After more than a week of intense daily negotiations, the media reported that the WNBA and the Players Association agreed on terms for a new collective bargaining agreement early on Wednesday, which both sides later confirmed publicly. More details are forthcoming and the entire agreement is expected to be available once it is signed, but the agreement covers at least the next six seasons. Even though the league-imposed deadline was passed, there is expected to be no disruption to the schedule for this season.
New Agreement
As with any league’s collective bargaining negotiation, there were many different items that both sides wanted to change from the last agreement, but the major sticking point in negotiations that caused such a protracted process was base player compensation and how it should be calculated. Exact details have yet to be announced, but all indications are that the model requested by players to set the annual salary cap as a percentage of league revenue will be used.
The league’s revenue has grown substantially over the past few years and is expected to continue on that trajectory. As a result, even the first offer from the league to the players represented a substantial raise, which ended up going further with each round of negotiations until the final amount was reached. Information on the salary cap calculation process has not been reached, but if it truly ends up being uncapped growth of the base figure instead of a fixed cap combined with distributions after revenue is calculated, then it could strong impact how players approach contract decisions. For Golden State, which is projected to have had substantially more revenue than any other team did last season, they could be better positioned to absorb that salary growth if some of the lower revenue teams cannot keep pace.
Once more details are announced, how the new CBA impacts the Valkyries will be more clear, including updated information on the contract status of all of their players. We will publish more articles on the subject once more specific details are available to everyone.
This Season’s Schedule
While the terms of an agreement have been reached, the vote to approve them must take place and the full text of the agreement must be created. The previous CBA ended up being 350 pages in total. Both of these steps must be completed before the league can begin its offseason activities. That will leave a very compressed schedule of important events that must occur during April.
The first offseason event will be the expansion draft for Toronto and Portland, which will happen close to four months later in the year than the one for Golden State. While the rules for it will likely not be announced publicly until much closer to the day it takes place, all of the teams should be getting those details much sooner once they are finalized. The league’s broadcast partners are likely to have some say over when the draft results are announced.
Free agency will be able to proceed after the expansion draft and will need to start with a couple of days where teams will be executing any rights that they have for their free agents who do not have contracts for the upcoming season. Once the final status of all players is decided, negotiations between teams and players can commence. With so many players being free agents and so much salary cap room available, this is expected to be a wild period.
Teams will want to have their major moves completed before the player entry draft, which is largely locked into a 4:00-6:30 window on Monday, April 13th so that it can be broadcast on ESPN. The compressed schedule is likely to still leave some free agents deciding by that time so those early draft picks could affect some of the ultimate choices made.
Training camps are scheduled to open the week after the draft, one week before the first preseason games. The agreement being reached means that the Valkyries will be able to play their scheduled home preseason game against Seattle on April 25th. Regular season games will begin on May 8th with Golden State on the road that day before their home opener on May 10th.
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