Five Out: An all-time All-Star game, broadcast deals and the difference between yesterday's price and today's...

Despite a break in the action, there's still plenty to talk about in the world of women's basketball. A looming labor fight, an incredible Arike Ogunbowale performance and so much more...

MARK J. REBILAS/USA TODAY SPORTS/REUTERS

There’s no doubt about it. 2024 WNBA All-Star weekend was a smash hit. Even with concerns over a lack of star power in the skills challenge and 3 point shooting contest, there were plenty of stories, content and generally good vibes to go around. No Cap Space had boots on the ground all weekend, getting some of the best videos in Phoenix with more cameos than a Marvel cutscene.

Head over to our Twitter, Instagram and Tiktok if you want to get caught up and click this link for Chauny’s piece on the leadup to the game.

So what do we have for your inbox this week?

• On Tuesday we are joined by Gonzaga star, WCC Player of the Year and Becky Hammon Mid-Major Player of the Year Yvonne Ejim. We are tinkering with our Luxury Tax format on Substack, moving to a combination podcast and written feature combo. We think you’ll enjoy a deeper written dive to help enhance the listening experience.

• On Wednesday, another edition of The Legendarium drops. This one concerns the first dynasty in a post Title IX, women’s college basketball world. If you missed our first one, concerning the NCAA’s takeover of the sport told through the lens of the last AIAW champion, click here.

• On Thursday, The Legendarium Podcast drops and then our video essay on the subject hits Youtube on Friday.

• Olympic opening ceremonies are also this week so if you want to get a preview of what Team USA will be up against, we got you covered here.

Now, let’s get to the column…

1. Another perfect storm for the WNBA, another A+ showcase for the sport.

It’s pretty fortuitous that the Caitlin Clark - Angel Reese phenomenon arrived when it did. Just ahead of a broadcast rights negotiation, in an Olympic year, right as the landscape of media consumption is changing (again) and when the players have a right to exercise their right to collectively bargain (more on that in a moment). The wave of new fans and energy — for better or worse — has given the sport a bump seemingly every step of the way and All-Star weekend was no exception.

The energy was infectious, the crowds looked significantly larger especially for the league activations and the Olympic format made for an incredible game. When we talk about Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese being an access point for new fans to find the rest of the game, Arike Ogunbowale’s performance is what we’re talking about. She’s a superstar in her own right and has been since her Notre Dame years. During that period of time, she briefly broke coverage containment with a spot on Dancing with the Stars and has been in State Farm ads for years. But this game for Arike felt like a “welcome back to the mainstream” moment for her. In 31 minutes, she dropped 34 points on 61.5% three-point shooting, dished 6 assists and had Team USA’s guards in the torture chamber for most of the night. While everyone was hoping for a CC logo bomb or a Clark-Reese two woman game (which we did get once!), what fans were treated to was essentially an And-1 mixtape from the Dallas Wings franchise guard.

Team USA wasn’t sleepwalking through this one, either. There were possessions where Kelsey Plum was picking up Caitlin Clark in the full court. You just don’t see that kind of effort in All-Star games. People may not have been expecting it but when the eyes were on the sport, the players rose to the occasion yet again. That’s happened quite a bit in the last few years and is worth highlighting. Whether it was LSU - Iowa in 2023, Iowa - South Carolina in 2024, Vegas - New York in the WNBA Finals or any of the W games on network TV, the product has proven itself time and time again. For all the discussion last year about All-Star weekend needing to be tethered to NBA Summer League to maintain cultural relevancy, it sure seemed like the W owned the weekend on its’ own in Phoenix. That should be enough for owners, players, agents, journalists and fans to know that the league is capable and should feel more comfortable operating on its own in the future.

2. The WNBA broadcast deal is a true sign that the league has arrived. So let’s talk about the elephant in the room…

A clear indication of the league moving towards self-sufficiency is the news this week that the WNBA was in line for a $2.2 billion, 11 year broadcast deal that would pay its’ member teams out roughly $200 million annually. As someone who spends an inordinate amount of time digging into the business side of the industry, I was stunned. For the last year and change, Commissioner Cathy Engelbert repeatedly said that the target would be somewhere between $80-120 million. To not just beat that target but double it up is remarkable.

But, as Howard Megdal noted in The Next this week, $200 million annually is more like $84 million when you start to divide the pie. A big piece of that is the fact that the WNBA owners really only own 42 percent of the league. A slice of the remaining 58 percent is held by private equity and the vast majority is retained by the NBA Board of Governors. Adam Silver, for his part as NBA Commissioner, has been steadfast in his desire to sell the W’s rights packaged together with the men and that the deals be integrated. He has cited in the past that the infrastructure of the NBA can continue to help the W grow and thrive. While I believe in Silver’s intentions, I can’t say the same about the NBA’s ownership writ large.

