WNBA All-Star Player Pay Moves Began...

Looking back on the 2025 WNBA All-Star Weekend in Indianapolis, the tone was set not with partner activities at Indianapolis Motor Speedway or activation previews at the convention center, but an unsatisfying meeting between the players’ union and the league on Thursday.

After the league signed a new broadcast deal last year worth an estimated $2.2 billion over the next 11 years, and players opted out of their collective bargaining agreement with the league in search of better working conditions and a greater share of revenue, players left Thursday’s meeting dissatisfied with the result. As Los Angeles Sparks guard and All-Star Kelsey Plum, who also serves as vice president of the WNBPA, told The Athletic, “We’re gonna use this weekend to show our value and our worth.”

Arguably, they waited until Saturday night’s All-Star Game to do so, donning black WNBPA-made shirts reading “Pay Us What You Owe Us” during warmups and the Nike Fit Check. During the MVP trophy presentation to the Minnesota Lynx’s Napheesa Collier, who scored an All-Star-record 36 points, fans chanted, “Pay them,” at league Commissioner Cathy Englebert as Washington Mystics All-Star Brittney Sykes stood behind them with a sign reading “Pay The Players.”

In a post-game press conference, Plum noted that the fans’ involvement “applies pressure.”

But that pressure has also been building for a while from all sides of the sports industry.

With players claiming their demands are being met with league observations that they “don’t understand the business,” ADWEEK spent All-Star Weekend—and the time leading up to it—watching players and brands including Aflac, Samsung, Ally, Sephora, and State Farm make a business statement stronger than just WNBA shirts and signs—both of which are for sale.

For its part, Ally replaced US Bank as the WNBA’s official banking sponsor in April, but was also among the first aboard the Napheesa Collier-and-Breanna Stewart-founded 3-on-3 league Unrivaled and, according to Marciano, helped the league land its six-year deal with Warner Bros. Discovery’s TNT Sports. With WNBPA leader Nneka Ogwumike named one of the founding members of the company’s Team Ally group of athlete ambassadors, Ally sees player success as essential to its own.