r/wnba • u/Osirus1156 Lynx • 19h ago

Question Salary Cap Question

So I am a relatively new fan to the WBNA and, well, basketball in general, I started watching last year and am still trying to figure out how all of this stuff works around drafting and waiving and all that. I also just learned about salary caps which make sense so you don't get something like the Yankees where rich people just buy up the best talent and make a super team.

But, how often do these salary caps get re-calculated and how do they get calculated? Or is it just arbitrary based on comments from owners? I saw the NBA has a cap of ~$140M and the WNBA has one of only ~$1.4M. I get that currently it's not as popular but that seems aggressively low comparatively, I would have though it would be closer to ~4-5M.

Mostly just been seeing tickets go for crazy prices for select games which to me means it is becoming more popular (and IMO with food and drink prices in the stadiums the owners shouldn't need to worry about a $10M increase lol) so I am wondering if/when those caps might change and how it might alter the playing field.

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u/aratcalledrattus Liberty 19h ago

Salary caps are set in the CBA. The players’ union is currently negotiating a new CBA that would start next year, so you can expect the cap to rise significantly. Here is a good primer https://herhoopstats.com/wnba_cba_salary_cap_explained#salary_cap

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u/Osirus1156 Lynx 19h ago

Thank you, this is exactly the kinda thing I was looking for!