The WNBA has launched an investigation into the circumstances around the newly announced sponsorship deal between the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority and the Aces.
Under the terms of the recently announced deal, the group will provide a $100,000 annual sponsorship to each Aces player for both this season and the 2025 campaign. However, that agreement has since raised some red flags with the league’s head office which is now looking into the matter.
According to Las Vegas head coach Becky Hammon, the tourism bureau contacted each of the player’s agents individually to negotiate the terms of the deal, but ultimately made the announcement to the team as part of a surprise for the players.
“I’m going to put it to you real simple like this: Most of sponsorship people go after the top two people,” Hammon said. “A’ja is taken care of — she’s got plenty of stuff going on. Kelsey has plenty of stuff. In this situation, from what I understand, is they wanted the whole team. So they went and called individuals, agents. I don’t know the details. I have nothing to do with it; the Aces don’t have anything to do with it. It’s just odd, but that’s basically what happened.”
Prior to the team’s 89-82 victory over the Sparks on Saturday, guard Chelsea Gray remarked “They’re investing in us, and so they put their money where their mouth is. We’ve done so much for the city and having fun doing it. It was a great moment for me and my teammates, of somebody actually putting funds behind, saying that they’re supporting and they want to have our back.”
While the Aces will point towards the fact that the sponsorship doesn’t technically violate the terms of the WNBA’s salary cap because the deal was not organized with the club directly, but rather with the player’s agents, other teams around the league have raised concerns about whether it violates the spirit of the cap rules and could set a dangerous precedent.
As it currently stands, Aces guard Jackie Young is the league’s highest paid player, earning $252,450 annually. Only 20 players in the league currently make more than $200K per season. Moreover, the $100K sponsorship is actually higher than the current annual salary of 6 Aces players.
With the tourism bureau essentially handing out half the annual salary of the league’s highest paid player in “sponsorships”, one can see why this could potentially create an unfair advantage for Las Vegas when it comes to matters such as free agency, and contract negotiations.
“On the players’ side, I’m super grateful to be in a franchise, in a city that constantly wants more for us. That wants us to not worry about stuff, just go play and go win, and have fun at that,” A’ja Wilson said. “I’m blessed with or without that 100K, because at the end of the day, we’re going for something bigger than that.”
“We’re going to continue to do that, continue to be us. We can’t really listen to this outside noise going on. But I’m not shocked.”
While there are few who will argue that WNBA players deserve to be paid more than they’re currently making, the competitive advantages that deals such as this present are obvious. If permitted to proceed unchecked, it’s very likely that the WNBA would slowly move to a collegiate model whereby “boosters” would be able to help teams recruit the top free agents via sponsorship laden agreements.
Las Vegas is also no stranger to being investigated by the league’s head office. Last year the team was stripped of its 2025 1st round pick and suspended head coach Becky Hammon for 2 games after an investigation determined that “the team violated league rules regarding impermissible player benefits and workplace policies”.
With the recent announcements of Caitlin Clark’s $28M Nike endorsement, and that the league would finally be implementing a chartered flight service, change is coming to the WNBA. However, with change comes a new series of challenges for commissioner Cathy Engelbert and the league’s head office to navigate.
Chief among them will be the Aces recent deal. And one can rest assured that the other 11 WNBA franchises will paying particularly close attention to how this investigation pans out.
Photo: Lorie Shaull. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.
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