# WNBA Players Want More of the League’s Revenue. Can They Get It?

An episode of [Big Take](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1578096201), 31 Oct 2025, 20 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/tracking.swap.fm/track/UVBrz8bN8aM2Xe47PEPu/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/825d4e29-b616-46f4-afd7-ae2b0013005c/2719c645-635f-441e-b9eb-b387014c8dfa/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=8b1dd624-a026-43e9-8b57-ae2b00130066

The WNBA is bigger than ever. From soaring ticket sales and to record TV viewership, the W is one of the fastest-growing sports leagues in the world. But since last year, the WNBA and its players’ union have been in tense negotiations over the cut that players get from that success. A deadline to reach a deal has been extended another 30 days, but the sticking points remain. On today’s Big Take Podcast, Bloomberg reporter Jennah Haque, Good Game host Sarah Spain and Seattle Storm Guard Lexie Brown break down the state of play, from proposals on the table for revenue sharing to questions about the league’s financial picture. Read more: • As Billions of Dollars Pour Into Women’s Sports, Players Seek a Bigger Cut Further listening: • Good Game with Sarah Spain • Full Circle with Lexie Brown & Mariah Rose—Power to the Players See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:02] Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news, twenty eight.
[0:10] Speaker 2: Years in the Banking to New York Liberty WNBA champions.
[0:19] Speaker 3: On October twentieth of last year, the New York Liberty
[0:22] Speaker 3: faced off against the Minnesota Links in the WNBA Finals.
[0:26] Speaker 2: The original franchise has its very first title.
[0:32] Speaker 3: It was an historic night. The Liberty won its first
[0:35] Speaker 3: ever WNBA championship, marking the end of a remarkable season
[0:39] Speaker 3: for the team and for the league. In twenty twenty four,
[0:44] Speaker 3: attendance at WNBA games was up nearly fifty percent from
[0:48] Speaker 3: the previous year, its highest in more than two decades.
[0:52] Speaker 3: Televised games attracted tens of millions of viewers over the
[0:55] Speaker 3: course of the season. More than a million people tuned
[0:57] Speaker 3: in to see the Liberty claim their first title. The
[1:01] Speaker 3: next day, the WNBPA, the union representing the league's players,
[1:05] Speaker 3: posted a video on x with a clear message.
[1:08] Speaker 2: The WNBA you know if you want us to be here,
[1:10] Speaker 2: you have to pay us more.
[1:14] Speaker 3: It was an announcement the players union was opting out
[1:17] Speaker 3: of its existing contract with the league. The union agreed
[1:20] Speaker 3: to keep the contract's terms through the end of the
[1:22] Speaker 3: twenty twenty five season, while both parties negotiated new terms,
[1:26] Speaker 3: but today October thirty, first, twenty twenty five, the clock
[1:30] Speaker 3: on those negotiations runs out.
[1:32] Speaker 2: One of my favorite things is that it's on Halloween.
[1:35] Speaker 2: It feels very spooky season.
[1:37] Speaker 3: Sarah Spain has been covering the WNBA for ESPN for
[1:40] Speaker 3: more than a decade. She's also the host of the
[1:43] Speaker 3: women's sports podcast Good Game with Sarah Spain. Yesterday, instead
[1:47] Speaker 3: of reaching a deal, the league and the players union
[1:49] Speaker 3: announced a thirty day extension, saying they'd continue negotiations through
[1:53] Speaker 3: the month of November with a caveat. The union maintains
[1:56] Speaker 3: the right to terminate the extension at any time with
[1:59] Speaker 3: forty eight hours notice. How would you characterize the quality
[2:03] Speaker 3: of the conversations the negotiations that have taken place so.
[2:06] Speaker 4: Far U acrimonious.
[2:11] Speaker 3: Acrimonious in part because there's a lot at stake.
[2:15] Speaker 2: Less than a handful of WNBA veterans are under contract
[2:19] Speaker 2: for next year. Almost every single player not tied to
[2:22] Speaker 2: a rookie contract has elected to have their contract end
[2:26] Speaker 2: with this season, and really, what's at the center of it,
[2:29] Speaker 2: at the biggest, most important level, is a desire for
[2:33] Speaker 2: the players to get a revenue share.
