Australian Basketball Players’ Association secures historic CBA with WNBL

The CBA begins with a 104% increase in the current minimum wage and payment proportionate to the NBL minimum starting in Year 3. That will ensure a minimum of at least $46,900 by 2029. Development players will also see a 314% increase in wage, with the same proportional payment.

Injured players will receive full contract protection insurance payments, as well as greater investment in ABPA player wellbeing and engagement services. It’s common for WNBL players to work second jobs and the investment beyond wages will set up a year-round support system for players.

Additionally, the salary cap for the league will grow 8% each year, with the number jumping up to $723,513 for the 2028-29 season. This comes as great news to WNBA players as well, since the WNBL perfectly supplements the WNBA season.

The WNBL season tips off roughly a week and a half after the last possible date for the WNBA Finals and the WNBL season concludes roughly two months before opening night in the WNBA. Not to mention, players who participate in both leagues get 12 months of summer between the two countries.

This appears to align well with WNBL owner Robyn Denholm’s comments from the league’s 2025 awards ceremony when she set a goal to have “every Australian Opal to play in the WNBL,” as more investment in the WNBL means more incentive for the global talent pool to develop as the WNBA adds expansion teams.

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This follows a period of tremendous growth of basketball in Australia, which included a large boom in viewership and attendance since the 2022 FIBA Women’s Basketball World Cup in Sydney. A series of 16,000-seat sellouts allowed basketball fans to show up in support of their nations while also witnessing the excellence on display in every game as the Opals won bronze with a 30-point performance from 41-year-old WNBA star Lauren Jackson.

Soon after, Australia and New Zealand hosted the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup, which consisted of 64 games and amassed nearly two million people for total attendance. It was roughly 500,000 higher than the tournament’s initial attendance target, highlighting the appetite for women’s sport in Australia. This led Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to announce the Play Our Way program, committing $200 million AUD to women’s sport in the country.

Australia also set a record for attendance at a women’s basketball game in Europe when the Opals faced France in the 2024 Paris Olympics, with 27,193 fans on hand. The Opals went on to win bronze in an 85-81 contest against 2023 EuroBasket gold medalists, Belgium.

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The link between domestic and international success cannot be understated and is something Serbian head coach Marina Maljkovic knows all too well.

During the 2023 EuroBasket, Serbia snuck by Montenegro in a classification game for the Olympic Qualifying Tournament (OQT). This led to Maljkovic sharing her impassioned stance on the need for investment in a Serbian domestic league during the postgame press conference. She told assembled media, “the major thing that preoccupies me, that’s always in my mind, is the lack of national league. It always hurts us so bad. Until we do something about that we will keep having problems.”

Historically, Serbia has been a strong basketball nation on both the men’s and women’s sides of the coin. Maljkovic hasn’t always had the deepest talent pool to select her national team from, yet has always found 12 good players she is able to get 110% out of. Her coaching acumen parallels the world’s best, she just doesn’t have the same tools as her contemporaries.

Contrasting this is the Australian Opals. The 20-player squad for the 2024 OQT saw multiple notable omissions, including Lauren Nicholson. In the 2023-24 WNBL season, per game, Nicholson finished third in the league for points, 10th in assists, eighth in made three-pointers, seventh in three-point percentage and second in free-throw percentage.

She was stellar in her domestic play yet didn’t feature in Australia’s 20-player international squad. This is the type of outcome Maljkovic is talking about when she speaks on the importance of a domestic product. Nicholson would have been a rotation player for most nations in the Olympics.

The CBA bolsters a domestic product that will strengthen the international product. The WNBL and Basketball Australia have outperformed the resources at their disposal, something the league no longer has to do. Players can now lean on improved financial investment and an increase in resources and support systems.

Ultimately, the performance of the WNBL and the Australian Opals has earned the new CBA. And in turn, this increased investment should accelerate the achievements and abilities of individual players, supplementing the positive feedback loop. It also raises the bar globally and brings other nations’ domestic basketball programs to the fore.

The new WNBL CBA didn’t happen overnight, but on the back of ongoing intrigue from Australian sports fans. Australia ranks 55th globally for population, making up just 0.33% of the total, yet finds itself at the forefront of interest at women’s sport, no matter what code it may be. This investment has been a collective effort of both private and public resources in response to the market for women’s sports in Australia.