WNBA’s Cathy Engelbert says a search firm is vetting candidates to replace her

WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert said that the league is still working on finding her successor with a search firm in charge of the process.

Engelbert announced last month that she’d retire at the end of the calendar year.

“I met with the search firm and been getting updates periodically as they start to reach out to potential candidates,” Engelbert said before Game 1 of the WNBA Finals on Saturday. “I had candidates that I submitted, a lot of us did, and a lot of people have called. So the good news is, there’s people who really want to take on this role, which I think is great.”

Engelbert described traits that would help her successor.

“It’s like a multi-dimensional role. You have to have very thick skin,” Engelbert said. “So I say that’s one characteristic you have to have. And, you have to have confidence that we can continue this growth trajectory and confidence and building relationships with players and agents and the Board of Governors, the owners and the stakeholders. so it is a multi-dimensional role.”

Engelbert is the second-longest tenured WNBA president or commissioner, and she helped negotiate a lucrative collective bargaining agreement this past spring that resulted in the league’s first set of million-dollar player salaries.

That growth has been accompanied by a series of headline-grabbing distractions for the league under her leadership, especially in the past year. She had a strained relationship with the players during the contract negotiations, and the 2026 season has been dominated by controversies surrounding officiating and the transgender debate along with a large amounts of social media backlash against WNBA participants.

Engelbert didn’t address any of those in her final state-of-the-league speech other than to say that the league needs to continue to support the players against the social media vitriol.

“To continue to condemn those that are using behind a keyboard to spew vitriol and hate and racism and misogyny at our players continues to be unacceptable,” Engelbert said.

“We obviously have worked on the cyber side of that. We worked on the physical security side of that by putting more, physical security around our players and arenas outside of arenas as they travel and things like that, which, again, none of that existed a few years ago. So we’ve made those investments.”

The WNBA has grown at an exponential rate during Engelbert’s tenure as commissioner, with record TV ratings, strong attendance, a new long-term media rights deal and expansion to 18 teams by the end of the decade.

There were 51 telecasts this year with more than one million viewers, compared to 19 last season. More than 320 million hours of WNBA basketball were watched by fans around the world. A total of 3.8 million fans attended games during the regular season — the most in league history. More than 67% of the games were sold out.

Officials replay center

Engelbert said that the league, along with the NBA, completed a multi-million dollar renovation in New Jersey to the official replay center. It will be fully operational next season. The league is working to upgrade techonology and video infrastructure at arenas to help the process.

“As I said at All-Star, this represents one of the largest investments we’ve made in basketball operations,” said Engelbert, who first announced the new replay center at this year’s All-Star Game.

On future of league internationally

Engelbert said that people in 240 countries and territories around the world watched the WNBA as viewership was up more than 200% on Amazon this past season.

“Turn those players into global superstars is on the horizon,” Engelbert said.

Her legacy

Engelbert was proud of all she’s accomplished in her seven-year plus tenure as commissioner, but stopped short of wanting to discuss her own mark on the league.

“Someone else can write legacy in the history books will write that. But I’m just proud of the team we’ve built,” Engelbert said.

She’s increased the amount of people in the league office which has helped the overall growth of the WNBA.

“It’s really about people and investment and I’d say, you know, the one thing I did, I think we had 12 people — and it’s not even about the number — we’re close to 100 now. It was the capabilities we built. So I’d say that’s what we did. You grow a business by hiring great people who have capabilities to take your weaknesses and turn them into strengths, to drive a business, to drive growth.”

Engelbert added a chief growth officer and chief marketing officer and gave them resources to succeed.

“Those two leaders in our organization today have 30 to 40 people working for them now. There was zero back then, so it’s really a great story of how you build a business that quite frankly, when I came in was struggling, financially struggling with digital. So we had no social, we had no digital.”

___

See AP’s full WNBA coverage here