Napheesa Collier has again doubled down on her attacks on the league, using Caitlin Clark! She said, “The amount of money that Caitlin Clark has made the league is insane, and she’s getting 0% of it because we have no rev share.” The WNBPA vice president has ignited a fresh debate in less than a month since her WNBA exit. With such exchange of words between the important stakeholders, the WNBPA and the WNBA aren’t settling things anytime soon, and the October 31st deadline is far from reach.

Erin D. Drake, senior adviser and legal counsel for the WNBPA, said on No Offseason: The Athletic Women’s Basketball Show, “I pray, I believe in miracles. I’m not hopeful that (agreeing to a deal by Friday) is going to come to fruition.” Everyone in the WNBA community has had an idea based on how the players aggressively spoke out against the league. The October 31deadline was up for a toss, but now it’s almost official, given that it is coming straight from the players’ advisor. Well, she has more to speak about it.

When Drake was asked what her days usually look like in this intense atmosphere which she replied, “A lot of thinking and reflecting about kind of how we got here, and a lot of preparation for where we go next. You all (media) have done a great job covering what happens on October 31st. And the answer is not necessarily much, right? We’re still going to be at the table. We’re still going to be negotiating until we get this agreement done. We just don’t know how long that’s going to take, unfortunately.”

The delay in reaching a new agreement is nothing new for the league. A similar situation occurred before the last CBA expired in 2019, when the original October 31 deadline was extended to December 31, and the final deal was reached on January 14, 2020. This year seemed to follow the same path until tensions grew beyond negotiations. With disputes turning personal between players and league leadership, a potential lockout now feels like a real possibility.

Extensions like this are not new, even in the NBA. In 2022, the league and the NBPA extended their deadline several times, from December 15 to February 8, and then again to March 31, 2023. So, there is still no reason to panic yet. However, time is running out, and both sides must reach an agreement, but by when can they come to terms?

According to Ben Pickman, it’s 5 months from now. “After taking the pulse of a few sources around the league, it seems as if having a deal done by the beginning of March would allow for all that’s mentioned above to progress at a regular pace. In that scenario, the league could hold both its expansion draft and free agency period in March, allow the WNBA Draft to be held on schedule in April, and begin the 2026 season in May,” he wrote. 

The two parties have been negotiating for a year now (formal opt-out notice given by WNBPA in October 2024), and they haven’t progressed much since then. Will another 5 months be any different? Since a lockout will hurt both the players and the management, the talks should ramp up as we approach March. A key factor in the negotiations is the revenue ‘share’, which the WNBPA is fiercely demanding. Now, the league no longer has that old excuse to avoid giving the players a piece of the pie. 

WNBA’s rising revenue contradicts financial struggles claim

The longest reason for not paying the players propagated across media platforms by the WNBA and the NBA is that the league is not profitable yet. Last season, the New York Post predicted that the 2024 season would lose $40 million instead of the initially predicted $50 million. In the negotiations today, many still point to that number as an excuse for continuing with a similar format until we reach profitability. However, according to an economics professor, the league should be flush with money. 

“There clearly is money,” said David Berri, professor of economics at Southern Utah University and co-author of “Slaying the Trolls: Why the trolls are very, very wrong about women and sports,” via Sports Business Journal. “You can’t be telling the women, it’s not profitable when we see the expansion fees. Because clearly to get the expansion fees, you had to say it was profitable.” Let’s count the money we know the league is getting from all the expansions. (note: this is the reported fee)

And we can add approximately $200 million per year till 2036 from its latest media rights deal with multiple networks. The league still hasn’t shown its books yet. So they could already be profitable from the boom in the last two years, led by Caitlin Clark. Or, they have very positive projections, which the management has leveraged to collect record fees and sign an 11-year $2.2 billion deal.

Either way, these numbers don’t show a league that is barely hanging on. It implies that the WNBA  is thriving, and the franchise valuations also project the same.