MANHATTAN — The WNBA and WNBPA resumed their marathon bargaining session at a hotel in Midtown on Wednesday at 2 p.m. in an effort to hammer out a new collective bargaining agreement without delaying the league’s 30th season.
Only hours earlier, both sides had wrapped a 12-hour-long meeting before calling it a night at roughly 5:20 a.m. on Wednesday morning without a deal.
“We still have work to do,” WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert said early Wednesday morning. “But we’re working hard, I guarantee you.”
As of 11 p.m. on Wednesday night, discussions were still ongoing with both sides trading multiple proposals over the course of the more than 20 hours of total meeting time, according to sources on site.
WNBPA executive committee members Breanna Stewart, Nneka Ogwumike, Brianna Turner, and Alysha Clark returned to the Langham Hotel for the second day of negotiations in addition to executive director Terri Carmichael Jackson and other union staff members.
On the league side, commissioner Cathy Engelbert and New York Liberty owner Clara Wu Tsai were back in attendance, and Connecticut Sun president Jennifer Rizzotti was a new addition at the bargaining table on Wednesday.
On Feb. 23, the league told players that if a deal was not reached by March 10 the season would face delays. After the first day of negotiations concluded and that deadline passed, Engelbert declined to get into specifics regarding a timeline for the upcoming season.
“We’ve got to get this deal done,” Engelbert said on Wednesday morning. “We’ve got to get it done soon.”
One differentiator between the bargaining session that began Tuesday evening and Wednesday’s was the way both sides spent their breaks.
During Tuesday’s 12-hour session neither side exited the hotel until negotiations concluded. On Wednesday, players, union staff, league executives, and staff were all seen leaving the hotel at various times in the day to enjoy some time outside of the confines of the negotiating rooms.
Revenue share and player housing have been two of the most critical sticking points over the roughly 17 months of negotiations.
The details of the most recent proposals from the WNBA and WNBPA have not been made public. The WNBA’s most recent known salary cap proposal was $5.75 million in addition to a 70% share of net revenue. The WNBPA was seeking a salary cap of roughly $9.45 million and a share of 26% of gross revenue over the life of the deal.
When both sides come to a verbal agreement, it will need to be ratified by board of governors approval and approval from a majority of voting players.
The expectation is that once a deal is reached it will take weeks to formalize, after which the expansion draft for the Portland Fire and Toronto Tempo can begin.
The timeline communicated by the league to general managers had the expansion draft occurring in early April, followed by free agency, and then the standard collegiate draft on April 13. But that schedule was subject to a deal being reached by March 10.
