WNBA CBA agreement is a win for league, players, and brand partners

The GIST: The WNBA and WNPBA reached a verbal agreement on their CBA yesterday, just 51 days before season tip-off. The news is considered a major win for both parties as well as W fans, but there are other players at stake with a lot pinned on the success of this deal: The W’s confirmed and prospective brand partners. Let’s explore what this new CBA means for everyone.

The details: Per ESPN, the salary cap now starts at $7M (up from $1.5M) with supermax deals starting at $1.4M (up from $249K). The average salary is now around $600K (up from $120K) and the minimum salary is above $300K (up from $66K). Plus, the average revenue share — a major sticking point for the union — is reported to be nearly 20% throughout the deal.

• The negotiations managed to avoid changes to the 2026 schedule, with training camp still set for April 19th, preseason games tipping off April 25th, and the regular season beginning on May 8th. But the delayed deal means it’s crunch time for other crucial offseason activities: The league must now hold a two-team expansion draft and free agency for over 100 players.

The brand impact: The stability is undoubtedly beneficial for the W’s burgeoning partnership portfolio. With uncertainty all these months, it was likely challenging for brands to confirm their plans around the W season, especially regarding the draft and tip-off.

• On the W’s website aggregating its partnerships news, there hasn’t been anything since last June, besides a State Street partnership in September. This means that through 2026 so far, no new league-level partners with the WNBA have been announced.

• With women’s March Madness increasingly becoming a connected storytelling opportunity to the WNBA Draft, brands have previously announced W partnerships within this timeframe to get attention. In early April 2025, the WNBA announced deals with Mielle Organics, Ally, and Coach, but with the CBA uncertainty, everything has been up in the air.

Zooming out: Getting this done ASAP was essential to the W, which is still scaling up and very much needs to remain a welcoming environment for sponsors, particularly with players wanting increased revenue sharing. Now everything can roll on according to schedule, and we should see some new sponsorships stream in. Welcome to the party, pal.