2025 WNBA Off-Season

[CTGirl15]

One of the WNBA demands in the negotiations is that players don't play in Unrivaled and AU.

The only way this ends up in the CBA is if the WNBA increases salaries significantly. The reason those two leagues exist is because the WNBA doesn't pay the players enough.

If they want the players to only play in the WNBA, they need to pay them salaries that are competitive with Unrivaled/AU and the international leagues. They need to make the WNBA into a league that's great enough that players don't want to play anywhere else.

 

[Dillon77]

Wasn't one of the reasons for the formation of UnRivaled was for players who were burnt out/fried going over to Europe, Korea, China or Australia to play in one domestic place -- Florida -- for a set time, while making enough money to augment what are still relatively paltry salaries for the vast majority of players?

The W has solid money being invested in it, for sure. And that can and should result in larger salaries which may or may not hurt UnRivaled. We'll get an idea of where this going with the new CBA. However, having one of the faces of the W trash the commissioner who is going to be in charge of the new CBA is certainly going to, err, make things interesting.

BTW, I do think Englebert has done some solid things for the league but 'Phee has noted some attitudes which may show some intransigence on leadership's part Not a good idea to think this this popularity is only due to the W (See Clark, Caitlin or Bueckers, Paige or Watkins, JuJu).

Another area....the chose way forward is in conjunction with NBA money. This is evident in the downright "our way or the highway" treatment of the Connecticut Sun.

I'm writing this while watching the nailbiter between Las Vegas and Indiana, which is now tied at 84, so excuse lack of flow, clarity.

 

[maccca3232]

I will add a couple of thoughts.

I think overall Cathy has done a good job. I think the big thing was getting the NBA players buy-in (attending games, wearing apparel, talking about them in interviews) to normalize watching and discussing the WNBA.

During a recent interview with one of the WNBA podcasters (can't find it at the moment) when answering a question in relation to Unrivaled Engelbert mentioned something like "it is unusual to have a capital raising so close together". I took that a shot at Unrivaled's ownership.

During a recent interview (starts 12:55) with Sean Evans when answering a question about the future of Unrivaled, Breanna Stewart said:

"I think about us expanding, you know we were able to play in this facility which could really hold probably 3 to 5 thousand people but we want 20, 25 on a nightly basis and paying everybody seven figures".