WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert says relationship with players is repaired after CBA deal

WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert says relationship with players is repaired after CBA deal

NEW YORK — The WNBA is entering its 30th season after a long, arduous offseason that brought a new collective bargaining agreement, labor peace and a frenzied free agency period with newly minted million-dollar deals thrown around. But commissioner Cathy Engelbert is already eying a bigger and more international future for the league.

“The past 30 years have been about building the foundation,” she said at a news conference before the 2026 WNBA Draft. “The next 30 are about scaling the game.”

Engelbert said she wants to bring the WNBA outside of North America. Though the league has only recently played its first games outside of the U.S., and will add the Toronto Tempo to the league this upcoming season, she wants to have exhibition games and, eventually, regular-season games abroad. She also mentioned that the WNBA will be able to play up to 52 games by the 2029 season because of the new CBA.

Although the WNBA has publicized its ambitions, it is also dealing with the ramifications of a pugnacious labor negotiation. Engelbert said her relationship with the players is back in a good spot after she took a lot of criticism during last season, most notably during a now infamous press conference by Lynx star Napheesa Collier, and as negotiations ran long and fevered. She ran into WNBPA president Nneka Ogumwike before the draft and said they had a good exchange.

“Obviously, we were in the midst of collective bargaining, and I feel really good about the relationship with players,” Engelbert said.

She added: “I understand that makes great headlines and press, things like that, but this executive committee of the (players association) and my team worked really hard to do something historic. We’re on their side too. This wasn’t their side, our side, although it seems like that at times. … I’ve been fighting for gender equality my whole career. And I think obviously there’s a lot of posturing going on, but I’m proud of what we accomplished together and we’re going to be fine.”

After CBA negotiations dragged on and several issues divided the two sides for months, Engelbert said she did not expect that housing would be such an important issue for the players. Teams paid for housing for all players under the old CBA, but that will be phased out under the new one. Players who request housing will get it through the 2028 season, but teams will provide housing to only players making less than $500,000 starting with the 2029 season.

“I didn’t know how important and emotional that was for them,” Engelbert said. “Because I just assumed having two children in their 20s that paid for their own housing, that once they were making these much increased salaries, that that wasn’t something they would need or want. But they made it very clear it was very important to them. It was an emotional issue. … Everything we wanted for the players, obviously, again, we’re representing the owners, we wanted to pay them more, give them more benefits.. And so probably the housing was one where they were very, very clear, and we listened very, very hard to get them to a good place on that.”

Other takeaways from Engelbert’s news conference:

• Engelbert ducked a question about her own future in the job. She has been the commissioner since 2019, helping lead the league through two CBA negotiations and adding six new teams through expansion. NBA commissioner Adam Silver said last month that he hadn’t talked about her job status yet, and Engelbert had no interest in discussing it Monday night. She said the focus should be on the other women in the league and wondered if that question would be asked if she were a different gender.

“I wonder whether you would ask that of man, by the way, but I realize I get asked different questions than men do,” Engelbert said.

The reporter who asked that question quickly responded: “I would.”

• Engelbert said the WNBA still has not received any official paperwork on the sale of the Connecticut Sun to the Houston Rockets ownership group. They will move the Sun to Houston and rename them the Comets, bringing a historic WNBA franchise back to life. She said the league will review the transaction when they do.

The sale, when it goes through, ends a tumultuous process for the Sun and the league. The Sun had offers in place with potential owners who were willing to move the franchise to Hartford and Boston but the WNBA made it clear they would not approve them and allow the new groups to move the teams out of Uncasville, Conn. The Fertitta family, which is buying the Sun, had no such problem. They also will not have to pay a relocation fee, according to one source briefed on the deal.

“Coming off a significant expansion process, the WNBA had 13 cities bidding on, remember what we thought would be one team that we would grant maybe it was 18 months ago now. And obviously we’ve now announced Cleveland, Detroit and Philadelphia (in 2028, 2029 and 2030, respectively). We did not receive a bid from the Boston market or the New England market. Obviously, the Connecticut team there, the Mohegan tribe then hired a banker to represent them in the potential sale. Or, I think it started with a variety of options — a partial sale, minority sale, and ultimately they did reach agreement that you’ve read. We have not got anything final at the WNBA, yet when we get that agreement, we will put that through our governance process.”

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

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