A year later, WNBA players have that new CBA, they’re being compensated (very) differently, and the league has adjusted the schedule accordingly. 

The WNBA announced Wednesday that it would expand the season to 50 games beginning next year. It’s not a huge jump from the current number of 44—but it’s relatively striking for a league that had never played more than 34 games in a season until 2022. Yet this is a natural progression for a WNBA that is occupying more space in every conceivable way than it was a few years ago. After more than a decade of holding steady at 12 teams, the league has started expanding, and it’s on track to have 18 teams by 2030. This is now a bigger league with more resources and more broadcast partners eager to air more games. It’s only logical that growth should mean a longer season for the WNBA. 

And that, in turn, means many more chances for teams to differentiate themselves. 

Start with personnel. A longer season places more emphasis on roster depth. That has traditionally not been a major focus in the WNBA: The end of the bench was so historically neglected, in fact, that many teams did not even bother fielding a full roster until recently. The new CBA requires teams to use all 12 of their roster spots as a way to address the fact that teams previously often stayed under the salary cap by carrying only 11. That can no longer be the case. It will become increasingly hard to make a serious run with a team that plays only seven or eight deep. There will be real potential value to be found in players on the margins here.  

And that comes with more work for the front office. In this current moment of teams bolstering their staff—including several that have brought on former writers and public analysts—it can be easy to forget how few jobs there were in this space just a few years ago. It hasn’t been so long since WNBA teams often had just one person splitting the duties of head coach and GM. But the front office is now a place where franchises can staff up and flex their financial muscle. They increasingly cannot afford not to do so. It’s a matter of scouting, of course, but also of strategy. 

That’s about both identifying talent and maximizing its potential. International scouting will likely only become more important here: The higher pay under the new CBA means a larger pool of foreign players may be motivated to join the WNBA. With expansion franchises adding roster spots to the league with every passing year, and with extra minutes for each team to distribute across a longer season, it will be more important than ever for competitive front offices to spot and recruit talent outside traditional pipelines. Only so much of a roster can go to big free agents and high draft picks. A longer season with a recently expanded playoff means the sixth and seventh players off the bench may prove just as crucial as the stars. 

A longer season also places more importance on team facilities and injury prevention. It creates more chances for opposing coaches to figure out a system and make adjustments. Simply put, a longer season will require more from a team, and it will make it harder to paper over gaps in resources. 

It will also change the cadence of the calendar. The WNBA’s schedule historically came with some key benefits: A shorter season meant that nearly every game could have playoff implications. (That’s proven no small thing as the NBA has grappled with the fading importance of its regular season and developed a healthy fear of the phrase “load management.”) A season played almost entirely in the summer let the WNBA operate in a relatively uncrowded part of the sports calendar. All of that made sense for a version of the league that was still fighting to establish itself. 

But the league has changed, and some of its motivations and incentives have, too. There is more money, and more at stake, generally. The 50-game season will last into November. It will not automatically cut into the winter opportunities that many players take overseas or in domestic leagues such as Unrivaled or Athletes Unlimited—but it might change the value proposition for some players, and if the season expands any more, it very well might shift the landscape here. This is a different league now. The WNBA that plays 50 games in 2027 will bear few similarities to the WNBA that a player like McBride entered back in 2014. And the longer season will only give more opportunities to show just how much has changed.

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Emma Baccellieri is a staff writer who focuses on baseball and women's sports for Sports Illustrated. She previously wrote for Baseball Prospectus and Deadspin, and has appeared on BBC News, PBS NewsHour and MLB Network. Baccellieri has been honored with multiple awards from the Society of American Baseball Research, including the SABR Analytics Conference Research Award in historical analysis (2022), McFarland-SABR Baseball Research Award (2020) and SABR Analytics Conference Research Award in contemporary commentary (2018). A graduate from Duke University, she’s also a member of the Baseball Writers Association of America.