WNBA’s Product Is Thriving. Its Leadership Still Isn’t.
OPENING STATEMENTS
I was courtside in Chicago last week, and it reminded me why I fell for this league in the first place. Flau'jae Johnson and Caitlin Clark trading grins mid-game. A player practically levitating because Clark signed her shoes. Families three generations deep in the stands, paying a fraction of what an NHL or NBA ticket costs. Elite athletes playing with a joy and accessibility that some professional sports abandoned years ago as prices climbed and stars retreated behind velvet ropes.
That's the product. It's real, it's rare, it’s exciting.
Which is exactly why the WNBA's leadership problem is so maddening.
The league that in the last month set a ratings record (drawing 2.6 million for Fever-Aces) and continues to set attendance marks (its all-star game outdrawing the NBA’s version for the first time), is also the league that can't stop making unforced errors off the court. It starts at the top, where Commissioner Cathy Engelbert seems challenged by the paradox of growth.
She’s presided over soaring financial success and team valuations, but can’t avoid compounding controversies. Napheesa Collier's now-infamous line from last fall — that the WNBA has "the worst leadership in the world" — still hangs over every controversy that's followed: officiating chaos, online abuse of players going unanswered, a Commissioner accused of being absent when she should be visible.
The officiating issue alone tells the story. Fouls per game are up. A no-call on a loose-ball play between Clark and Alyssa Thomas turned into a national storyline and death threats against a player, resolved with a one-game suspension nobody thought matched the offense. The league still has no offsite replay center, no Last Two Minute report, and refs who are paid per game rather than salaried; the same structural gaps identified more than a year ago, walking unchanged into the league's biggest season ever. You can't build a premium product and staff it like a beer league.
Here's what frustrates me most as a fan and as someone who spends her career advising organizations on exactly this kind of moment: none of this is a talent problem, a fan problem, or even fundamentally a money problem. It's a governance and communications problem. When fines are your response for speaking out, you've told everyone watching that accountability flows in one direction. When your Commissioner won't get out in front of officiating controversies, online harassment of players, or her own future, you've ceded the narrative to leaks, anonymous sourcing, and crisis-management columns in USA Today that suggest you should “exit stage right.”
This matters beyond one league. The WNBA got there first. First sustained pro women's league in America, first real fight for equitable pay, first to prove that women's sports could be an economic engine and not a charity case. Every women's sports property that comes after it, from soccer to volleyball to softball to whatever's next, is being built in the WNBA's shadow. If the league that led the way can't run itself professionally, it hands ammunition to every skeptic who wants to write women's sports off as a moment instead of a market.
And it is a market. As former NFL player Jason Wright, who now oversees Ariel’s Project Level investment fund focused on women’s sports, told Front Office Sports, "This isn't just a moment, it's not just a media flash in the pan. This is a real economic drive behind these women." He even suggested team valuations could climb toward those of the NHL. That kind of growth trajectory deserves a league office that matches it: in transparency, in accountability, in basic communications discipline.
The All-Star game I watched didn't have a leadership problem. The players, the fans, the atmosphere. That part of the WNBA is working exactly as it should. The job now is making sure the people running the league catch up to the product they're lucky enough to be stewarding.
EXHIBIT A
This week’s Godfrey v. NCAA ruling is more than a win for the 2022 class seeking a fifth year of eligibility. It may end up as a turning point in how courts look at college sports. For the first time in this 5‑in‑5 wave, a court treats playing college sports as a property interest, giving judges a new way to poke at NCAA decision‑making instead of deferring to it as private association business. That framing also tees up future arguments about due process if the NCAA ever inches closer to being a state actor. In other words, this order doesn’t just open the door for extra seasons; it opens the door for courts to ask much harder questions about how and why the NCAA limits athletes’ opportunities, and the NCAA will fight that property‑right idea every step of the way.
EXHIBIT B
We should keep an eye on two almost-inevitable outcomes from this week’s eligibility ruling: 1) roster cuts and 2) a real challenge to the transfer portal. With hard roster caps now in place under the House settlement, every newly eligible player a coach brings back means someone else gets squeezed out, and we’re already hearing about athletes losing their spots as depth charts get reworked. At the same time, Judge Sweeney’s order makes clear these 2022 athletes remain bound by existing transfer rules and windows. Athletes who “win” extra eligibility but can’t realistically use it because of portal timing or transfer limits are prime candidates to test those restrictions under federal antitrust law.
ON THE DOCKET
Today shapes up as another pivotal day for the Protect College Sports Act. Senate Majority Leader John Thune filed cloture Wednesday, teeing up a floor vote before the chamber's August 7 recess. That momentum followed a stunning about-face last Friday, when the Big Ten and SEC threw their support behind the bill. Passage still requires 60 votes, and even then, the bill faces a significant test in the House. Miss this window, and the bill likely slides into a post-midterms 2027 timeline.
FOOTNOTES
“Double.”
