Las Vegas Aces players under WNBA investigation for $100K NIL–style deal

The GIST: The WNBA is in its growth era, including its teams and athletes. However, with growth comes growing pains, like this weekend’s news that the Las Vegas Aces are under investigation by the league after every player on the roster signed a $100K local tourism deal. What happens in Vegas…

The deal: The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority — the official marketing organization for the region — announced a two-year, $100K sponsorship of all 12 Aces players last Friday. The City of Las Vegas also shared a video of its leadership offering the athletes the opportunity, and explained why the city approached the team.

• Tourism authority president and CEO Steve Hill said "the offer's really simple: We want you to just play, we want you to keep repping Las Vegas, and if you get a three-peat, that'd be icing on the cake.”

• When players signed their respective deals, they agreed to make appearances on the city’s behalf while repping gear to promote Las Vegas.

The investigation: The WNBA hasn’t publicly explained why it’s investigating the Aces, but the league is reportedly determining whether or not the deal "violates the spirit of the [salary] cap rules.” Similar to the league’s argument against NY Liberty charter flights, the additional compensation could be perceived as an unfair advantage.

• In the Aces’ case, the tourism authority negotiated directly with individual players and team brass was reportedly not involved. An endorsement deal like this is unprecedented in the WNBA, with Aces head coach Becky Hammon explaining that “most sponsorship people go after the top two people.”

The pushback: Aces players like A’ja Wilson criticized the W for claiming to want to grow the game while potentially limiting opportunities for players to earn sponsorship dollars. It doesn’t look great to some when the league just went on a campaign detailing how much Caitlin Clark earns from endorsements.

Lingering questions: The salary cap exists to maintain financial parity between WNBA teams, as is standard practice across pro sports. And though individual endorsement deals are encouraged by the league, how does it differ when a deal is done with an entire roster? Time to figure things out, and fast.