[2:35] Speaker 3: Lexi Brown is a guard for the Seattle Storm. She's
[2:38] Speaker 3: not a free agent, but after eight seasons in the league,
[2:41] Speaker 3: she's asking for a bigger piece of the pie.
[2:43] Speaker 1: We're asking for the share of something that we've built,
[2:46] Speaker 1: something that we've created.
[2:48] Speaker 3: Lexi says she's seen huge improvements for players on and
[2:52] Speaker 3: off the court since she started, but she says the
[2:54] Speaker 3: growing popularity of the game has made her realize how
[2:58] Speaker 3: undervalued the players have been.
[3:00] Speaker 1: It's like being like in a relationship with the toxic
[3:03] Speaker 1: man and then you find the good man. You're like, oh,
[3:05] Speaker 1: this is what it feels like. And I feel like
[3:08] Speaker 1: Vegas and New York and Seattle have been three of
[3:11] Speaker 1: the organizations that have finally had ownership groups that are
[3:15] Speaker 1: making all of us feel respected, valued and really investing
[3:20] Speaker 1: in us. Just understanding how undervalued we've been for so
[3:24] Speaker 1: many years. And I think for most of us that's
[3:26] Speaker 1: really the principle of showing us that you value us
[3:29] Speaker 1: as players and value the product that we put out
[3:32] Speaker 1: every season.
[3:38] Speaker 3: I'm David Gera, and this is the big take from
[3:40] Speaker 3: Bloomberg News today. On the show, at the negotiating Table
[3:44] Speaker 3: with the WNBA and the WNBPA what the players want,
[3:48] Speaker 3: what the league wants, and what's on the line for
[3:50] Speaker 3: one of the fastest growing sports leagues in the world
[3:53] Speaker 3: if they can't make a deal. The WNBA started nearly
[4:03] Speaker 3: thirty years ago in nineteen ninety seven. It was a
[4:06] Speaker 3: pivotal moment in women's sports. Many of the players that
[4:09] Speaker 3: first season had just won a gold medal for Team
[4:12] Speaker 3: USA at the nineteen ninety six Olympics in Atlanta. To
[4:15] Speaker 3: even qualify for the team, they had to spend the
[4:18] Speaker 3: year leading up to the games traveling the world, leaving
[4:21] Speaker 3: existing careers and taking pay cuts to play in small
[4:24] Speaker 3: arenas and local gyms, part of then NBA commissioner David
[4:28] Speaker 3: Stearn's plan to drum up interest in women's basketball players
[4:31] Speaker 3: nicknamed it the WNBA Test Balloon. Decades later, that balloon
[4:36] Speaker 3: is floating higher than ever. Players like Caitlin Clark, Breonna Stewart,
[4:41] Speaker 3: Paige Becker's, and Angel Reese have become household names standard
[4:45] Speaker 3: metrics of success. TV viewership, game attendance valuations, and ticket
[4:49] Speaker 3: sales have soared all except for one player pay, specifically
[4:55] Speaker 3: a share of the revenue. In twenty twenty five, base
[4:58] Speaker 3: pay for WNBA players range from about sixty six thousand
[5:02] Speaker 3: dollars to two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. NBA players
[5:06] Speaker 3: play roughly twice as many games, but their annual salary
[5:10] Speaker 3: is significantly higher, anywhere from about one point two million
[5:13] Speaker 3: dollars to fifty six million dollars. At this year's WNBA
[5:18] Speaker 3: All Star Game, players wore t shirts that read, pay
[5:21] Speaker 3: us what you owe us. It was a big statement.
[5:24] Speaker 3: Here's ESPN reporter and Good Game host Sarah Spain.
[5:29] Speaker 2: So right now they're getting less than ten percent of
[5:32] Speaker 2: the WNBA revenue compared to about fifty percent that NBA
[5:35] Speaker 2: players get.
