W.N.B.A. Makes ‘Big Bet on Women’ With a New Contract

The W.N.B.A. season itself also will change in some dramatic ways, if the deal is approved. A 34-game campaign in 2019 will become a 36-game slate next season. And the games themselves will be different, thanks to another innovation: the Commissioner’s Cup.

Certain games on the 2020 schedule will be designated as Cup games, with separate standings for this in-season competition. The two teams with the best records in Cup games will play for the Commissioner’s Cup title. Starting in 2021, the prize money for in-season tournaments will be a minimum of $750,000.

The players’ experience, too, will be improved in ways that reflect both their day-to-day priorities and lifestyle choices.

The league’s teams, which provide housing, will now guarantee two-bedroom apartments for players with children. Travel, long a source of frustration among players, will now include individual instead of shared hotel rooms for every player. But players will still have to fly on commercial, not charter, planes to games, though they will receive economy-plus flight accommodations.

Player movement, too, will become easier, echoing an N.B.A. trend to give players more opportunities to change teams or sign new deals. In the last W.N.B.A. agreement, players could not reach unrestricted free agency until they had played six full seasons. That number would become five. The leagues will, over the next several years, reduce how many times a team can designate someone as a core player and thus prevent them, even as an unrestricted free agent, from leaving the team.

The sum of new investment, accounting for league and team-specific initiatives, is nearly $1 million per team per season.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/14/sports/basketball/wnba-contract-collective-bargaining-agreement.html?emc=rss&partner=rss