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How the new WNBA CBA will impact every player’s salary in 2026
The WNBA players had many issues to negotiate with their new collective bargaining agreement, some more complicated than others. But salary is a currency every worker understands, and the league will offer historical gains in players’ salaries for 2026 and beyond.
The WNBA board of governors unanimously ratified the terms of a new collective bargaining agreement on Tuesday, one day after the players also unanimously approved the seven-year CBA. But the league’s general managers are already hard at work with the compressed timeline for building their teams this season. The expansion drafts for new franchises Toronto and Portland will be April 6, followed by a massive free agency period expected to start April 7 and the collegiate/overseas draft April 13.
Now that we have more of the specifics of salary structure, here are some examples of what it will look like for players of all levels for the 2026 season, when the salary cap will be $7 million per team, compared to $1.5 million in 2025.
Jump to salaries: Elite veteran | Average veteran | Minimum veteran | Elite rookie | Top draft picks

Elite veteran
Example: A’ja Wilson, 6-foot-4 center
Age to start this season: 29
Years of WNBA experience: 8
2025 salary: $200,000
Projected 2026 salary: $1.4 million, supermax
Wilson won her third WNBA title and unprecedented fourth MVP award in 2025. The 2018 No. 1 draft pick by the Las Vegas Aces, Wilson has averaged 21.4 points, 9.3 rebounds and 2.0 blocks in her career. The Las Vegas Journal-Review has reported that the Aces are eager to sign the free agent Wilson to a supermax deal.
Last season, Wilson took a pay cut from the supermax, which was then $249,244, to help the Aces afford the championship roster around her. She wasn’t her team’s highest-paid player in 2025; that was guard Jewell Loyd, who made $249,032.
Wilson has been so valuable and durable for the Aces that it seems likely she will get paid as much as is allowed this season. Plus, the cash value for various league awards also is increasing. Should Wilson win a fifth MVP this season, it would be worth $60,000, compared to $15,450 last year.
As for other elite players, the max salary for 2026 will be $1.19 million.
Average salary veteran
Example: Alanna Smith, 6-4 forward
Age to start this season: 29
Years of WNBA experience: 7
2025 salary: $150,000
Projected 2026 salary: $600,000
The WNBA is listing the “average” salary as being $583,800 in 2026, which is an estimate. We will get a better sense of the actual range for elite and midtier veteran salaries by observing how general managers build teams under the new CBA.
Smith, drafted No. 8 in 2019, spent four seasons establishing herself before she really clicked with the Chicago Sky as a starter in 2023. The past two seasons, she has been a big part of the Minnesota Lynx, helping them make the WNBA Finals in 2024 and earning co-Defensive Player of the Year with Wilson in 2025.
Smith is the kind of reliable veteran essential for a team seeking a championship. She just won the Unrivaled title with Mist.
Minimum salary veteran
Erica Wheeler, 5-7 guard
Age to start this season: 35
Years of WNBA experience: 10
2025 salary: $78,831
Projected 2026 salary: $300,000
Wheeler made the veteran minimum last season with the Seattle Storm, averaging 10.3 points and 3.3 assists. The season before that, with the Indiana Fever, she made $202,154 and averaged 3.6 points and 1.8 assists. She gave as much effort and dedication in both situations, which partly explains her value even in her mid-30s.
Wheeler’s experience and team-first mindset can help a franchise. Plus, she still has on-court skills, as we saw during the Unrivaled season. The minimum for players with zero years of experience is $270,000; one to three years is $277,500; four to six years is $285,000; seven to nine years is $292,500; and 10 or more is $300,000. Wheeler will at least be in that last category.
Undrafted out of Rutgers in 2013, she had to work to earn a spot in the league. She has carried an underdog mentality gracefully, including as All-Star Game MVP in 2019. The way Wheeler welcomed and treated Fever rookie sensation Caitlin Clark in 2024 was the type of leadership general managers notice.
Elite rookie contract
Example: Caitlin Clark, 6-0 guard
Age to start this season: 24
Years of WNBA experience: 2
2025 salary: $78,066
Projected 2026 salary: $530,000
The standard WNBA rookie contracts have been for three years with a club option for a fourth, with players earning more for being drafted higher. The union made it a priority to get better pay for the 2026 incoming rookies and players such as Clark, whose existing rookie deals will be adjusted — reduced by 4% for each year elapsed since signing — to the new CBA parameters. For Clark, the No. 1 pick in 2024 entering the third year of her rookie deal, that should be nearly $530,000.