[5:36] Speaker 4: And at the crux of.
[5:38] Speaker 2: It is, the league side wants them to get higher salaries,
[5:42] Speaker 2: but they want their revenue to be affected by certain
[5:45] Speaker 2: stipulations a predetermined rate, whereas the players want their revenue
[5:50] Speaker 2: to go up, their salary cap to go up, all
[5:52] Speaker 2: of those things to be dependent on growth along with
[5:56] Speaker 2: the revenue that they're creating for the league.
[5:58] Speaker 3: I want to dig into the revenue sharing piece of
[6:00] Speaker 3: this a bit more. And you brought up the contrast
[6:02] Speaker 3: between the WNBA and the NBA, so can you spell
[6:04] Speaker 3: that out a bit more explicitly, well.
[6:06] Speaker 4: We'll give you the extremes.
[6:07] Speaker 2: So, as of the most recent report, Steph Curry is
[6:12] Speaker 2: the highest paid NBA player place for the Warriors, and
[6:16] Speaker 2: Jackie Young is one of the highest paid WNBA and
[6:20] Speaker 2: Steph Curry makes two hundred and thirty times as much
[6:24] Speaker 2: money as Jackie Young. There was a great op ed
[6:27] Speaker 2: in The New York Times by Nobel Prize winning economist
[6:30] Speaker 2: Claudia Golden, and these are her numbers. And one of
[6:34] Speaker 2: the very tricky things about discussing this issue is that
[6:36] Speaker 2: there is such a lack of financial transparency from the
[6:40] Speaker 2: NBAWNBA league side, so everyone is sort of estimating at
[6:44] Speaker 2: revenue profit.
[6:45] Speaker 4: Everything else cost.
[6:46] Speaker 2: But according to Claudia Golden's numbers, based on game attendance,
[6:50] Speaker 2: TV viewership, all the other stuff, WNBA players should make
[6:54] Speaker 2: somewhere around a quarter of what NBA players are making,
[6:57] Speaker 2: and they're making an eightieth.
[7:02] Speaker 3: That's partly because WNBA base salaries are lower, but another
[7:06] Speaker 3: factor is that the NBA and the WNBA have really
[7:10] Speaker 3: different approaches when it comes to the way they pay
[7:12] Speaker 3: their players. What's essentially a bonus. That's something Bloomberg Data
[7:16] Speaker 3: visualization reporter Jenna Hawk has spent years looking.
[7:19] Speaker 5: Into So the NBA looks at everything in terms of
[7:23] Speaker 5: basketball related income. So basically, anything that is brought in
[7:27] Speaker 5: their media rights deals, concessions sold at games, ticket sales,
[7:32] Speaker 5: corporate sponsorships, merchandise, it's all under one pot. And within
[7:38] Speaker 5: that large pot they basically split it up and fifty
[7:41] Speaker 5: one percent between fifty to fifty one percent goes directly
[7:44] Speaker 5: to players. The rest goes to the league, the owners,
[7:47] Speaker 5: et cetera.
[7:48] Speaker 3: The WNBA, on the other hand, when it.
[7:50] Speaker 5: Comes to revenue sharing, only league revenue is up for sharing.
[7:54] Speaker 5: So the current collective Bargaining Agreement technically already has a
[7:59] Speaker 5: revenue sharing provision, but unfortunately, because of really strict requirements
[8:03] Speaker 5: that have been outlined in that CBA and because of
[8:06] Speaker 5: really difficult thresholds that the league has to meet, the
[8:09] Speaker 5: revenue sharing has never actually kicked in for the players.
[8:13] Speaker 5: So even though it's been outlined in this CBA since
[8:16] Speaker 5: twenty twenty, players haven't actually seen a dime of that
[8:20] Speaker 5: money go into their paychecks.
[8:23] Speaker 3: Jenna says those requirements are difficult to meet. The league
[8:26] Speaker 3: has to increase its revenue by twenty percent for two
[8:29] Speaker 3: consecutive years in order for the players to claim a share.