Logically, it’s good business to extract as much money out of the W while having to eat as little overhead as possible. That means a hefty broadcast deal while keeping the league small, rosters small, salaries low, league staff to a minimum and as little rocking of the boat as possible. While there is some crossover between NBA and WNBA owners (Mat Ishbia in Phoenix, Joe Tsai in New York and soon to be Joe Lacob in San Francisco, for example), it is always interesting that there’s a large swath of men that have no real stake in the women’s league voting on its’ future regularly. To their credit, they haven’t made a huge fuss in matters of growth. No one caused an issue over charter flights this year and the only vote against expansion to Toronto was from James Dolan, who did so apparently because of his own petty lawsuit against the Raptors organization.

“But the men' subsidize the women’s league so they should have more of a say in the W!” People will argue…

The idea of sports teams and leagues turning profits is always a bit of a complex and loaded conversation. As of 2023, only four out of 23 MLS teams were cash flow positive. Researcher Dimitrije Curcic reported that in 2020, all NBA teams were profitable for the first time. Think about that. It took until 2020 for every team in the league to turn a profit individually in the same season. Which is why when we get into the discussions about cash flow, it really doesn’t mean much for leagues that are in the growth stage. Sportico data reveals that the Las Vegas Aces were cash flow positive in 2023 while the average WNBA franchise is worth $96 million.

Atlanta Dream managing partner Larry Gottesdiener has long been a vocal proponent of the idea that the league is in a place where it should consider divesting from the NBA. While my personal Twitter account is long gone, I do recall an interaction with him where he intimated to me that the NBA’s ownership of the WNBA had impacted independent owners like himself that wanted to push the boundaries and grow out the game the way deep-pocketed MLS owners were doing. He is an ardent opponent of dual ownership groups and has gone at the NBA itself for not doing enough to dispel what he calls the myth that the league is subsidized wholly by the men.

While it’s hard to know whether or not the NBA’s Board of Governors actually feel the way Gottesdiener suspects I believe that the next few years, and the next collective bargaining battle in particular, will give us a good indication. For the sake of the WNBA’s growth, I hope the NBA’s intentions are well-meaning and they see women’s basketball as a partner in wrestling the full-year sports calendar back from the NFL rather than treat it as a profit center that runs like a newspaper backed by Alden Global Capitol.

3. Prepare for one hell of a labor fight from the Players Association…

So with that in mind, the WNBPA has already made their position on the $2.2 billion deal clear: they think they’re being lowballed. Within hours of the release of the details, player’s association president Terri Jackson came out and publicly questioned where the valuation came from. The money quote was her last, setting up the very basis of the next labor fight in this league.

“There is no reason to undervalue the WNBA again.”

While we can debate the merits of whether or not the league is currently undervalued (I personally think $2.2 billion is a massive win especially with a renegotiation window baked into the deal), it’s the right thing to say for a union. You fight to extract as much as you can for your members, point blank period.

In the past, that lack of broadcast revenue has been a hindrance on what the PA is able to advocate for during collective bargaining windows. The last CBA was able to generate moderate salary increases that put the league’s average salary over six figures for the first time but also focused heavily on quality of life improvements ranging from maternity to travel and free agency age restrictions.

With the table set on most of those issues and charter flights negotiated outside the CBA (a win for the PA whose magnitude is still understated), the union can go all-in on raising their revenue sharing figure.

Roberta Rodrigues for The Next has a great breakdown on how the deal impacts player salaries. Essentially, when you start to take all the cuts out of $200 million annually, split it among teams and take the 10% share the players get out, it amounts to roughly $420,000 per team that they can spend towards salaries. So theoretically each player gets around a $28,000 raise annually if you evenly distributed that amount among the roster.

But then consider if the women had the NBA’s revenue sharing model, where the players have a 50/50 split with the owners. That number would jump to roughly $2.1 million per team, and $140,000 dollars per player if distributed equally.

Will they be able to get that type of rev share in this current round? Probably not. But Cheryl Miller is right in one thing: the PA needs a real bully who can rally the players around a single message. Right now, the 144 players of the WNBA have had widely disparate opinions on what they value most in a CBA fight. While Terri Jackson is already putting up a posture for what’s to come, there needs to be a concerted effort to make sure everyone is walking into the public space with a unified message. Every presser, every media appearance, every podcast with Paul George should include some mention of revenue sharing increases.

