BREAKING — Sophie Cunningham Sounds the Alarms: “If We Don’t Get This CBA Right, I Don’t Even Know If There Is a WNBA Next Year.”
INDIANAPOLIS/NEW YORK — Sophie Cunningham has never been afraid of a microphone, but her latest comments didn’t just make noise — they detonated across the women’s basketball world. The Indiana Fever guard, fresh off turning heads at an LPGA event as Caitlin Clark’s caddy, sat down with Front Office Sports in lower Manhattan and delivered one of the most brutally honest assessments of the WNBA’s future that any player has dared to say out loud.
And the most shocking line of all?
She’s not sure the league will even exist next season if CBA negotiations fall apart.
Cunningham, traded to the Fever after six seasons in Phoenix and coming off an MCL tear that cut her 2025 campaign short, walked into the interview with her trademark candor. No filters. No softening. No PR polish. Just the raw reality of a league teetering between breakthrough growth and dangerous instability.
When asked what the Fever need to make a Finals run, Cunningham didn’t point to a superstar, a trade, or a tactical shift — she pointed to survival.
“There’s a lot of uncertainty … with the CBA, with the money, if we’re even going to have a league next year,” she said, dropping a bomb that instantly reframed the conversation.
For all the WNBA’s momentum — record ratings, surging exposure, rising merch sales — the CBA negotiations have crawled into a standstill. Cunningham confirmed that the last meeting was two weeks ago, and the silence since then is fueling fears.
“Normally we don’t have meetings unless something big is happening. And … we haven’t had one.”
Translation: If progress was being made, players would know. They don’t.
At the center of the stalemate?
Player salaries. Revenue share. Control. Long-term respect.
One proposal that’s circulated privately is an $850,000 supermax salary — a number that looks powerful in headlines but, as Cunningham bluntly noted, means little without escalators tied to revenue growth.
“They can wave a big number in your face … but what happens when the business continues to go up?”
And if the W can’t or won’t pay? Other leagues will.
Unrivaled is already here.
Project B is lurking with multi-million-dollar offers.
Cunningham didn’t sugarcoat her stance on these competing leagues either:
“If people are going to be paying you multi-million dollar deals, why would you not?”
It’s not disloyalty. It’s survival — the very theme shaping the entire offseason.
Still, for all the uncertainty, Cunningham is also proof of how the WNBA’s rising profile has transformed off-court opportunities. She’s landed partnerships that rookies a few years ago couldn’t dream of.
Her latest? Sun Cruiser — a brand that fits her off-court vibe too well.
“Say less — sign me up. I don’t care what the money looks like. Give me that drink.”
The irony is stark:
The WNBA has never been more visible, more talked about, or more culturally relevant…
Yet the players feel the whole structure could collapse if the league doesn’t modernize — now.
Sophie Cunningham didn’t just give an interview.
She fired a warning shot.
And the WNBA — from league offices to ownership to fans — can’t pretend they didn’t hear it.
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