[8:33] Speaker 5: And so if you miss your target one year, the
[8:35] Speaker 5: following year you have to make up for all that
[8:38] Speaker 5: lost money and again meet your twenty percent goal for
[8:42] Speaker 5: that year. So you can imagine whethering a pandemic, there's
[8:46] Speaker 5: some lost money on the table. So the kind of
[8:48] Speaker 5: growth targets have then become much higher for the league.
[8:51] Speaker 5: After you meet all these cumulative targets, only about seventeen
[8:55] Speaker 5: point five percent of the final area that's up for
[8:58] Speaker 5: grabs will actually go to players. And so we kind
[9:01] Speaker 5: of calculated a couple of years ago how much would
[9:05] Speaker 5: players actually receive. Well, when you actually split it up,
[9:10] Speaker 5: give the players the portion that they are owned, give
[9:13] Speaker 5: the league what they're owned. There's another provision called the
[9:16] Speaker 5: cost of doing revenue. So if you start out with
[9:20] Speaker 5: an excess of two million dollars and the union opts
[9:23] Speaker 5: to split all of these funds kind of equally, players
[9:26] Speaker 5: would basically only get a two thousand dollars four hundred
[9:30] Speaker 5: one time bonus.
[9:33] Speaker 3: Here's Seattle Storm player Lexi Brown.
[9:36] Speaker 1: The WNBA takes care of our housing. You know, if
[9:38] Speaker 1: you don't have a car and market, they take care
[9:40] Speaker 1: of that. They do supplement a lot of expenses for us.
[9:45] Speaker 1: Despite these really low salaries, I do think like we're
[9:48] Speaker 1: super underpaid for what we do on the daily and
[9:51] Speaker 1: the expectations they have for us. I remember, I think
[9:53] Speaker 1: I made forty grand my rookie year, the season I
[9:57] Speaker 1: got waves and only played half the year. I think
[10:00] Speaker 1: I only made like fifteen twenty thousand dollars playing, and
[10:03] Speaker 1: I want a championship that year.
[10:05] Speaker 3: When it comes to the current contract negotiations, Lexi pointed
[10:08] Speaker 3: out the league is offering them higher base salaries, but
[10:12] Speaker 3: what it doesn't want to budge on is the revenue
[10:14] Speaker 3: share structure.
[10:15] Speaker 1: You do have some players who are looking at these
[10:16] Speaker 1: new numbers and they're like that looks pretty good to me,
[10:19] Speaker 1: Like what's the big deal. And then you also have
[10:22] Speaker 1: just other players like it's the principle of what's going
[10:25] Speaker 1: on here, Like they are not allowing us to also
[10:28] Speaker 1: grow with this business that we are helping grow.
[10:31] Speaker 3: The league argues that while it's rapidly growing, it still
[10:34] Speaker 3: isn't profitable. Getting a look at those finances can be
[10:37] Speaker 3: tricky because the WNBA is a private company.
[10:41] Speaker 5: So they don't actually have to disclose how much money
[10:43] Speaker 5: that they're making every single year, whether they're churning a profit.
[10:47] Speaker 3: In twenty twenty three, though, Jenna got her hands on
[10:50] Speaker 3: some official WNBA documents which helped give her a picture
[10:54] Speaker 3: of the league's finances.
[10:55] Speaker 5: From the end of fiscal year twenty nineteen, the league
[10:58] Speaker 5: had brought in around fifty one point eight million dollars.
[11:01] Speaker 5: In twenty twenty four, the league brought in over one
[11:04] Speaker 5: hundred and forty four million dollars, so it's one hundred
[11:07] Speaker 5: seventy seven percent jump.
[11:09] Speaker 3: Even so, Jenna says, we can't definitely say whether or
[11:12] Speaker 3: not the WNBA is profitable.
