What the WNBA's Windfall Could Mean for Player Salaries
Jackie Young, the WNBA’s highest-paid player, currently makes $252,450 annually. Within a couple of years, the WNBA’s lowest-paid players will sign what not long ago were record-breaking contracts for the league. (As recently as 2010, rookies earned a minimum of $35,190, while the maximum salary was $101,000.)
This shift could dry up the pipeline of WNBA players going abroad to supplement their incomes. While the contracts abroad are still lucrative—superstars like Brittney Griner and Breanna Stewart have both said they’ve made $1 million annually playing in Russia—the WNBA might pay all players enough where they don’t have to go overseas to afford the costs of professional basketball. If not all players, many should be able to make a healthy living playing in the U.S. year-round. (The WNBA did try to tackle this in the 2020 CBA by giving players bigger cuts of off-season marketing campaigns, but those applied to only certain players. In ’22, Griner brought national attention to the overseas dynamic when she was detained in Russia.)
The jump would be even better for top-drafted players locked into set rookie salaries through their fourth year. First through fourth picks like Clark would likely get paid much more than their current set contract of $85,873 for 2026 under the existing CBA.
For the highest-paid players like Young, tripling their salaries would land upward of $750,000, while quadrupling them would put the deals over $1 million annually for the first time in league history. These bigger deals could instantly become some of the highest salary contracts in women’s team sports, bypassing the world’s highest-paid female soccer player Sam Kerr and her nearly $550,000-per-year deal with Chelsea. And million-dollar paydays are nothing new to individual women’s sports like tennis and golf. Iga Świątek earned almost $10 million on the tennis court alone in both 2022 and ’23. The richest female athletes in U.S. team sports like soccer and basketball currently make most of their money from endorsement deals or entrepreneurship. Even with the anticipated salary increases, that would likely remain the case; see Caitlin Clark’s eight-year, $28 million deal with Nike.
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