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It took months of negations, threats of strike action and T-shirts worn by players saying, “Pay us what you owe us”. But now, weeks after players in the world’s premier women’s basketball league signed a historic new collective bargaining agreement, its players are starting to benefit.
Among them are Australians Alanna Smith and Ezi Magbegor, with Smith on Sunday (AEST) signing the richest contract by an Australian woman in team sport, valued at $US3.68 million ($5.2 million) over three years with the Dallas Wings.
Last week Magbegor received a one-year offer from her current team, the Seattle Storm, to earn the maximum salary of $US1.4 million this season. She is yet to accept the offer.
“It doesn’t feel real, to be honest,” Smith said on Sunday. “You put so much hard work into your craft and to be rewarded for it is pretty cool. I just feel grateful to be in this position and hopefully lead the way for other women to get what they deserve as well.”
Smith signed with Dallas on Sunday morning (AEST) and will leave the Minnesota Lynx, where last season she was named co-defensive player of the year – the first Australian to do so since Lauren Jackson in 2007.
On Sunday, Jackson welcomed the news of Smith’s contract and Magbegor’s offer, saying the league had come a long way since her 11 years in the WNBA when players had to play in Europe in the off-season to subsidise their incomes.
“It’s incredible that they’re able to capitalise now the way that they are off basketball, and that equity that we’ve been talking about for forever, it’s starting to pay off for them,” she said. “There’s still a long way to go until they’re paid what they’re worth, but this is a major, major, major milestone ... The money is life-changing.”
The new WNBA collective bargaining agreement was reached on March 18 after more than a year of tense negotiations between the players, their union and league officials.
The most significant changes to the agreement concern player salaries. Last year, the maximum annual salary was about $US250,000; under the new CBA it will be $US1.4 million. Even the lowest-paid players this year will earn more than last year’s richest, with the new starting salary $US270,000. And while a team’s total salary cap in 2025 was $US1.5 million, now teams will have $US7 million to spend.
Also significant is the greater share players will get of the league’s revenue – one of the most divisive clauses during the negotiations. While men in the NBA receive between 49 per cent and 51 per cent of revenue, women in the WNBA shared no more than 10 per cent. That figure will now double.
Her new contract will make Smith one of the highest-paid female Australian athletes of any sport, even before accounting for brand partnerships. By comparison, Sam Kerr’s current contract at Chelsea is worth £466,000 (almost $890,000) a year.
It is all the more remarkable considering Smith was cut from the WNBA and Australian national women’s team, the Opals, in 2022. Returning home, she played in the Australian domestic basketball league, the WNBL, and later the Polish league before getting another contract in the WNBA in 2023.
“I think the contract is really just a statement of what makes Alanna, Alanna,” her agent, Sammy Wloszczowski, said. “You don’t get through what she’s been through without a certain make-up, without a certain amount of fight, a certain amount of strength of character, the resilience to go from having every one of those career aspirations pulled from you and to go back and get them all back.”
Smith and Magbegor aren’t the only Australians already enjoying a salary boost after the CBA negotiations. The Opals’ Jade Melbourne (23) and WNBL player Nyadiew Puoch (21) are also set to sign new contracts this year.
Wloszczowski said these contracts were “40 years in the making”.
“I think every female basketballer and every Aussie female basketballer helped pave the way to get where we are this year,” he said. “It feels like we’ve finally crossed a threshold where we’ve taken a substantial leap closer to fair remuneration for the work and for being in the top 0.01 per cent in the world for what they do for a living.”
While these historic contracts are a far cry from salaries in the local WNBL, Jackson (who is an advisor to the league) and Smith believe the historic CBA will have a positive impact on all women’s basketball leagues. For Smith, this is even closer to home as her younger sister, Andie, signed for WNBL expansion team the Tasmania Jewels last week.
“One of the most rewarding parts is being able to see younger women benefiting from a system that you fought so hard to change,” Smith said. “I’m just really lucky in that I’m close to someone and I get to see how that will impact her directly. I’ve said this so many times about Andie, but the sky’s the limit for her.”
