Numbers game or negotiation tactic? Players question the WNBA's 50% net revenue claim, revealing a starkly different calculation of the league's offer.
The gap between the WNBA and its players on a new collective bargaining agreement may come down to something more fundamental than any single contract term: the two sides are not describing the same offer using the same math.
The WNBA has characterized its latest revenue-sharing proposal as offering players 50% of net revenue — a figure league officials have presented as a landmark concession and a sign of good faith heading into a March 10 deadline for a term sheet.
The Women's National Basketball Players Association is telling its members something different. In a player survey distributed this week and posted on union social media, the WNBPA described the same proposal as representing "less than 15% of gross revenue."
Both numbers can be accurate simultaneously. Net revenue and gross revenue are different calculations, and the spread between them depends entirely on how expenses are defined, which costs get deducted before revenue sharing is calculated, and who controls those definitions.
In a league where players have limited visibility into team and league-level finances, that distinction is not a minor accounting footnote — it is the entire argument.
The union's survey asked players directly whether they would "accept the league's proposal of '50% of net revenue,' which is less than 15% of gross revenue in an eight-year deal or ask the union to keep negotiating."
Eighty-four percent said they would not accept the offer and want negotiations to continue, according to the union's Instagram post, though the total number of respondents was not disclosed.
WNBPA vice president Alysha Clark addressed the framing directly Wednesday on ESPN's "NBA Today."
"We're at a place where we feel like the proposals the league has sent haven't been good ones," Clark said. "And we want to continue to fight for what we know we deserve."
The net-versus-gross framing has practical consequences beyond messaging. In the letter Plum and Stewart sent to executive director Terri Jackson on Monday — obtained by ESPN — the two players specifically requested a detailed breakdown of the WNBA's expenses and revenue "to the best of our understanding" as one of several pieces of information they said they had sought from PA staff without receiving.
The implication was that even members of the executive committee did not have a clear enough picture of the league's financials to evaluate what 50% of net actually means in dollar terms.
That information gap makes the framing dispute harder to resolve. If players cannot independently verify how expenses are calculated before revenue sharing kicks in, the league's 50% figure and the union's 15% figure are both abstractions, and the side that controls the narrative controls the negotiation.
The WNBA has not publicly responded to the union's characterization of the offer. The March 10 deadline for a term sheet remains in place, with the 2026 regular season scheduled to begin May 8.