has experienced record growth the past two years, with attendance, viewership, merchandise sales, investment and franchise valuations soaring and a new $2.2 billion media deal on the way.
When asked during the Finals what the players and owners weren’t seeing eye-to-eye on in CBA talks, WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert spoke to the importance of “balancing” an increase in player salaries with the “long-term viability of the league.”
“That’s what we’re just kind of going back and forth determining where that right balance is,” Engelbert said. “I think we all agree we’re trying to return every dollar we possibly can to the players, but we also want to incentivize investment from owners. We want owners to have a viable business. Obviously, we’re looking at expansion up to 18 teams by the end of the decade. So that’s important that those owners coming in have a shot at a viable economic model for the future.”
If the two sides do not come to an agreement by Halloween, they could agree to an extension that would allow them to continue bargaining, as they did for the last CBA that was ultimately signed in Jan. 2020.
A new CBA must be done before a two-team expansion draft is held for the Toronto Tempo and Portland Fire, and also must precede a free agency period where most of the league’s veteran players are unrestricted free agents.
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