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Tuesday, March 10, was the aspirational deadline set by the WNBA in their ongoing CBA negotiations with the players’ union, the Women’s National Basketball Players' Association (WNBPA). That was the date given by which a deal would need to be reached in order to avoid a delay to the season, as there needs to be free agency, an expansion draft, a regular draft, and training camp before a WNBA season can begin. The WNBPA, however, had always seen this as a soft deadline.

As of Friday, March 13, the WNBA and the PA have spent at least 40 hours over the course of four days at the bargaining table. During that time, at least nine proposals have been exchanged. As of midday Friday, a deal has still not been reached.

Fans are growing frustrated with what seems like an unwillingness on the part of the WNBA to give its players a fair contract. The sticking point appears to be revenue sharing. “The union’s last known proposal included a request for a 26% share of the league’s revenue before expenses,” according to Annie Costabile at Front Office Sports. “Their most recent proposals seek less than 26%, according to sources familiar with the negotiations. The WNBPA began negotiations by asking for 40% of the league’s revenue before expenses.” Meanwhile, the most recent offer from the league included 15.5% of total revenue for the players, “with certain expenses still being deducted.”

Some fans believe that collective action can help swing the negotiations in favor of the athletes. A week before the March 10 deadline, a fan-driven social media campaign was launched, with. The Working Families Party and Women’s Sports Rally encouraging fans to unfollow the WNBA on social media and unsubscribe from League Pass. The groups also spearheaded the action to have 18,000 fans chant “Pay the players!” on March 2 at a sold out Unrivaled playoff game at Barclays Center, where the New York Liberty play. The hope is that public-facing pressure will show WNBA Commissioner Cathy Englebert and NBA Commissioner Adam Silver that the fans are squarely behind the players.

“Our core purpose is social connection and community building,” Caroline Fitzgerald, the founder of Women’s Sports Rally, a New York City-based fan collective, told Out of Your League. Women’s Sports Rally delivered 23,000 fan signatures in support of the players to the doors of the WNBA league office back in October.

“Once you get everyone together, you have power,” Fitzgerald says. “Part of creating a more pleasurable experience of enjoying women’s basketball is removing the inequity that gives everyone the ick when you’re watching these amazing athletes and you’re reminded that—for no good reason!—they are being paid less.”

Some fans have told Out of Your League that they have wanted to do something concrete to support the players in their negotiations, but haven’t known exactly what to do without a centralized ask from the PA. “It has been feeling like the voices of fans have been lost in all this, or just totally undirected by the players’ union,” one fan told Out of Your League.

The PA says it has seen the fan support online, and they are grateful for it. “WNBA fans have always been right there with the players,” the WNBPA said in a statement to Out of Your League, when asked about the Unfollow/Unsubscribe campaign. “Seeing fans across the country step up on their own and speak up online, at events, on the streets, and in their communities about the future of the game shows how much the players and what they have built together mean to people. The players see it and appreciate it.”

The Unfollow/Unsubscribe campaign gives fans a concrete ask that doesn’t jeopardize the players (by targeting only league accounts), and doesn’t ask season ticket holders to risk their ticket packages by canceling them (most fans have already paid for their season tickets, and canceling would mean losing out on the seniority that existing ticket holders have).

“We know the CBA wasn’t agreed on following [the Unrivaled semi-finals] and I think fans are generally aware that we are past the point of sending more letters and things like that, so we need new strategies that meet the moment,” Fitzgerald said.

“The Unfollow/Unsubscribe campaign is something we pilot tested at an Unrivaled watch party in Philly. We talked to fans about how they felt about that kind of action because it is hard as a fan—you love the WNBA and you want it to continue and its hard to have to put pressure on the league like this. But what we heard was that fans know that Cathy [Englebert] and Adam [Silver] are ultimately going to be moved by the numbers—things actually changing in terms of revenue and followers—those are the metrics on their scorecard.”

Fitzgerald says that since launching the Unfollow/Unsubscribe campaign March 2, the WNBA’s Instagram account has lost approximately 19,000 followers. While that’s a large number, it’s not statistically significant for an account with over 3.5 million followers. But Fitzgerald is hopeful that if more people know about the campaign, fans will take action in much larger numbers.

When the players first opted out of their CBA last October, momentum was strong and the players were united in the fact that they were willing to go to the mat to get the pay and benefits they deserved. In December, 98% of the players voted to authorize a strike under the necessary conditions, with 93% of the union participating in the survey. 

But by last week, players seemed fractured when it came to their positions regarding CBA negotiations. A letter to WNBPA executive director Terri Jackson that was penned by WNBPA Executive Committee members Breanna Stewart and Kelsey Plum was leaked to the press, in which the pair expressed frustration at the way PA leadership had handled the negotiations. That same day, Plum spoke to the press and called the WNBA’s most recent offer “a significant win” and said that “a strike would be the worst thing for both sides.”

Stewart and Plum’s letter stated that they are “concerned about the impact that a standoff or work stoppage would have on the overall financial health of the league.” In response, a glut of players, including fellow WNBPA EC member Alysha Clark, Natisha Hiedeman, and Lexie Brown, took to social media to express their disagreement, and to clarify that a strike was still a viable option. Other players told Seerat Sohi at The Ringer that the PA was very good at communicating with the players.

In order to show a more unified front, the WNBPA released the results of a new player survey that stated 84% of union members were not happy with the league’s existing offer of giving the players 50% of net revenue, which is less than 15% of gross revenue, and would not be accepting it.

But the fracture left fans unsure of how to show up to support the players, as many told Out of Your League they don’t want to push harder than the players are pushing themselves, or jeopardize the negotiations in any way. Other fans expressed contempt for Stewart and Plum’s actions online, with “Scab York” memes of Stewart making the rounds (Stewart, who plays for the Liberty, is sometimes referenced with the tagline “Stew York”).

Now, with time running out, some fans have decided they will try to help anyway, even without a direct call-to-action from the players. Others say they would be ready to spring into action with a green light from the PA. “We’re in full support of mobilizing our community in support of the WNBPA,” Megan Doherty-Baker, one of the co-founders of the ValQueeries, a queer fan group for the Golden State Valkyries, told Out of Your League. 

“Honestly, [we’re] ready to do whatever,” a Liberty season ticket holder told Out of Your League. “I think mostly everyone I interact with will support a strike if it came to that.” She says there is a season ticket holder group chat that would make it fairly easy to organize others, while other fanbases say their team’s subreddit would absolutely spread the word. There are fan collectives, a women’s sports bar network, and plenty of content creators who surely would back any campaign that put pressure on the W during these negotiations.  

Whether a fan-driven campaign can generate enough momentum at the eleventh hour to have the needed impact for the players to have their demands met remains to be seen. But, as Doherty-Baker of the ValQueeries said about a push to support the players: “LFG.”