Outline

One Sentence Summary:

A data-driven exploration of the WNBA’s recent economic boom, the historical wage gap caused by its previous Collective Bargaining Agreement, and how the newly negotiated 2026 CBA represents a leap forward, while still leaving room for future growth.

High Level Summary:

For my final project, I will focus on the WNBA’s recent boom in revenue, attendance, and viewership, and how that growth has intensified long-standing concerns about player compensation. To understand the surge, I will first examine its causes: the arrival of a generational rookie class (headlined by Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese, and Cameron Brink), who entered the league following the most-watched NCAA women’s basketball tournament in history. The 2024 NCAA women’s final alone drew 18.7 million viewers, outrating the men’s final for the first time. Historically, there has been a major wage gap between the WNBA and the NBA. While some of that disparity is tied to differences in overall league revenue and audience size, it is also rooted in the structure of the WNBA’s collective bargaining agreement (CBA). Under the league’s previous agreement, WNBA players received an estimated 9.3% of revenue. This means that even as the league has grown in popularity and profitability, player salaries are not positioned to rise at the same pace. In recent seasons, women’s professional basketball has experienced a surge in national attention, with record-breaking attendance, television ratings, and merchandise sales. That growth made the limits of the old CBA even more visible. This project aims to visualize that tension between rapid revenue growth and a restrictive compensation structure. The project will then turn to the newly negotiated 2026 CBA, which introduces major changes, including significant salary cap increases and a new 20% revenue-sharing model. These changes represent a major victory for players and the labor movement,and the WNBPA’s decision to terminate the previous CBA early in October 2024. At the same time, comparing this new structure to the NBA’s roughly 50/50 revenue split, using a consistent 2023–2025 time window for both leagues, shows that, while the 2026 agreement is a transformational step forward, the fight for true equity in professional basketball is far from over.

Project Structure and Story Arc

The Boom:Establish the baseline of the WNBA’s growth. The audience will see the growth of viewership, attendance, and league revenue in recent years. This section will also explain the causes of the surge, with a sub-section on NCAA women’s basketball as the feeder system. Key NCAA data points to visualize include: NCAA women’s tournament viewership (2021–2024), with the 2024 final’s 18.7 million viewers highlighted, and the moment the women’s final outrated the men’s final for the first time. This will be followed by the WNBA regular season surge.
The Conflict (The Gap): Reveal the structural wage issue. Using data from NBA & WNBA salary contracts/caps from a focused 2023–2025 window, I will show the difference in wage gap between both associations. This will include a specific breakdown of rookie minimum salaries (WNBA ~$64K vs. NBA ~$1.2M) and max contracts (WNBA ~$250K vs. NBA ~$60M+ over five years). Additionally, I will show how the CBA deals intensify that gap through their revenue-split model.
The Resolution (The New Deal): Introduce the 2026 CBA agreement, but first provide the context of player negotiations. The WNBPA’s 2020 opt-out threat (as well as what that means)that secured gains, the decision to opt out again in October 2024 (triggering a two-year negotiation window), the formation of a player-led bargaining committee. The final visualizations will compare the old $1.5M salary cap to the new $7M cap, and highlight the new 20% revenue-sharing model. My conclusion will highlight how player initiatives and negotiations were able to achieve a new deal which will increase player benefits and salaries, which is a great start, but also highlight the remaining 30% gap between the men’s and women’s revenue-sharing models.

Initial sketches

Data

Name	URL	Description
Across the Timeline	https://www.acrossthetimeline.com/	Provides historical, game-by-game attendance data dating back to 1997. This will be used to establish the WNBA’s baseline growth and visualize the sudden explosion in attendance in recent years.
Sports Media Watch	https://www.sportsmediawatch.com/tag/wnba-ratings/	Offers historical national television ratings and league revenue estimates. I will use this to plot the recent spike in viewership.
Sports Media Watch	https://www.sportsmediawatch.com/tag/ncaa-womens-basketball-ratings/	Provides NCAA women’s tournament viewership data, including the 2024 final’s 18.7 million viewers.
Her Hoop Stats	https://herhoopstats.com/salary-cap-sheet/wnba/summary/2025/	Details the limitations of the previous WNBA system, such as the $1.5 million team salary cap. I will use this to prove that the historical wage gap was exacerbated by the WNBA’s estimated ~9.3% revenue split compared to the NBA’s ~50% split (using a consistent 2023–2025 comparison window).
Spotrac	https://www.spotrac.com/nba/	Contains historical player contract data for both the NBA and WNBA. This will provide the drastic gap by contrasting the NBA’s massive average salaries against the WNBA’s historical averages under the old CBA.
WNBA	https://www.wnba.com/news/wnba-wnbpa-tentative-cba-deal-2026	Given that the deal just happened this past month, there is not an extensive dataset that can be used. However, the report provided by the WNBA provides the terms of the brand-new 2026 Collective Bargaining Agreement, including the jump to a $7 million team cap and the new 20% revenue-sharing model.

Method and medium

To bring this data story to life, I plan to build an interactive, scrolling narrative using Shorthand. This medium will allow me to display the three “ acts “ of my story, which include the boom, the gap, and the new deal. The data visualizations themselves will be developed using Tableau. Given the extensive graphs that require moving around more critical pieces of information, tableau is more user friendly in terms of being able to have more of a hand in the final product, whereas data wrapper has a limitation in types of graphs that can be produced. Once completed, I will embed these interactive Tableau dashboards directly into the Shorthand presentation.

References

AI acknowledgements

For this project, I utilized Google’s Gemini to help me brainstorm ideas and consult the tools I would need to make this a reality. Specifically, AI was used to help structure the narrative flow of the data story and to brainstorm creative Tableau visualization strategies. Furthermore, I used the AI’s image generation capabilities to create wireframes and sketches to prototype the dashboard layouts before building them.

Human Contribution: All data points, sources, and core arguments were independently verified. Sketches were produced by myself after getting inspiration from Gemini.

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