And thanks to a new CBA feature called “EPIC” — Exceptional Performance on Initial Contract — players can renegotiate the fourth year of their rookie deal and agree to a three-year contract extension. Honors such as being named to the All-WNBA first or second team could get them a max deal, or winning MVP a supermax deal. Clark was limited to 13 games last year due to injuries. But she was All-WNBA as a rookie in 2024 and thus will be eligible for a max deal in 2027.
This CBA dramatically improves all players’ salaries. For those still on rookie deals, the difference between what they would have gotten under the old CBA and what they could get now is particularly striking because of how much it accelerates their earning potential.
Projected 2026 No. 1 draft pick
Example: Azzi Fudd, 5-11 guard
Age to start this season: 23
Projected 2026 salary: $500,000
Fudd was eligible age-wise for the WNBA draft last season since she had redshirted at UConn in 2023-24. But she opted to use her final year of college eligibility and is chasing a perfect season and a second consecutive NCAA championship with the Huskies. She will benefit by starting her WNBA career under the new CBA.
The rookie salary scale for 2026 starts at $500,000 for the No. 1 pick. The second pick gets $466,913, the third $436,016, etc., and finishes at $289,133 for the last seven picks in the first round. Second- and third-round picks and any other rookies get $270,000.
The WNBA draft is scheduled for April 13, with the Dallas Wings having the No. 1 pick. Fudd, Spain’s Awa Fam and TCU‘s Olivia Miles are projected as the top-three picks in ESPN’s most recent mock draft.
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BTS fans pack Las Vegas Chinatown as Allegiant Stadium shows begin
LAS VEGAS (FOX5) — As hundreds of thousands of fans of K-Pop group BTS head into Las Vegas for Memorial Day weekend, numerous small businesses are being inundated with fans after a phenomenon: the BTS Army effect.
BTS will perform at Allegiant Stadium for four nights from May 23 through 28.
Across Chinatown, patrons will see lines outside restaurants and various establishments after a visit from one of the K-Pop band members or the group.
While BTS and members of the boy band have notably visited other popular establishments across Las Vegas, they have been spotted along the Chinatown corridor at popular mom-and-pop shops for good Asian eats.
MORE ON FOX5: BTS brings Arirang World Tour to Las Vegas, local businesses prepare for fan surge
“Where they go, we know it’s going to be good. We know there’s going to be a mob of people, but at least it’s like, our people,” said one fan who is coming in from the Bay Area, who had already seen a prior show locally.
Urban Matcha found a line outside the door, this morning, after band member J-Hope came Thursday for a shaved ice matcha dessert; millions of fans watched videos of the visit circulate on social media platforms.
Fans also visit establishments that appeared on a BTS Army “live feed;” other establishments hold BTS-themed special events with special menu items through the performance dates.
“Our small businesses in Chinatown and small businesses that are members of the Chamber are so excited for BTS to come here the second time around. They bring a factor to them as they love to support small businesses– and as they support small businesses, the Army follows and supports small businesses,” said Catherine Francisco of the AAPI Chamber.
The business boost comes after a packed previous weekend on the heels of the Electric Daisy Carnival in town; hundreds of thousands of attendees headed to Chinatown establishments in search of food and drink at all hours of the day and night.
“Everyone really discovering Chinatown– and its great businesses and great products and food and drinks. We thank them for really supporting small businesses,” Francisco said.
Establishments have ramped up staffing and preparations to accommodate extra patrons in town during the back-to-back EDC weekends and BTS performances, Francisco said.
Copyright 2026 KVVU. All rights reserved.
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James Harden, Carmelo Anthony & the AI-Powered Hollywood Pivot

James Harden has spent more than a decade as one of basketball’s most mercurial superstars — an MVP, multiple-time scoring champion, 10-time NBA All-Star and one of the most inventive players of his generation. At his 2010s peak with the Houston Rockets, Harden turned step-back three-pointers and foul-drawing into an almost mathematical form of offensive domination, becoming both statistically unstoppable and endlessly polarizing. Few athletes of this era have generated more highlights, more debate or more internet discourse.
Now he may be trying to turn that persona into entertainment IP.
On March 5, Harden released an AI-generated basketball animation to his 11.9 million Instagram followers that focused on his life story, used his voiceover and had near Pixar-like character development. It was ambitious in a way celebrity content rarely is. Working with a leading AI studio, he created a short film that transformed his persona into a larger-than-life animated protagonist, remixing his NBA career into an anime-style mythology built for social media: oversized arenas, hyper-stylized basketball battles, emotional arcs, cinematic pacing. It felt less like a sponsored post than a test case for turning an active NBA player into a self-distributed entertainment universe — without waiting on Hollywood.
