CHICAGO — On Friday night, WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert spent 30 minutes addressing the media, just before the 22nd WNBA All-Star Game began. Appropriately, Engelbert touted the league’s many successes and growth first, beginning with Friday morning’s events hosted at the Obama Presidential Center (which included a visit from President Barack Obama himself), as well as the 180,000+ square feet of programming Chicago has hosted for fans and Friday night’s competitions.
Engelbert, who has experienced her own ups and downs as Commissioner as she navigates what has arguably been the league’s most successful season to date, also directly addressed solutions for combating abuse players receive, noted that this year’s Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) negotiations were tough and announced the league will implement a replay center beginning next season.
There’s a lot to dig through — here’s what stood out.
A “full centralized” replay center is coming in 2027
Engelbert’s announcement that the league will soon be home to a “fully centralized” replay center should appeal to just about everyone — fans and players alike.
The WNBA will be able to leverage the NBA’s replay center in New Jersey, something that will give game officials the ability to review plays from multiple angles and ask for assistance from officials at the center.
“This is one of the most significant investments we’ve ever made in our basketball operations,” Engelbert said. “This investment of tens of millions of dollars will help bring greater consistency, efficiency, and transparency to our officiating process while continuing to improve the quality of the game.”
Engelbert also noted the WNBA will “add some innovation of our own.”
Transparency and communication are changing
Engelbert also acknowledged the WNBA could benefit from a continued increase in transparency and in communication, especially with the players.
While speaking on the topic of league transparency in terms of player suspensions and injuries, Engelbert emphasized that there are “processes for all of these” that have been “in place 30 years.”
“We have processes where plays are submitted by coaches after officials file game reports. There [are] all processes for this. … I think some people think, ‘Oh, we just looked at it because it was on social media.’ No, we have processes for all of this, and I can tell you there are processes, procedures, consultation with a lot of parties who have a lot of experience.”
The WNBA will also be using more technology, such as large language models (a broad category of AI technology) to address concerns about player safety on and off the court.
“The internet is a very complicated place, and someone gave me this term: ‘keyboard warriors’ are very adamant to get their messages through to our players, whether it’s through DMs, whether it’s through other means,” Engelbert added. “So again, we’re going to try to attack it, and we’re going to communicate a lot more with the players around that.”
Engelbert acknowledged communication with players is one area in which the WNBA’s leadership can improve, though she’s not quite sure the best pathway forward.
“It’s absolutely something I’ve been talking with the players about, how much they want to hear from us, how much they don’t. We do send them a lot of email updates and things like that. They’re a generation that doesn’t check email as much, so we have to get better at a text chain,” she explained.
“There’s no doubt I need to be better, everybody needs to be better at communication, I think, all the time. So we’ll continue to work on that and communicate,” Engelbert continued. She noted players insisted this week that the league “can’t over-communicate” to them, something that was a little surprising.
“I figure the players don’t want to hear from us all the time, so we’re going to institute more frequent communications with them when it’s appropriate,” she said.
These conversations will be on topics that range from honors and injuries to announcements, because players don’t always see every bit of news about the WNBA. “For instance, we just announced the replay center,” she said. “I’m going to reach out to the players and say, ‘Oh, by the way, we announced because they don’t see all the news that you all report, believe it or not, because there’s so much. There was something that they brought up on Tuesday night, actually, and they said like, ‘Well, we didn’t see that you talked about this.’ I said, ‘Oh, I just talked about it publicly,’ but they don’t always see it.”
The Aces investigation has concluded
The Commissioner also revealed the investigation into the Las Vegas Aces for salary cap circumvention had concluded. The investigation was launched by the WNBA in 2024.
“So, as you know, we’ve been conducting an independent investigation by outside counsel. So we have wrapped that up for now, and WNBA has determined that there is insufficient evidence at this time to establish a salary cap circumvention violation, and no discipline will be recommended or imposed,” Engelbert said. “Of course, if new or additional evidence comes to light, we’ll continue to investigate. But you know, the integrity of our game is number one.”
Relationships have improved post-CBA
Last year’s All-Star Game was dominated by conversations surrounding the then-impending CBA negotiations, as well as Engelbert’s own relationship with the players in the league. From Engelbert’s perspective, those relationships have improved one year later.
Engelbert had one word for the months-long negotiations: contentious.
“It was contentious. Some of that is negotiations and the way negotiations work, and I know I talked about that at Draft because, remember at Draft we had just finished the negotiations, so it was a little more recent,” she said. “And today, I just can’t be more proud of these players — how we were able to have so many players sign million-dollar-plus, multi-year contracts.”
Engelbert added, “I think they know that the league is in a really good place, and now they’re in a revenue share with the league, as you know, because that was part of the CBA. So I think I feel like at this and the Orange Carpet … we’re all kind of gelling from that perspective of what’s good for our players is good for our league, and we’ll all benefit from that.”
Her future is with the WNBA — or so it seems
Engelbert was also asked directly if she sees herself remaining in the position of Commissioner of the WNBA next season.
“I’m so blessed to be at the helm of this league during this incredible hypergrowth period, so blessed that these players are putting the product on the court they are every night,” she responded. “That they stand for the values that the W has long sought for.”
Her plan is to stay the course. “So I will just continue to do my job, execute the strategy because it has been working. Make sure we listen to the players, communicate with the players, and so absolutely just love this league and blessed to have had the career I had before and the career I have now, and just mostly the team we’ve built at the league.”
There was a time when the WNBA employed 12 people, Engelbert explained, and now almost 100 call the league their place of employment. The people who have been put into those positions make it possible for Engelbert to keep her focus on what really matters.
“What I focus on is leading that team to help, again, this game continue to grow so that young girls who typically drop out of sports too quick can see our players as their role models,” she said. “That’s what keeps me going.”