[11:14] Speaker 5: Some of those numbers still are a little murky to
[11:17] Speaker 5: us because of these complicated accounting structures. It also kind
[11:21] Speaker 5: of depends on owners that you ask. There's a lot
[11:23] Speaker 5: of NBA owners who also have tie ups in the
[11:26] Speaker 5: WNBA that claim they're losing lots of money. Other owners
[11:29] Speaker 5: will tell you it doesn't look like that if you
[11:32] Speaker 5: take into account the larger picture. So we can't say
[11:35] Speaker 5: definitively whether the WNBA is like truly making money yet.
[11:39] Speaker 3: The WNBA did not respond to questions about its profitability.
[11:43] Speaker 3: But when it comes to the revenue shared deal on
[11:45] Speaker 3: the table. A league spokesperson told us it offered players
[11:48] Speaker 3: quote a revenue sharing component that would result in the
[11:51] Speaker 3: player's compensation increasing as league revenue increases without any cap.
[11:55] Speaker 3: On the upside, that revenue shared deal would only go
[11:59] Speaker 3: into effect if certain requirements were met, like the current contract,
[12:03] Speaker 3: and the question of profit how much or how little
[12:06] Speaker 3: the league is making, sits at the center of these negotiations.
[12:10] Speaker 3: What is eating so much into the WNBA's profits.
[12:12] Speaker 4: Wouldn't we all like to know?
[12:14] Speaker 2: Wouldn't we all like for them to tell us this
[12:16] Speaker 2: is a league that starts an eleven year two point
[12:19] Speaker 2: two billion dollar right steal next year and has a
[12:24] Speaker 2: series of lesser value media right steals and has record merchandise, attendance, viewership,
[12:30] Speaker 2: everything else. So the idea that the argument would be
[12:33] Speaker 2: the same decades later, which is that it's still on
[12:36] Speaker 2: the players to really settle for scraps as they try
[12:40] Speaker 2: to build this league, as opposed to seeing the player's
[12:43] Speaker 2: percentage and salaries go up along with the growth of
[12:47] Speaker 2: the league.
[12:48] Speaker 4: Is I think, what's so frustrating.
[12:50] Speaker 3: Coming up after the break, how the WNBA's dizzying ownership
[12:54] Speaker 3: structure complicates the picture, and what could make the two
[12:57] Speaker 3: sides come to a deal. The WNBA and the wnbpas
[13:13] Speaker 3: spooky Halloween deadline is here, and instead of reaching a deal,
[13:17] Speaker 3: the two sides have agreed to extend their talks for
[13:20] Speaker 3: another thirty days, with the condition that the players may
[13:23] Speaker 3: terminate the extension at any time with forty eight hours notice.
[13:27] Speaker 3: A source familiar with the situation said the league will
[13:29] Speaker 3: have the option to terminate it as well. There's no
[13:32] Speaker 3: shortage of competing factors at play in these negotiations, but
[13:35] Speaker 3: ESPN Sarah Spain says a significant one is the league's
[13:38] Speaker 3: financial picture, made even more complicated by its ownership structure.
[13:43] Speaker 2: So the WNBA has forty two percent, the NBA has
[13:46] Speaker 2: forty two percent, and then there's a sixteen percent that
[13:50] Speaker 2: was sold in twenty twenty two to a variety of investors.
[13:53] Speaker 3: At the time of the twenty twenty two deal, that
[13:55] Speaker 3: sixteen percent was sold off for seventy five million dollars,
[14:00] Speaker 3: which would have valued the whole league at around four
[14:02] Speaker 3: hundred and seventy million dollars.
[14:04] Speaker 2: Three years later, one team, the New York Liberty, was
[14:07] Speaker 2: valued at close to that number on its own.
[14:11] Speaker 4: You have a league that is estimated to be worth.
[14:13] Speaker 2: Billions in the next couple years, and you sold off
[14:16] Speaker 2: sixteen percent of it for just seventy five million dollars.
[14:20] Speaker 3: Here's Bloomberg reporter Jenna Hawk.
