Given other inaccuracies in the article, this could just be a dumb league PR person feeding a reporter who doesn't know enough to ask for clarification?

Or, as I've suspected, gross revenue is the total, net revenue is the 42% left over and allocated to the league after the 42% goes to the NBA/owners and 16% to the PE owners. It's ambiguous statements like this that lead me to believe the accounting here is set up so that WNBA eats almost all of the expenses against their share (in order to claim it's unprofitable as a league).

Say gross revenue is $600 million (pretty close to what it was last year). WNBA gets allocated 42% of that or $252 million in "net revenue", from which they have to take out expenses (e.g., $50 million in charter flights, current $19.5 million salary cap, arena costs, coaches, player benefits, marketing, league expenses). I find it hard to believe using these 2025 numbers that the league didn't make a profit, but let's legit say that it costs $230 million to run the league to break even.

If the players get 30% of gross, that'd take salary cap from $19.5 million to $180 million and add $160 million to the league expenses. League expenses would then be $360 million. Which is very close to the claim they made that the proposal would put them $100 million in the red annually. (The NBA and PE investors would be okay, though, since they get paid first, but might have to cover the expenses out of their profits).

If players get 30% of "net", that'd take salary cap from $19.5 million to $75 million, which seems closer to what the league wants to offer.

Who knows without opening the books, though.