Failing to renew its agreement with the league, Under Armour will not be an authorized footwear supplier to the WNBA for the 2026 season, according to Front Office Sports (FOS). In consequence, several of its athletes are obliged to tape over logos or compete in unbranded shoes.
Logo-free in the W
Under the terms of the league’s collective bargaining agreement (CBA), players may wear non-Nike footwear only from brands that hold Authorized Footwear Supplier status and have provided athletes with a qualifying shoe deal: a minimum annual payment of $5,000 and a filing with the league office no later than seven days before the start of training camp. No brand without that status may appear on court.
Dallas Wings center Li Yueru has been seen wearing Curry 13s with tape over the Curry Brand mark. Toronto Tempo guard Marina Mabrey, Under Armour’s most prominent WNBA athlete since Kelsey Plum’s departure (earlier this year), has appeared in Curry Brand shoes manufactured without the company’s logo. Connecticut Sun forward Diamond Miller and Golden State Valkyries forward Laeticia Amihere, however, have played games with logos visible. No penalty has yet come to light.
Under Armour is not the first brand in this position. FOS reports that Holo has produced logo-less shoes for Chicago Sky guard Jacy Sheldon, and multiple outlets report that Moolah Kicks did the same for Minnesota Lynx guard Courtney Williams in 2025, after the league fined her five times and threatened suspension.
Nike by default
The old CBA, according to Sole Retriever, stipulated that players without a qualifying deal from an authorized supplier were to wear shoes designated by the league, and the designated supplier was Nike: holder since the 2019/20 season of the WNBA’s exclusive on-court uniform and apparel partnership. Even a player who signed a shoe deal mid-season was not to wear that brand’s shoes in games until the following year.
The framework covered shoes only. Players without personal deals were not obliged to wear any particular Nike model but were free to choose from Nike’s range. But no rival logo was to appear on court without authorization.
Nike renewed its deal in October 2024 for another 12 years, through 2037. The new CBA was signed on May 22 but remains unpublished. Recent events suggest, as FOS reports, that the shoe clause and its Authorized Footwear Supplier framework have survived, but we don’t know for certain.
The men
The NBA operates under the same, extended partnership with Nike, which covers uniforms, on-court apparel, global merchandising and content for the NBA, WNBA and G League. But the shoe rules differ.
The NBA does not require other brands to hold individual footwear deals for their players to wear their sneakers. NBA players have been free to wear any brand’s footwear since at least 2018, when the league dropped its last color restrictions. Stephen Curry, for example, spent the months between his deals with Under Armour and Li-Ning wearing on NBA courts whatever he chose, without penalty.
A rule older than Nike
Nike did not invent the framework, and the framework did not originate with its partnership or the extension. Adidas held the same exclusive on-court footwear position in the WNBA, but it too never invented it. Rather, it inherited it from Reebok, which Adidas acquired in 2005.
Players without personal deals were to wear Adidas; those who chose a competitor’s shoe were to cover the logos. The terms carried over through successive CBAs, ratified each time by the players’ association. The current version dates to 2020.
Nike’s true position
Nike holds a bigger stake in the league than an apparel deal. In February 2022 it became an equity investor in the WNBA, joining a group that raised $75 million. That group acquired a 16 percent stake, leaving the NBA and team owners each with 42 percent. Nike is, in other words, a part-owner of the entity whose rules it benefits from.
That arrangement drew attention during the 2025 season, when the aforementioned Courtney Williams was fined five times for wearing Moolah Kicks. Founded in 2020, Moolah Kicks describes itself as the only company to design all its basketball shoes for women’s feet. A brand owned by a woman and making shoes for women was under penalty for being visible in a women’s league at the height of its popularity? The fines drew coverage, Moolah sales surged (Women’s Wear Daily). The kicker, so to speak? Williams has since switched to Nike.
The WNBA deal in context
Under Armour’s lapsed supplier agreement is but the latest in a series of exits from basketball. Partners since 2013, UA and Stephen Curry parted ways in November 2025, leaving Curry a free agent. He went on to sign a ten-year deal worth a reported $400 million with Li-Ning.
Kelsey Plum, the face of UA’s women’s basketball division, left in April 2026, after months of wearing Adidas at Unrivaled and in Team USA practice.
The financial effects show in UA’s guidance. The wind-down of Curry Brand accounts for roughly one percentage point of the fiscal 2027 revenue headwind; with the brand excluded, underlying revenue would be close to flat. The company has framed fiscal 2027 as a year of stabilization, with a return to sustainable growth not expected until fiscal 2028. Footwear was the weakest category in fiscal 2026, down 11 percent to $1.1 billion.
The WNBA deal fits the pattern. Under Kevin Plank, who returned as CEO in 2023, Under Armour has been cutting SKUs, reducing fabric selections and concentrating on categories where it sees potential for full-price growth. A league footwear authorization fee for a roster that had shrunk to five active players, one of them out for the season, ill suited the plan.
Other leagues
The WNBA is a restrictive outlier among major professional leagues, different in its bundling of apparel and footwear rights.
Nike has supplied the NFL with uniforms since 2012, its current deal running through 2027 at least. Players may wear league-approved shoe brands or different shoes as long as colors match team-wide. Brand choice is otherwise free. Nike, Adidas and Under Armour are all approved.
MLB is the most permissive of major North American leagues, placing no restrictions on cleat color and permitting any brand as long as the supplier is registered with the league and the design is submitted in advance to the club, to MLB and to the players’ association. Nike supplies the uniforms, but its dominance in shoes – roughly half of starters by recent counts – derives from endorsement deals (Stadium Custom Kicks).
The NHL, which switched from Adidas to Fanatics for jersey supply in the 2024/25 season, imposes no league-wide brand restriction on skates. CCM, Bauer and others compete.
European football differs structurally. The Premier League has no single kit supplier. Nine brands supplied the 20 clubs in 2025/26, with Adidas outfitting eight and Nike three. Each club negotiates its own deal. Boot choice is left to the player, with no authorization framework in place (Score and Change).
The WNBA’s model has its own logic: a younger, smaller league with less negotiating leverage sold a single footwear slot as a commercial asset, and the buyer of that slot paid for exclusivity over players without individual contracts. This was logical for a league in need of revenue and the visibility that a single committed partner could provide. Does it make sense still?
The league is drawing endorsement interest from nearly every major footwear brand. It has a new CBA and a roster of athletes whose commercial value is rising. The Moolah Kicks episode and now the Under Armour taping would seem to have put options on the table.