[14:22] Speaker 5: There's almost two camps on how people view this. There's
[14:26] Speaker 5: the one camp, which is like, this was the biggest
[14:29] Speaker 5: amount of investment into women's sports in the history of
[14:34] Speaker 5: all time at that point, and you had all these
[14:37] Speaker 5: really big names declaring their support and earmarking their money
[14:42] Speaker 5: directly for women's sports, really big names like Condolleza, Rice Michael,
[14:46] Speaker 5: and Susan Dell, Loreene Powell jobs. On the other hand,
[14:50] Speaker 5: you have other people being like, well, if women's sports
[14:53] Speaker 5: and the WNBA as a league is on the precipice
[14:56] Speaker 5: of this really big moment, and we know that the
[15:00] Speaker 5: growth is coming, why dilute the shares? And that has
[15:04] Speaker 5: kind of been lurking for years now, especially as you
[15:09] Speaker 5: kind of shore up these big media rights deals, especially
[15:12] Speaker 5: as you talk about this collective bargaining agreement negotiations. It's
[15:16] Speaker 5: all kind of like, Okay, well, was this a good
[15:19] Speaker 5: business move and did this bring more eyes to the
[15:21] Speaker 5: game or did we make a bad move here?
[15:25] Speaker 3: From where I sit. I hear a lot of investors
[15:27] Speaker 3: talking a pretty good game about women's sports. They celebrate
[15:30] Speaker 3: it and support it. What role are they playing in
[15:32] Speaker 3: these negotiations, those who've invested in this league. Are they
[15:36] Speaker 3: being outspoken about what's going on here?
[15:37] Speaker 4: No, and that's what's fascinating.
[15:39] Speaker 2: So we had a WNBPA lawyer on my show Good
[15:42] Speaker 2: Game with Sarah Spain, and one of the things that
[15:44] Speaker 2: she talked about that really could push these negotiations, could
[15:48] Speaker 2: move the needle publicly, is if the folks who invested,
[15:51] Speaker 2: believing that they were both making a great business decision
[15:55] Speaker 2: but also supporting the players and the teams that they
[15:58] Speaker 2: care about, they spoke out and said, why isn't the
[16:01] Speaker 2: money that we put in getting to the players, Why
[16:05] Speaker 2: is it just enriching these other folks.
[16:08] Speaker 4: That would really change the conversation, I think.
[16:12] Speaker 3: Sarah says. So far, WNBA team owners haven't really spoken
[16:16] Speaker 3: out either, But they aren't monolithic. They approach this from
[16:19] Speaker 3: a variety of perspectives.
[16:21] Speaker 2: Some of them are invested in what it means to
[16:24] Speaker 2: support and invest in women's sports, and some of them
[16:27] Speaker 2: have just been told that it's a great place to invest.
[16:30] Speaker 2: With a lot of upside, and they're aligning more with
[16:33] Speaker 2: the side that I think is trying to make the
[16:35] Speaker 2: money without spending it.
[16:36] Speaker 3: But Bloomberg's Jenna Hawk says it may be too early
[16:39] Speaker 3: for those owners to judge the return on their investment.
[16:42] Speaker 5: At what point in a league should you actually be
[16:45] Speaker 5: talking about profitability. The NBA is decades older than the WNBA.
[16:51] Speaker 5: It took them many many years to churn a profit.
[16:54] Speaker 5: There's still plenty of different sports leagues that are decades
[16:57] Speaker 5: years old and they're not churning a profit. I think
[17:00] Speaker 5: all of these questions about how much money are they
[17:03] Speaker 5: bringing in, when should they be making money for their owners?
[17:07] Speaker 5: It's all kind of gotten into a question, well, if
[17:09] Speaker 5: you're in a period of major growth, are you supposed
[17:11] Speaker 5: to be seeing profit?
[17:12] Speaker 3: Yet all this comes down to whether the players trust
[17:16] Speaker 3: the league's leadership to appropriately value their worth, and the
[17:19] Speaker 3: relationship between the league and its players union has only
[17:22] Speaker 3: deteriorated as the negotiations have dragged on, with the players
[17:26] Speaker 3: union and the league publicly sparring for weeks now over
[17:30] Speaker 3: everything from the value of its media deals to the
[17:32] Speaker 3: leadership of the league's commissioner, Kathy Engelbert.
