How leadership shapes the future of the WNBA — Geno Auriemma on UConn’s chances

We are now nine days from the October 31 end date for the current collective bargaining agreement between the WNBA and its players, and there aren’t any public signs of an agreement in sight. But a steady drip of anonymous quotes have continued, supported by numerous players, front office members and owners I’ve spoken to around the WNBA, many speculating that current commissioner Cathy Engelbert, for reasons of communication, may not be long for her job, once a collective bargaining agreement is reached.

That may well be true for any number of reasons, from the dissatisfaction from some players that has spilled into public view this month to the realities that with a successful career in business already on her resume, Engelbert herself may decide she does not need the public flogging that comes with the job of commissioner now. That the growth of the WNBA under Engelbert’s direction means the commissioner faces the same public negativity once reserved for people like MLB’s Rob Manfred and the NFL’s Roger Goodell is a significant data point here.

Accordingly, it is worth taking a step back and considering what an Engelbert departure would mean for the WNBA, though.

The reasons most folks around the league I speak to continue to think there will be a deal reached, if not by the October 31 deadline, in plenty of time for the league to conduct an offseason full of business (two expansion drafts! Massive numbers of free agents!) is that there’s plenty of money available to make that deal. Adam Silver attempted to make a point that’s actually significant for the players as much as the owners this week — if we’re talking pure revenue split, the sheer amount of money it takes to operate the league will keep salaries from rising as fast as a straight-up rise in compensation will.

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The profit or loss question is not the relevant one, really. At the end of the day, how you get there is secondary to what truly matters, which is whether players can make massively more money in the new deal than the old one. If the WNBPA thinks the revenues are about to skyrocket, it behooves them to build out a shorter deal, or an opt-out, since revenue share alone from the WNBA-only owners will not come close to the leap in salaries currently being offered the players in 2026.

But the league’s primary source of revenue is media rights, and that’s now been locked in for the next decade. It is unclear where the other, unnamed one-time jump in revenue is expected to come from. So there’s a fairly good set of reasons to assume that the current set of economic circumstances represents the state of play, ceiling-wise, through at least the remainder of the decade. The engine of growth will need to be steady, consistent increases in sponsorship/partnership money.

Which brings us to the other part of the Cathy Engelbert discourse: no one, I mean no one, has anything bad to say about the way she’s run the business as a whole. There’s plenty of second-guessing about the capital raise back in February 2022, but I’ll go ahead and refer you to an interview I did with the great Lindsay Gibbs at the time about this. In short: what should have happened, with hindsight, was the WNBA owners should have purchased that stake themselves, but there were not a critical mass of owners willing to do that, and Cathy Engelbert cannot waive a magic wand and force them to do so. That’s just not how any of this works. And that was vitally important capital that helped lead the WNBA to a point at which it brought in a massive new media rights deal, expansion teams paying $250 million apiece… the very things that will power the huge raise players will get in the new CBA.

At that point, if Cathy Engelbert ends her tenure, the WNBA faces another question: if not Cathy, then who? The theory of the case for those who most want Cathy ousted seems to rest on one of two assumptions: either that the momentum of the WNBA is so great, it doesn’t matter who sits in the commissioner’s chair, or that the business skills of Engelbert are less important, on balance, than a more charismatic commissioner serving as a public face of the league and consistently reaching out to players and owners alike.

Which brings me back to Val Ackerman. When the macro story of the WNBA is told, its rise, fall and rise again is often set against things like ESPN’s active efforts to hamper the product (which has plenty of truth to it!) or even elements like the 2008 financial crisis (which spooked men in ownership suites into making the decision to stop spending on women’s, but often only women’s sports).

But it has always been obvious to me — long before the BIG EAST became a sponsor here, I mean, look up Val’s body of work — that the biggest change in WNBA history came when Ackerman left the job of WNBA president after the 2004 season. The trio who followed her, Donna Orender, Lauren Richie and Lisa Borders, all had points to recommend them. None of them are, to put it mildly, Val Ackerman.

But Engelbert? She’s taken the WNBA from a low point, attendance-wise, through a pandemic, into one, then another CBA negotiation, dramatically increased revenue around the league and utterly changed the conversation about the business of women’s basketball. The problem with assigning all of those positive outcomes to the players exclusively is that for those of us who have covered this league for a long time, the players have always been exceptional with incredible stories. Breanna Stewart, professional basketball player, existed a decade ago. Maya Moore was a dominant force in the 2010s, as was Tamika Catchings. That’s not new. The change at the WNBA level was Cathy Engelbert in charge.

The last WNBA game of Val Ackerman’s tenure featured a young Sue Bird leading the Seattle Storm to a WNBA title over rookie Lindsay Whalen in front of a sold-out Key Arena crowd of 17,072. Few could have predicted the rocky seas ahead.

Instead, Ackerman, following some time away from high-profile jobs, took on another supposedly impossible task in 2013: trying to keep the BIG EAST, a basketball-first conference, relevant in a college football-heavy world. All she’s done is grow the conference into a consistent basketball power, with the signature men’s conference tournament remaining at Madison Square Garden (who remembers the ACC trying to take over New York in March? Because I do!), while improving the league’s standing with each successive media rights deal. I don’t think anyone is foolish enough to claim that the macro-economic indicators were so positive for a basketball-first collegiate conference that anyone could have done this. (RIP Pac-12. Larry Scott is no Val Ackerman, either.) Ackerman was elected to the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 2021. My fearless if currently unpopular prediction: someday, Engelbert will be as well.

Leadership matters. And women in leadership are often held to a different standard when it comes to how they interact with others. But when it comes to Cathy Engelbert, if those who wish to push her out are successful — either directly by convincing Silver and the owners to make a change, or indirectly by convincing Engelbert herself that this job is not worth the trouble — it’s hard to imagine there are many people with anything approaching Engelbert’s business acumen and track record who will see how she’s being treated and line up to take the gig.

Then again, maybe the league can hire someone who is friendlier and more eager to get on the phone and schmooze with all stakeholders during the time Engelbert spends getting deals done. Owners and players alike will doubtless be thrilled to hear from their new commissioner, three times a week, that there’s not enough money for anyone.

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Five at The IX: Geno Auriemma