And people paid attention.
Fans online dissected every frame of the video, which was produced in under a week using AI-native production workflows. Some viewers praised the scale and speed of what had been created, comparing it favorably to Pixar characters. Others zeroed in on the flaws: Harden’s avatar occasionally appeared to shoot with the wrong hand, and the lettering on his jersey sometimes dissolved into visual nonsense. The reactions were split between fascination, skepticism, mockery and genuine curiosity, with one detractor blurting: “You rich bro, stop this.”
And yet, it’s undeniable that his engagement exploded. That tension — imperfect craft, massive speed, direct fan distribution — revealed how athletes can now build, test and own entertainment IP before Hollywood would have even scheduled the first general meeting.
Cecilia Shen, the founder and CEO of Utopai Studios who collaborated with Harden on this effort, says his anime clip became one of the highest-performing posts on the Cleveland Cavalier combo guard’s Instagram account, even though she wasn’t entirely aware that he was going to be posting this animation. “James went ahead and posted early, and I woke up that morning, and he just went ahead and posted the clip along with a fire emoji,” she recalls. Harden, 36, reportedly wanted to control his own brand, and has decided to keep making AI content for his fans. And so, just a few weeks later, he released his second anime, with the promise of delivering more on a consistent basis.
Now Carmelo Anthony is getting on board to develop original sports and entertainment IP entirely on his own terms by partnering with Utopai Studios. In addition, Anthony will be an investor in the company, and his first project, an anime-inspired property built around his cultural world, will roll out shortly as a recurring short-form series (like Harden’s). Shen says that it follows in a line of business strategy where athletes “should have control over their own IP.”
Below, I’ll get into what this creative intersection means for AI, athletes and Hollywood:
- How AI lets athletes turn persona into owned IP without waiting for a greenlight
- Why even LeBron James shows the stark financial limits of the athlete-as-media-mogul model
- The athlete-media Catch-22: Fame moves fast, Hollywood doesn’t
- Why James Harden’s rough AI anime may still be a distribution success
- How Carmelo Anthony fits into the new athlete-IP playbook
- The opportunity — and warning — this opens up for Hollywood
Don’t stop here
Unlock the full story — and the no-spin reporting Hollywood trusts
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Rocket League On Unreal Engine 6 Announced At Paris Major
During the ongoing 2026 Rocket League Championship Series Paris Major, Epic Games and Psyonix delivered on a major announcement they’d been building up to for weeks, with several professional players and onsite content creators alluding to the announcement over the past few days.
The future of Rocket League will be on Unreal Engine 6, something that’s been highly anticipated by players for years. Rocket League was originally developed on Unreal Engine 3, which has undoubtedly hampered the ability of Psyonix to update the game as regularly as they would probably have liked in recent years.
We got to see a brief clip of Rocket League running on UE6, and it looks damn near photorealistic. There’s no hint at when it’s going to be coming, though, so it could be a ways off.
Unreal Engine 3 doesn’t have many of the contemporary features that developers enjoy with modern engines, and it’s harder to train junior developers on an old engine when they’re more familiar with UE5. We’ve seen teams like Halo Studios and TT Games face similar struggles with old engines before eventually opting to switch to Unreal.
Though many are sure to be excited about the announcement, there are also some concerns. Primarily, players are worried that a new engine might meaningfully change how the game’s physics engine behaves. The core feel of Rocket League is intertwined with how the ball reacts when colliding with one’s car, and any change to those systems will cause a major shock wave in the community.
Still, Epic Games is responsible for both UE3 and UE5, so the chances of the port feeling worse than the original are low. Everyone is looking for the exact same game with shiny new visuals and more content, and that seems to be what Epic is going for.
The Paris Major Storms On
The announcement of Rocket League on UE6 came during the semi-finals of the Paris Major, an appropriate time to make such a massive announcement, given that the event is one of the game’s biggest ever.
The energy in Paris is electric, as three of the competing teams, Karmine Corp, Team Vitality and Gentle Mates, are French organisations and each reached the major’s final six. The fandom of these respective organisations is on full display on the streets of Paris, seen by many as the spiritual home of Rocket League esports.
With the next semi-final being contested by Karmine Corp and Team Vitality to see who will face Twisted Minds in the Grand Finals, the energy of Paris’ La Défense Arena remains frenetic.
Rocket League
- Released
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July 7, 2015
- ESRB
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E for Everyone: Mild Lyrics
- Developer(s)
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Psyonix
- Publisher(s)
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Psyonix
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