The historical past books can be kinder to Cathy Engelbert than this final 12 months was as WNBA commissioner.
Six enlargement groups. A global market. A landmark media rights deal. Exploding TV viewership and enviornment attendance numbers. Group valuations > and averaging $460 million.
Then there’s the league’s first $1 million participant salaries and a collective bargaining settlement (CBA) primarily based on revenue-sharing, marking the second “transformational” CBA she oversaw. They bookend a mind-boggling ascension for ladies’s sports activities collectively in Engelbert’s seven years operating a league that turned 30 this 12 months, and is the longest-running ladies’s league in the USA.
Pull again 10,000 ft, and people are the highlights of a theoretical Encyclopedia Britannica entry, not the turmoil that finally led to Engelbert’s r, introduced on Friday. She is the league’s second-longest-tenured chief, and > she had initially meant to do the job for 3 and a half years. She sped previous that brief window, and instructed the AP she had been mulling the choice for months.
“It is a actually good time given the monetary transformation journey we’ve been on,” Engelbert instructed the outlet, including it was her resolution and she or he didn’t really feel stress from NBA or WNBA stakeholders. “Getting the collective bargaining settlement completed, getting a long-term media rights deal completed, getting enlargement completed.”
Thanks to the first-ever Commissioner of the WNBA, Cathy Engelbert 🧡 3
— WNBA (@WNBA) 6
Engelbert led the league over a interval of unprecedented development, a product created by a mixture of her strategy and outdoors forces. There’s a cause staff homeowners by no means got here out to tear her, and why even gamers important of her tenure — and there are legitimate causes to take action — quieted when the paychecks started to hit their financial institution accounts in Could.
To place it bluntly: Engelbert made everybody actually, actually wealthy and related in a enterprise traditionally suppressed and on the butt of cultural jokes.
The ascension of ladies’s basketball occurred so shortly, it’s straightforward to overlook Engelbert took this job in Could 2019 at a time when the New York Liberty have been enjoying in Westchester County Heart, having been shuttled to an auditorium and left to disintegrate by former proprietor James Dolan. They now common close to sell-out numbers nightly after the Tsais moved them to Brooklyn’s Barclays Heart, a correct residence the place they averaged 16,495 followers per sport this season and gained their first championship in 2024.
Mark Davis hadn’t but bought the Las Vegas Aces, which he did in 2021, nor had he constructed a team-specific coaching facility that sparked an arms race that has since revolutionized and professionalized all ladies’s leagues within the U.S. The Aces are on a run of three titles in 5 years, packing the Las Vegas Strip for parades. Engelbert’s first champions, the 2019 Mystics, instantly flew to play abroad after popping their champagne bottles.
No, Engelbert herself didn’t do both of these issues, or most of the different foundational items of the final six years. However her management, which notably included a enterprise background at Deloitte and never a regulation diploma, mattered to many opting into the WNBA.
Enlargement talks popped early in Engelbert’s tenure, a top-of-mind challenge pushed down the checklist by necessity. Months after taking the job and signing a monumental 2020 CBA, the world shut down amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Engelbert insisted on holding a season, believing that to skip one would do detrimental hurt to a league that had no qualms pushing the concept it already wasn’t worthwhile. They have been the primary to return, internet hosting a bubble season in Florida starting that July.
After one other profitable 2021 season that started with out followers, Engelbert led> in 2022 that appeared needed on the time. It was the largest-ever funding spherical in ladies’s sports activities, financing the overdue > The entrance workplace expanded to correctly promote the league in an period that reworked gamers into family names.
She might lastly instantly reply the query that opened fairly practically each press convention she held. Enlargement? When?
Golden State turned the primary enlargement staff because the Atlanta Dream in 2008 when the league >They started play in 2025, adopted this 12 months by the resurgence of a Portland staff and worldwide attain to Canada in Toronto. At a gathering held at their workplaces final summer time, the league introduced three extra in Cleveland (2028), Detroit (2029) and Philadelphia (2030), every at a report $250 million charge. It’s going to convey the WNBA to a report 18 groups. The schedule continues to increase, with 50 video games slated for 2027.
Extra video games, extra markets, extra money for all.
Engelbert will perpetually carry the excellence of the league’s first commissioner after earlier leaders of the WNBA led underneath the title of president. Although she held the title equal to these of main skilled leagues within the U.S., she additionally confronted the truth that the WNBA sat beneath the NBA’s umbrella and commissioner Adam Silver.
That precarious standing tilted dangerously towards demise in latest months. Gamers criticized her lack of relationship constructing, a problem that by no means relented following Napheesa Collier’s scorched-earth end-of-season interview final 12 months, calling out Engelbert and the WNBA as “the worst management on the planet.” The CBA negotiations have been tense, requiring around-the-clock conversations virtually previous the eleventh hour. The deal marked main wins for everybody, specifically the gamers, however condensed a busy offseason into a couple of brief weeks.
As tensions rose, officiating wilted and s enveloped the league, many questioned her management. Engelbert by no means thrived in that side of the function. Her public-facing conversations improved over time, however have been by no means her robust go well with. She hardly ever spoke outdoors of tentpole occasions, and was way more comfy speaking store than chit-chat. The underlying query remained how concerned Silver — who each employed and introduced her retirement — was.
Although these points will make it to her bio, it is going to be buried. Engelbert did her job and did it effectively, even amid forces majeures that rattled the complete world past a sport performed between 90 ft.
In the long run, cash talks, and financial institution accounts don’t lie.