The WNBA’s latest collective bargaining agreement proposal to players includes a max salary exceeding $1 million, a source with direct knowledge of negotiations confirmed to Front Office Sports. 

The Associated Press was first to report the league’s latest proposal.

The proposal—presented this week—includes a salary range starting at more than $220,000 for the league minimum and going up to more than $1.1 million for the max. The new league average would be more than $460,000.

These salaries are in the first year and would grow over the course of the CBA. 

The new proposal comes after negotiations between the league and the WNBPA reached a contentious point, with both sides exchanging public barbs last month before agreeing to a 30-day extension. The CBA was set to expire Oct. 31, but the extension pushed that date to Nov. 30. 

While increased salaries and an improved revenue-sharing model have been the two main sticking points in negotiations, the players presented a list of priorities when they opted out of the CBA last year. Among those were improved benefits, the formalization of charter travel, establishing baseline standards of operation for every franchise, a softer salary cap, and roster expansion. 

Meetings are ongoing, a source told Front Office Sports. 

The league can’t set dates and rules for an expansion draft for its two newest expansion teams, the Toronto Tempo and Portland Fire, until a CBA is ratified.

The last round of labor negotiations in 2019 was extended by 60 days before a new CBA was formalized in the new year, just before free agency was set to begin.

The latest proposal follows news that start-up league Project B is offering star players multimillion-dollar salaries. The new league, which will run from November to April, will not be in direct competition with the WNBA, but multiple sources suggested that players could opt to skip the WNBA season if negotiations didn’t go well. Jewell Loyd, Jonquel Jones, Alyssa Thomas, and Nneka Ogwumike have all signed on to be part of Project B’s inaugural season. 

NEW YORK — After many months of anticipation, Major League Baseball has formally unveiled a set of short-term national media-rights deals to repackage programming forfeited by ESPN, as well as some content previously held by Roku.

Roughly three months after reaching agreements in principle, the league said Wednesday it has finalized new pacts with NBCUniversal and Netflix, and it reached a substantially reworked deal with ESPN. Among the specific pacts, each covering the 2026–28 seasons:

• NBC Sports: A showpiece of this pact is the Comcast-owned outlet picking up Sunday night primetime rights and ending a 35-year run of Sunday Night Baseball on ESPN. There, NBC Sports will have a year-round showcase of live sports on the critical television night when also including existing pacts with the NFL and NBA. NBC Sports also picks up exclusive rights to the wild-card playoff round, which posted record viewership last month, as well as Sunday morning rights previously held by Roku, the first hour of the MLB draft, the MLB All-Star Futures Game, and select special-event games. When there are conflicts on Sunday nights with the other leagues, the MLB programming will air only on Peacock. That streaming service will also air one out-of-market MLB game every day of the season. The agreement is worth nearly $600 million over three years, Front Office Sports sources said. 
• Netflix: The dominant streamer gains rights to an opening-night game, which in 2026 will be the Yankees at the Giants, as well as the Home Run Derby, the 2026 Field of Dreams game involving the Twins and Phillies, and a special-event game in each of the subsequent two years. The agreement is worth an estimated $50 million per year, according to FOS sources, and builds upon a separate pact for rights in Japan to the 2026 World Baseball Classic. 
• ESPN: The substantially restructured agreement with the Disney-owned outlet calls for a 30-game national package that will air on ESPN’s linear networks, as well as the new ESPN direct-to-consumer service. ESPN retains rights to the MLB Little League Classic, and it gains rights to sell and distribute, through the ESPN app, local streaming rights to teams whose games are being produced and distributed by the league. The pact also gives ESPN rights to sell and distribute the MLB.TV out-of-market streaming service. The ESPN agreement, previously worth $550 million per year, is worth roughly the same figure in this new form, FOS sources confirmed. 

All told, MLB was able to surpass what ESPN was previously paying alone while also incorporating a pair of new partners. MLB commissioner Rob Manfred confirmed at the Front Office Sports Tuned In summit in September that such an outcome was happening. 