[17:35] Speaker 2: You look at NAFISA Collier's statement during her exit interview
[17:38] Speaker 2: for the Minnesota Links, talking about private conversations she had,
[17:41] Speaker 2: she told me players should be on their knees thanking
[17:44] Speaker 2: they're lucky stars for the media right steal that I
[17:46] Speaker 2: got them.
[17:47] Speaker 3: Before the first game of the WNBA Finals, the commissioner
[17:50] Speaker 3: responded to the FISA Collier's statement and if the.
[17:52] Speaker 1: Players in the w don't feel appreciated and valued by
[17:55] Speaker 1: the league, then we have to do better, and I
[17:57] Speaker 1: have to do better.
[17:58] Speaker 3: In the week since the back and forth has continued,
[18:01] Speaker 3: here's Lexi Brown again.
[18:03] Speaker 1: Early in negotiations, it was very much we're gonna, you know,
[18:07] Speaker 1: we're gonna keep this in house, like basically like keep
[18:09] Speaker 1: it cute. And then I think just things just weren't
[18:14] Speaker 1: going the way we expected it to. Considering the explosion
[18:19] Speaker 1: of the WNBA in the last few years, I think
[18:22] Speaker 1: it kind of caught everybody off guard that the league
[18:24] Speaker 1: was just kind of like, yeah, like we're doing amazing,
[18:26] Speaker 1: y'all are doing amazing, but like we still want to
[18:28] Speaker 1: like keep y'all in this little corner over here that
[18:30] Speaker 1: we've had y'all in for the last twenty five years.
[18:33] Speaker 1: So slowly and slowly and slowly, we've kind of brought
[18:37] Speaker 1: it more out to the public.
[18:39] Speaker 3: Now the players in the league have thirty more days
[18:42] Speaker 3: to try to see eye to eye. In a statement,
[18:44] Speaker 3: the WNBPA said, quote, while we believe negotiations would be
[18:48] Speaker 3: further along, the players are more focused, united, and determined
[18:52] Speaker 3: than ever to reach an agreement that reflects their value
[18:55] Speaker 3: and undeniable impact on the league. The WNBA says it
[18:59] Speaker 3: stands ready to continue negotiations, adding it hopes the union
[19:02] Speaker 3: does the same so that both parties can quote finalize
[19:05] Speaker 3: a mutually beneficial new CBA as quickly as possible. Lexi
[19:10] Speaker 3: Brown so she hopes to find a way to work
[19:12] Speaker 3: with the league and stay on good terms with leadership.
[19:15] Speaker 3: One day she could see herself being one of them.
[19:18] Speaker 1: I can just speak for myself, like, I do want
[19:19] Speaker 1: to work in front office one day, whether that's in
[19:21] Speaker 1: the league or for a team, And I feel like
[19:24] Speaker 1: the best way to help grow the league when you're
[19:26] Speaker 1: done is to be a part of the higher ups.
[19:29] Speaker 1: So that's something that I've always dreamt of doing, as
[19:32] Speaker 1: being on the other side of the table in these negotiations.
[19:36] Speaker 1: Having a player's perspective. I feel like it could be
[19:39] Speaker 1: super beneficial.
[19:43] Speaker 3: This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm David Gerrat.
[19:46] Speaker 3: The show is hosted by me Wanha and Sarah Holder.
[19:49] Speaker 3: The show is made by Aaron Edwards, David Fox, Eleanor
[19:52] Speaker 3: Harrison Dengate, Patti Hirsch, Rachel Lewis, Krisky, Naomi Julia Press,
[19:56] Speaker 3: Tracy Samuelson, Naomi Shaven, Alex Kura, Julia Wi, Young Young,
[20:01] Speaker 3: and Taka Yasuzawa. To get more from the Big Take
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[20:06] Speaker 3: today at Bloomberg dot com Slash Podcast offer. Thanks for listening.
[20:11] Speaker 3: We'll be back on Monday.
[20:16] Speaker 2: Thank you much

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