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 disparity in collective bargaining agreement discussions between the WNBA and its players might require something nobody expected to still be arguing about this close to a deadline. As it stands, there is no agreement on what the offer actually entails.
The league claims that players would receive 50% of net revenue under its latest proposal. Meanwhile, the union sees it differently. A player survey conducted this week and posted on social media put the figure at less than 15% of gross revenue.
Both numbers are probably accurate, which is the problem. Net and gross are not interchangeable, and the spread between them depends on what expenses get pulled out before revenue sharing kicks in, how broadly those expenses are drawn, and who gets to draw them. Players have had limited access to the league's books for years, so when the difference between 50% and 15% comes down to definitions they had no hand in writing, that is not a rounding error. That is the argument.
The union's survey did not complicate it. Accept the offer or keep negotiating. Eighty-four percent said keep negotiating. The union did not say how many players responded.
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 same issue runs throughout the letter that Breanna Stewart and Kelsey Plum sent to executive director Terri Jackson on Monday, which ESPN obtained. One of the things the two said they had been asking PA staff for — and never gotten — was a plain breakdown of the WNBA's expenses and revenue. Their point was that there was no way to know what 50% of the net actually would pay the players.
That is the problem with a deadline in this situation. If players cannot verify how the league arrives at its net revenue figure, both numbers floating around — 50% and 15% — are abstractions. And whoever gets to define the terms has already won part of the argument.
The league has said nothing publicly about how the union is characterizing the offer. March 10 is today. The season is supposed to start on May 8.