The WNBA has been growing steadily over the past decade but reached a tipping point during the 2024 season. Big-name young stars with prodigious college careers such as Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese have drawn more attention to the league.
Record attendance numbers and viewership underlined a breakout year for the WNBA. The historic media-rights deal signed in July will inevitably lead to higher salaries for players and coaches. Salaries for the former group are expected to skyrocket following the end of the current collective bargaining agreement between the WNBA and its players’ association on Oct. 31, 2025.
The highest-paid WNBA coaches of 2025 are still paid far less than their NBA counterparts, but are commanding decent salaries based on publicly reported information. Like their counterparts in men’s professional sports, the exact salaries of WNBA coaches are not publicly revealed by the teams themselves.
Tibbetts, Hammon Lead Highest-Paid WNBA Coaches
We do know that at least two WNBA coaches are making over $1 million per year: Nate Tibbetts of the Phoenix Mercury and Becky Hammon of the Las Vegas Aces.
Hammon became the first coach in WNBA history to cross the threshold of $1 million in average annual salary when she was hired by the Aces in early 2022. Mark Davis, owner of the Aces (and Las Vegas Raiders), publicly confirmed that detail about Hammon’s salary at the time.
Hammon went on to lead the Aces to back-to-back WNBA Finals wins in each of her first two seasons, though her tenure in Las Vegas has come with controversy.
Tibbetts overtook Hammon as the highest-paid coach in the WNBA upon his hiring by the Phoenix Mercury in late 2023, ESPN reported at the time. While we can infer that Tibbetts is also making more than $1 million per year, given what we know about Hammon’s contract, few other details about his contract with Phoenix were disclosed.
In Tibbetts’ first season as Mercury coach, Phoenix finished 19-21 and earned the 7th seed in the WNBA playoffs. They were swept in a best-of-3 series by the Minnesota Lynx.
Tibbetts and Hammon also have something else in common — they were both longtime NBA assistants with virtually no WNBA coaching experience at the time of their hires. Tibbetts spent over a decade as an NBA assistant coach with the Cleveland Cavaliers, Portland Trail Blazers and Orlando Magic and previously interviewed for several NBA head coaching jobs. Hammon was a longtime San Antonio Spurs assistant who also interviewed for multiple NBA head coaching jobs and was a finalist for the Trail Blazers role that ultimately went to Chauncey Billups in 2021.
Other High Earners Among WNBA Coaches
Tibbetts and Hammon were also two of the coaches who stayed put during a chaotic 2024-25 WNBA offseason that saw six of the league’s 12 incumbent teams change coaches (not including the expansion Golden State Valkyries).
Though we don’t know which coaches aside from the aforementioned duo are among the highest-Paid WNBA Coaches, there are several likely candidates.
New Los Angeles Sparks coach Lynne Roberts comes from the University of Utah, where she earned an estimated $709,500 base salary with a $305,000 maximum bonus, per USA Today’s college coaching salary database. That means she could also be earning in the neighborhood of $1 million if the Sparks exceeded that compensation package.
Cheryl Reeve of the Lynx and Sandy Brondello of the New York Liberty are also likely in the mix. Unlike the previous three coaches mentioned, they are both longtime WNBA head coaches with 10 WNBA Finals appearances and six titles between them. That includes last season when Brondello’s Liberty defeated Reeve’s Lynx in a thrilling best-of-5 series that went the distance.
Caitlin Clark’s coach in Indiana, Stephanie White, could also be among the league’s highest-earning coaches after the Fever lured her away from the Connecticut Sun last offseason for her second stint as the team’s head coach. White previously led the Fever to a WNBA Finals appearance in 2014.
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