This just in: WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert plans to text the players more.
That wasn’t Engelbert’s only takeaway from All-Star weekend, of course. Plenty of logistical matters got hammered out.
And yet the plan to “institute more frequent communication,” as the former Deloitte CEO put it, stuck out.
The knock on Engelbert, who is facing mounting public criticism from league insiders, is that her relationship-building needs work. Players feel like they don’t hear from her on a regular basis.
Asked to characterize the current relationship, four-time MVP A’ja Wilson repeated her standard line: She really only knows Engelbert from trophy handoffs.
Engelbert said she took that feedback from players this weekend. She’s now realizing they don’t really read their emails. She’s now realizing they might actually want to hear from her casually, a happy birthday text or check-in after an injury or milestone.
Is it too little, too late? Maybe. Multiple recent reports from ESPN and Sports Business Journal in recent weeks suggest many league insiders believe this might, or at least should, be her final year.
One thing most agree on: She has put the league on much more stable financial footing and got a CBA done that made players millionaires. But the office requires savvy in the personal and PR side too.
Asked whether she plans to be commissioner in 2027, she gave her usual answer about keeping her head down.
“I’m so blessed to have to be at the helm of this league during this incredible hyper growth period,” she said. “So I will continue to do my job, execute the strategy, because it has been working. Make sure we listen to the players, communicate with the players. Absolutely just love this league.”
For now, she’s still chugging away at the priorities: improving officiating, which has remained a pain point this season. Globalizing the game, a standard playbook for professional sports these days. And improving player security, which matters even more in a women’s league, where players face disproportionately more threats.
The last point was the focus of the weekend. League leaders met with players to address the online harassment they increasingly receive. Mercury star Alyssa Thomas recently described death threats after her flagrant foul on Caitlin Clark. Aces star Chelsea Gray talked about receiving racial slurs from someone who had bet on one of her games.
Engelbert said the meeting was productive and that the league will invest in enhanced security personnel and protocols.
On officiating, Engelbert announced an improvement many have called for: Like the NBA, the WNBA will install a replay center for the 2027 season, helping on-court officials make more accurate and efficient decisions when reviewing plays.
There’s still plenty of work to be done for the WNBA’s infrastructure to match its quality of play. But the business keeps trending upward. Engelbert pointed out that 29 games have averaged more than 1 million viewers, up from 11 at this point last year. That includes two non-Fever games hitting the million mark, no small thing considering that the year before Clark arrived, not even the Finals drew 1 million viewers.
From a business perspective, the league has a clean bill of health. The player-league relationship is a little wobbly, but the hostility of last All-Star weekend, when CBA negotiations were in full swing, is gone.
Asked whether Engelbert should still be commissioner, union leaders like Breanna Stewart and Nneka Ogwumike reiterated that they respect her, even if the relationships aren’t fully developed.
Engelbert is embattled, but she presided over a remarkable transformation: a league once on the margins, now fully mainstream. There’s plenty to like about her legacy. If only she’d thought to institute the Texting Initiative a little sooner.