DIVYA NAVANI—On March 20, 2026, the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) announced that it had reached a tentative deal on what it called a “historic” collective bargaining agreement (CBA) with the Women’s National Basketball Players Association (WNBPA). Standout provisions from the seven-year agreement include the first comprehensive revenue-sharing model in women’s professional sports history, over $1 billion in player salaries and benefits over the duration of the CBA, and increased protections for pregnant players and their families.
This CBA is more than just a sports story; it represents decades of advances in labor law, contract law, and civil rights that have coalesced into an agreement that has the potential to set the standard for women’s sports.
The story begins with the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), enacted in 1935. Congress recognized that there was an inequality of bargaining power between workers and their employers, which, if left unchecked, led to obstructions to the flow of commerce, economic depression, industrial strife, unrest, and instability. Thus, Congress enacted the NLRA to give workers the right to self-organize and associate to collectively negotiate terms and conditions of employment. The NLRA enabled the creation of the Women’s National Basketball Players Association (WNBPA) in 1998, the first labor union for professional women athletes, to represent and advance players’ interests. Specifically, Section 9 of the National Labor Relations Act gave the WNBPA and other unions like it the right to negotiate pay rates, wages, hours of employment, and other conditions of employment on behalf of the players they represented.
In October 2024, the WNBPA decided to opt out of the previous collective bargaining agreement that governed the relationship between players and the league. The players argued that, although the WNBA was experiencing significant success and growth, they faced low salaries, a choice between higher pay and better working conditions, and the need to play in international leagues to earn extra income. For 17 months, the WNBPA and WNBA negotiated the terms of the new CBA, with the threat of delaying the 30th season looming as negotiations extended into March 2026. Central to these negotiations was revenue sharing, which would allow players’ compensation and league growth to go hand in hand, enabling players to share in the league’s success. Finally, in March 2026, after eight days of in-person talks totaling over 100 hours, the WNBA and WNBPA reached a tentative agreement on the new CBA.
The power of collective bargaining and persistent negotiations is evident in the major changes from the old CBA to the new one. First, the minimum salary for a player will rise from $66,079 (the minimum the league had to pay players in 2025) under the old CBA to $270,000 under the new CBA. The average player salary will grow from $120,000 (the 2025 average) to $583,000 with projections exceeding $1 million by 2032. Players also successfully maintained league-provided housing, a benefit the WNBA aimed to phase out, along with increases in retirement contributions, life insurance benefits, family planning benefits, and mental health coverage.
Notably, the new CBA broadens protections for athletes who are pregnant, or who are building or raising families. Players with more than two years of service become eligible for family planning benefits, which can include partners and spouses, whereas previously only players with eight or more years of service qualified, and such benefits could not be extended to partners and spouses. Non-birthing partners are now eligible to take paid leave to be with their newborns, extending an opportunity that was previously available only to athletes who physically give birth. Young children are allowed to travel with their parents, enabling single mothers to be with their children and keep their families together on the road. Teams are required to provide nursing rooms and family rooms at the team’s home arena. Finally, following the lawsuit filed by WNBA forward Dearica Hamby, who alleged that the Las Vegas Aces traded her because she was pregnant, the new CBA codifies that teams may not trade a pregnant player without her consent.
To settle the longstanding revenue-sharing debate, the league will share 20% of gross revenue with the players, allowing them to share in the league’s success as they continue to contribute to it. Gross revenue refers to the amount the WNBA earns before deducting any expenses or operating costs, 20% of which is allocated to the players. Although this percentage is lower than what the National Basketball Association (NBA)—the WNBA’s male counterpart—gives its players, it still represents an increase compared to the previous CBA model, where the league had to reach a revenue target before giving only 50% of the excess to players (reportedly, just 9.3% given to players in 2024). This revenue share also marks the first comprehensive revenue-sharing model in women’s professional sports history, a feat made possible through collective bargaining.
Why do these new provisions matter? First, the new CBA represents a significant increase in the bargaining power of WNBA players, enabling them to push for structural changes that can benefit players across the league for years to come. Second, the new CBA marks a shift away from the idea that women’s leagues do not generate enough profit to give players a fair share of the success they help create. On the heels of the WNBA’s multi-billion-dollar media rights deal and over 50 million viewers, the CBA now allows athletes’ earnings to be directly linked to their on-court contributions. Third, through collective bargaining, WNBA players have codified investments in their health and wellness, along with crucial protections and benefits for themselves and their families that go beyond what was traditionally offered. These benefits recognize the diverse needs of single mothers, non-birthing parents, pregnant players, domestic partners, and families in a way that has not been done before in the WNBA, providing players with legal rights and remedies through the WNBA’s grievance and arbitration procedures if the league fails to uphold its end of the bargain.
By leveraging their on-court success and their off-court right to collectively bargain, WNBA players negotiated a CBA that illustrates the evolving capacity of collective bargaining to address not only wages but the full spectrum of workplace conditions in a modern labor market. As collective bargaining agreements across women’s professional sports near expiration, the WNBA’s model offers a legally significant blueprint: one that ties compensation to revenue, treats family-related benefits as core working conditions, and converts previously discretionary policies into enforceable contractual rights. The new WNBA CBA serves as a case study in how labor and contract law can be leveraged to correct structural inequities and advance protections and benefits for female athletes. Whether other leagues follow suit will determine whether this agreement remains a “historic” outlier or becomes the foundation for a broader transformation in the legal and economic landscape of women’s professional sports.
