Collective bargaining agreement talks take center stage during WNBA All-Star weekend

Roughly four dozen players attended the CBA talks on Thursday, led by WNBPA President Nneka Ogwumike. Seattle Storm star and 11-year veteran Skylar Diggins said it was the most players she recalled attending one negotiating session, and she called the meeting disappointing in terms of the response from the league.

“I was extremely disappointed. There’s a lot of talk about expansion and new teams and things like that, and we can’t have an expansion draft if we don’t have a CBA. And so the players have been working tirelessly. Obviously, Nneka Ogwumike right here to my right is the President,” Diggins said. “I really appreciate the unity from the players. We want this league to sustain for a long time. I want this league to sustain so my daughter can play in it, my two-year-old. But there are a lot of things that they need to understand that we’re serious about.”

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Diggins said the revenue sharing aspect of the conversation was the part in which she felt the largest issue. Her belief is that the players won’t budge on their stance in that aspect of negotiations, and the WNBA isn’t, in her eyes, responding well to the WNBPA requests.

Several other players voiced their displeasure with CBA talks on Friday, and it became the biggest storyline of the weekend as time passed. League Commissioner Cathy Engelbert took the stand to field a variety of questions roughly an hour before tip off before the All-Star game, and the majority of the questions she fielded were about the CBA and the meeting with the WNBPA on Thursday.

“I want to share we had a productive meeting on Thursday with the WNBA PA and the players. We’re engaged in constructive conversations,” Engelbert said as a part of her opening remarks. “I remain confident we’ll reach a new CBA, one that’s transformational for the teams, players and owners for the future of our league.”

Engelbert said there are more meetings between the two sides scheduled going forward. She called the talks “constructive” and shared her role and the league’s role in connecting the players and the owners in their stances regarding negotiations. The deadline for negotiations is Oct. 31.

“I have confidence we can get something done by October, but I’m not going to put an exact date on it because if we’re in a good place, we’re going back and forth, there’s a few remaining issues, we can extend dates here and there,” Engelbert said. “We have to have an expansion draft, free agency period, college draft by the time March Madness gets over for the women’s game.

“Would we like to get it done? Yes,” she added. “Does it have to be done exactly on that date? We’ve got some room to continue negotiations if we’re close at that point.”

The Commissioner confirmed that talks about revenue sharing have taken on different forms. Part of why she is optimistic about a new CBA eventually being agreed upon is that Engelbert thinks the new revenue sharing program will be much more lucrative.

Less than an hour after Engelbert’s presser, All-Star players took the court for warmups. Each of them was wearing a shirt that said “Pay Us What You Owe Us” with a picture of the WNBPA logo on it. Several fans in the crowd had cut out signs that said “Pay The Players.”

“There is no league without the players. Past, present, the ones coming out, they’re the ones that have put in the blood, sweat, and tears for the new money that’s coming in. And so we feel like we are owed a piece of that,” All-Star game MVP Napheesa Collier said of the meaning behind the shirts.

The signs continued to pop up within the crowd throughout the game.

As Engelbert was speaking postgame and about the present Collier with the game MVP trophy, fans filling the arena chanted “pay them” over and over. The noise filled Gainbridge Fieldhouse, once again making the CBA the primary topic during a big moment. Washington Mystics guard Brittney Sykes stood nearby holding one of the “Pay The Players” signs in the background and was captured on the broadcast on numerous occasions.

Ogwumike discussed the player’s stance taken on Saturday postgame. “We see the growth of the league and, as it stands, the current salary system is not really paying us what we owe,” she said. “We want to be able to have that fair share moving forward, especially as we see, you know, all of the investment going in. And we want to be able to have our salaries reflected in a structure that makes sense for us.”

When it comes to revenue sharing and the disagreement between the players and the WNBA, Ogwumike shared what the WNBPA is fighting for. “Based on what we saw and based on what we’re proposing, it’s two fundamentally different systems — one that leans more towards a fixed percentage that the league is responding to us with. We want to have a better share where our salaries go with the business.”

The players didn’t want to miss their moment, especially after having a CBA meeting on Thursday that didn’t go how they hoped it would. Despite strong player turnout, it was disappointing. The current deadline for a new CBA is about three months away.

Ogwumike is thrilled that the players met the moment of All-Star weekend and got their message out in front of fans. The official warm up shirts are available for sale online. Given how the crowd responded with chants, it appears that message was well received. But the league and the WNBA still have work to do, especially as the league continues to grow in the number of teams and with an expansion draft on the horizon.

“I think it exceeded my expectations,” Ogwumike said of the players building their narrative this weekend. “We want to significantly increase their salary and benefits while balancing with our owners, their ability to have a path to profitability as well as continued investment. You see tens of millions of dollars being invested in practice facilities and other player experience by teams. We want to strike the right balance between those two so that can continue,” said Engelbert. Meetings will continue in the coming months.