To do so, however, required folding the MLB.TV rights into the ESPN pact, as well as the access to local rights for the Diamondbacks, Guardians, Padres, Rockies, Twins, and most recently, the Mariners. Striking the new agreements also involved a period of initial acrimony between MLB and ESPN. 

The new deals, however, also arrive amid a rising tide of MLB viewership, with the league posting audience gains during the regular season and then every individual round of the postseason. 

“We think the combination of ESPN, NBCUniversal, and Netflix is a great win for us,” Manfred said Wednesday about the deals in the midst of MLB owners’ meetings here. “This expands our reach, increases our partnership revenue, and given the [ESPN] opt-out before, it was really important to continue that relationship with ESPN … and this brings in two great new partners.”

A consistent theme of each of the pacts, meanwhile, is to create more tentpole events within a 2,430-game league schedule that stretches over six months. 

The league’s existing deals with other rights holders such as Fox and TNT Sports, meanwhile, remain intact, and will also run through 2028—when Manfred intends to pursue a larger restructuring of the national and local media rights. 

An $8 billion casino and entertainment complex in New York, long planned by Mets owner Steve Cohen and Hard Rock Entertainment, is now a potential glide path to happening after the resolution of a late-developing conflict with the neighboring U.S. Tennis Association. 

The operators of the US Open filed a lawsuit against the city of New York last week, challenging a move to enter into a pre-development agreement with Cohen and Hard Rock for the long-discussed casino complex, Metropolitan Park, to be located next to Citi Field. The USTA argued the casino plan violates the existing “superiority clause” it holds for area parking lots, local access, and event scheduling during the US Open, with the exception of Mets home games. 

Already, there are multiple overlap dates each year between the Mets and the US Open—something that can test local resources further and is a dynamic only set to increase substantially with a casino complex next to the ballpark.

Almost as quickly as the dispute arose, however, the issue was largely resolved. The city’s agreement with Cohen and Hard Rock, now signed, preserves the US Open’s superiority in the area and codifies protections for USTA.

“We have successfully signed our pre-development agreement with the City,” Metropolitan Park wrote in a statement. “This moves forward Metropolitan Park as a comprehensive transformation of the area that embraces the existing sports attractions to create a world-class sports and entertainment destination in the heart of Queens. This is a positive step forward for the local community and fans.”

License Watch

The final, and by far, most crucial step now awaits next month, when the New York State Gaming Commission is expected to award as many as three downstate casino licenses.  

In addition to the Cohen–Hard Rock proposal for Metropolitan Park, there are two other top candidates for the licenses: Resorts World New York City, which plans to build at the site of the Aqueduct Racetrack in Queens, and Bally’s, which plans a $4 billion resort complex at Ferry Point in the Bronx. The trio is the only three remaining applications, so the key question is whether the board will award licenses to all three or limit its final selection. 

The gaming commission’s facility location board made site visits to the three locations earlier this week, and it continues to review application details from each, but it has not yet detailed its findings. That board will make recommendations to the gaming commission by Dec. 1, with those conclusions likely influential in the final selections. 

“The purpose of each visit is for the board to obtain an understanding of the physical location, and, if necessary, seek clarification regarding the transportation, parking, infrastructure, and layout components of the proposal,” the facility location board said. 

Soccer Considerations

The other key element in the overall reshaping of the Willets Point area of Queens, which includes Citi Field and the tennis complex, is the forthcoming stadium for Major League Soccer’s NYCFC. Set to open in 2027 on the other side of Citi Field from the casino complex, Etihad Park will additionally have overlap dates with the US Open. 

That will be the case even after the momentous decision last week by MLS to adopt a fall-to-spring schedule, adhering to the sport’s international standard, beginning in 2027. NYCFC is not part of the casino plan, but it has been strongly supportive of the effort. So, too, is the USTA, despite the legal action against the city. 

“We’re in favor of anything that the residents of Queens, and especially this immediate area, are in favor of, and anything that’s going to make this area better,” NYCFC CEO Brad Sims told Front Office Sports in September. “There’s a great discourse going on with the community and the community leaders, and the Mets have done a great job listening to the feedback and working that into their proposal.”