The amusing irony is that the activist league has largely been incrementalistic in its’ approach to growth. If there was ever a time to really flip the table to get what you deserve, it’s now. But what longtime fans also have to understand, as Chicago Sky season ticket holders found out, is that all the advocacy for making your favorite players millionaires will likely result in you potentially being priced out of these games. And while I can understand being mad or sad about being collateral damage on the road to success, there has to be some type of acceptance that this is inevitably the cost of doing business.

4. Nneka Ogwumike’s comments on WNBA media are appreciated, but the players need to be introspective too…

I really appreciated Nneka Ogwumike this weekend at All-Star. Introspective, firm but not contentious and consistently promoting the message that this league has always been deserving of the attention it’s receiving now. The Athletic posted a really thought-provoking set of quotes based around a question Zena Keita asked about coverage of the WNBA. The reason it made point number 4 in the column is because of the following…

“I think that the OG media can do a really good job of leading that way, letting people know, ‘Hey, this is how it used to be; this is where it is now. These are the stories that have been told over and over again. These are the stories that need to be told.’ And I think all of the media that’s coming in — I mentioned it earlier during the scrum — I can understand, and I even witness a lot of the [OG] media now getting elbowed out by bigger entities that are just here because they feel like it’s hot.

I absolutely love the message from Ogwumike here because it is true. This league has been covered largely by freelancers doing second jobs for the entirety of its’ existence. There’s not many full time women’s sports beat writers and even less WNBA specific reporters. But the effort has always existed. Where Ogwumike gets it right but some of her colleagues get it wrong is that they contribute to OG media getting elbowed out. Breanna Stewart is letting Chris Haynes and Shams Charania primarily break her news. Independent WNBA media allegedly were fed the wrong story about Courtney Vandersloot’s free agency last year that led to a retracted report shortly before an announcement that was made on Sloot’s own Instagram.

I don’t blame the players for looking for the biggest fish. There are pre-existing relationships between agencies and reporters as well as the desire to maximize the buzz of your news through some of the biggest audiences on Twitter. But in doing so, it makes OG media not nearly as essential outside of niche storytelling that is great journalism but not the thing that pays the bills in today’s world.

So while I appreciate the effort of Nneka to stand up for those that have been in the game for a long time, I do think the players have to practice what they preach in that regard. Longtime WNBA media members don’t need to be treated like make-a-wish kids when it comes to scoops but there’s folks that have been in here long enough that they should be treated as the professionals they are. Otherwise, you’re giving flowers to reporters and creators while you watch them be replaced.

5. Team USA is fine heading into the Olympics.

Let’s end the column with a deep breath. Team USA is still a prohibitive Gold medal favorite in Paris. Relax.

I thought about just leaving the fifth point at that but we do have to expand on it. For starters, this isn’t the same situation as Team USA losing to a college team when they do one of those nationwide tours. If you were to put Team WNBA in the Olympics, they’d vaporize most of the field and meet the Americans in the Gold Medal game. So the idea that Arike Ogunbowale and Nneka Ogwumike could help propel the best of the rest of the league to victory really isn’t that far-fetched.

Additionally, there is absolutely no team in the women’s basketball field that has the same caliber of talent that the WNBA All-Star team had. There is no one that even registers a 7/10 or higher on the threat to a gold medal scale. If Team USA has trouble with Germany when the two teams meet in a pre-Olympic exhibition on Tuesday, then I’ll be concerned.

The reaction to the game largely seems to be based around the omissions of Arike and Caitlin Clark from the Team USA rosters. But it’s worth noting this type of issue has been always been a thing in women’s basketball. Candace Parker was famously omitted from the roster for years and inferred Geno Auriemma had a direct hand in leaving her off. Nneka Ogwumike was snubbed from the Tokyo Olympics and now two of the most eye-catching guards in the WNBA face the same issue. The energy around Team USA losing is mostly drama and narrative based rather than a problem with what’s actually going on on the floor.

In a way though, I’m glad it happened like this. Clark needed a break. The kid has essentially been playing nonstop competitive basketball for a full year. Let her take a week and put her feet up. Plus, it gave us one of the best All-Star games I’ve seen in any sport recently. Arike absolutely cooked and does she get the same motion on social media if she isn’t on Team WNBA leading an upset in the pettiest way possible? I’m not so sure. For their part, Team USA will be just fine. And if they’re not, then they’ll strip the organization down to the studs and start over like USA Basketball does. Win-win for everybody.