Mo'ne Davis was preparing for a Women's Professional Baseball League scrimmage when the WNBA and its players agreed to a landmark collective bargaining agreement last month.
Davis, who rose to stardom as a little league pitching sensation, followed developments as WNBA players negotiated historic salaries. As she enters the inaugural season of the WPBL, Davis sees those record gains as a signal to the next generation of women's leagues about what is possible.
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“Wanting to be a WNBA player growing up and seeing it not be as huge as it is now,” Davis said, “and just seeing the growth — it’s amazing. I’m excited for what’s to come.”
As the WNBA begins its season under the new CBA, emerging women's sports leagues like baseball and hockey are looking at that progress as a promising roadmap for growth. At the same time, leaders of those startup leagues recognize the WNBA's growth was shaped by decades of player advocacy, work stoppage threats and athletes playing elsewhere to supplement their incomes.
“The WNBA is definitely an example of a league that had to grind and keep showing its worth over and over,” said Justine Siegal, co-founder of the WPBL, which debuts in August. “The recognition is overdue and well-deserved. For us as a new women’s pro league, we don’t see it as the beginning. We see it is we’re part of a momentum that fans want to see.”
Newer women's leagues try to capitalize on current boom
The WNBA's new seven-year CBA will raise the league's salary cap from $1.5 million to $7 million in the first year of the deal. It will also improve player experience with codified charter flights, first-class travel accommodations and expanded mental health support. Perhaps most notably, the deal marks a new era of player compensation, with stars like four-time MVP A'ja Wilson making more than $1 million for the first time in WNBA history.
Those milestones are, in part, the result of surging popularity in women's basketball, with stars like Caitlin Clark becoming household names and driving up viewership. After securing a landmark media rights deal in 2024, players recognized a pivotal opportunity to demand a bigger share of that growing revenue.
“We can kind of show (other leagues) what worked and obviously the strength in numbers,” said New York Liberty star Breanna Stewart. “Realizing the value of your league and your teams."
Newer leagues are still far from the financial scale of leagues like the WNBA or National Women's Soccer League, which is in its 14th year and has benefitted from years of equal pay efforts. A recent report published by the accounting firm Deloitte said soccer and basketball are expected to be the top revenue-generating women’s sports in 2026, with each accounting for 35% of overall revenues.
Still newer leagues are watching closely as they try and capitalize on the current boom those established organizations helped create.
“There is a lot for us to take away from both the player solidarity that led to the deal and the substance of the deal itself,” said, Malaika Underwood, executive director of the Professional Women's Hockey League Players Association, in an email. “In many ways, this new CBA has raised important benchmarks for what women athletes should expect across professional sports.”
Growth won't happen overnight
She added while that kind of growth won’t happen overnight for the PWHL — which is concluding its third season— the league believes it has set itself up for similar success. That has been evident in how the PWHL has blown past initial attendance and revenue projections since its 2024 launch. After adding two franchises last year, the eight-team PWHL is preparing to expand by as many as four more for next season.
Other leagues, like Women's Elite Rugby (WER), are learning from WNBA players' unified approach to advocacy, while recognizing their own unique financial hurdles.
The WNBA, entering its 30th season, is partially owned by the NBA, and while the PWHL isn't financially tied to the NHL, it has been able to leverage partnerships through marketing and shared venues.
That's not the case for WER, which is entering its second season.
“There wasn’t a billionaire benefactor who was willing to write a big check and say, ‘Let’s get this going no matter what the cost,’" said Phil Camm, the league's chief commercial officer. “So we can learn from things, but we have to approach it from a very different perspective.”
Because of the current investment in the women’s sports ecosystem, David Berri, an economics professor at Southern Utah University, predicts it won't be long before women's athletes in rugby, baseball and other emerging leagues become household names and enjoy the same benefits that WNBA players long fought for.
“By the time you get to the end of the century, people are going look back to this point and go, ‘I don’t get it, why weren’t you showing it on television?'" Berri said. "'Why wasn’t it obvious that this was a good idea?’ It’ll seem obvious at that point that you should have done that.'”
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AP Sports Writer John Wawrow and Women's Basketball Writer Doug Feinberg contributed to this report.
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