Transcript: Cathy Engelbert WNBA All-Star Media Availability
Published on July 25, 2026 under Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) News Release
CATHY ENGELBERT: Good evening, everyone. Welcome to Chicago. Thank you for all being here as we celebrate the 2026 AT&T WNBA All-Star Game.
I want to start by extending a huge thank-you for the Chicago Sky, their ownership group and the city of Chicago. From our events at the Obama Presidential Center and getting a special visit from President Obama himself, to last night's impressive performances at Wintrust, this has been an incredible week, and Chicago has been an outstanding host.
It's been amazing to see how much this week has grown over the years, even since the last time we were here in Chicago. Just a few years ago, in '22, our footprint and scale were much smaller than they are today, as I'm sure some of you will remember. I don't remember this room being this big back then. So thank you for your coverage.
This week's All-Star is our largest, most immersive and successful All-Star experience ever. I had a chance to check out WNBA Live yesterday and today and was truly amazed. Over 180,000 square feet of programming, with 35 partners and licensees, and over 30,000 fans and still counting in attendance when I left this afternoon.
So in just a few years, WNBA Live, this year presented for the first time by AWS, has become one of the marquee elements of All-Star Weekend. Every year these partners, activations seem to outdo themselves.
On top of that, last night, hope you were here, we had some outstanding performances. Congratulations to Elena Delle Donne. We are ready to re-sign her, right, everyone? Shakira Austin, and Jezelle "GG" Banks, who was the high schooler, representing Team Washington. She's from Wilmington, Delaware. Really excited for her. An exciting win in the Kia Shooting Stars event.
Congratulations to Azzi Fudd, the first rookie to ever win our Three-Point. I thought State Farm did a great job with sponsoring the Three-Point Contest this year.
I know we're in store for a memorable night tonight. Before we talk about tonight's game, I want to address an issue that has received significant attention over the past several weeks, and quite frankly since I walked in the door here. That's player safety resulting from online abuse and other threats.
What too many players across the WNBA have experienced is unacceptable. Many cases it's disgusting. The racism, the misogyny, the homophobia, harassment and threats directed to our players has no place in sport or anywhere else. This is their workplace. It has no place.
As you all know, because you all cover us, the WNBA is built on inclusion and respect, and those values have defined this league for 30 years. It will continue to define us for the next 30.
Earlier this week, I had productive discussions with some of the players and deeply appreciate their feedback and thoughtful ideas. We're going to work together. That conversation is already forming our next steps we're taking as a league. I look forward to continuing that dialogue with them.
Player safety will always be our top priority. That means every aspect of their experience, whether it's competitively on the court, physically off the court, kind of cyber world digitally. We need to continue to create a competitive environment where they can compete aggressively without unnecessary rough play, investing in enhanced security personnel and protocols. Obviously we've done a lot of that. We have charter travel now. We offer mental health resources. We're leveraging technology, strengthening our policies, taking action to combat online hate, harassment and threats.
The league has a variety of security measures and protocols in place to help the players, but we know there's more work to do and we'll continue to work together. We'll continue to have those important conversations. A lot of listening and making investments to make sure every player feels as safe and supported as possible. I just wanted to make sure we addressed that.
Now, I also want to congratulate an incredible group of All-Stars. First-time All-Stars Olivia Miles, Jess Shepard, Dom Malonga and Marina Mabrey, earning their first All-Star nods. On the other side of the scale is Nneka Ogwumike, who is second in all-time All-Star appearances with her 11th selection. So this year's group I think is really special.
As we celebrate our 30th anniversary season, it's especially fitting that two pioneers of our game, Cynthia Cooper and Spoon, Teresa Weatherspoon, drafted tonight's teams as honorary GMs.
I've attended many different events over the weekend. I can't help but think about who helped build this league over these past three decades. The players, obviously. But my predecessors, legends, coaches, owners, officials, employees, partners, media and fans helped build the WNBA long before women's sports was experiencing the moment that we're experiencing now. Every milestone we're celebrating this year is possible because of the foundation that so many built before us.
When we entered the season, we did so in the strongest position in league history, coming off a historic CBA, starting a new era of media partnerships, record franchise valuations, two new expansion teams coming in this year and excitement around the league at an all-time high. Those milestones are marking the beginning of the next chapter of WNBA growth.
Since opening night, we've been building on that momentum. On the court, we've witnessed some remarkable basketball, whether it was Caitlin's historic 45-and-10 game, Marina Mabrey's 53-point performance, A'ja recording her fifth 40-point game, incredible, Kahleah Copper and Kelsey Plum each scoring for the first time in our history 40 points in the same game, Brittney Griner becoming the league's all-time blocks leader. There's so many other performances going on on the court. We don't have enough time to cover them all. But this season delivered historic performances night after night. That's what makes it so special.
WNBA offenses, by the way, are currently on pace to set all-time highs in points per game, field goal percentage, offensive rating and a handful of other offensive categories. I think the quality of the game has never been higher, and fans are responding to the best basketball in the world through record engagement.
Perhaps the statistic that captures the momentum we're experiencing during the 2026 season, just halfway into the season, is already that this is already the most-watched WNBA season of all time, and we're only halfway through. Through 117 broadcasts, we've reached over 73 million unique viewers. Last season, the whole season was 63 million, which was a record. Now we're only at the All-Star break. Just think about that.
This year we've also had 29 games average over one million viewers, the most ever at the All-Star break. Last year that number was 11 for the whole season. We've already had 29.
That kind of growth does not happen by accident. It's the result of the extraordinary players delivering incredible competition. I just named some. And media partners who have made impactful investments in the W.
Our new partners this year, NBC and USA Network Versant, have completely exceeded our expectation and have been super creative in their coverage. Our longtime partners, Disney, ESPN, CBS, Amazon and ION, every one of our broadcast partners has showed up, raised the bar. Shoulder programming, showcasing our games, telling our players' stories. So together they've helped us.
One of our goals was to make it easier to be a WNBA fan. They are making it easier to be a WNBA fan, bringing more games to more households across more platforms, and connecting fans to players in really meaningful ways.
On top of this great viewership news, more than 2.2 million fans have attended WNBA games; that's up 16% from this point last season. And our new digital platform, WNBA ID, which helps us personalize the fan experience, has already surpassed two million members. I know these numbers are a lot, but they tell us again that we're reaching our fans in more places than ever before, and the strategy is working.
We're going to continue to build off this sustainable momentum. All this to say, the W, kind of I like to do state of the league here at All-Star, has never been stronger. Because of that strength, we're able to make investments in both the player experience and the fan experience.
Which is why, after a multi-year process of evaluation, I'm happy to announce that the WNBA will be launching a full centralized Replay Center beginning with the 2027 season. This is one of the most significant investments we've ever made in our basketball operations. This investment, tens of millions of dollars, will bring greater consistency, efficiency, transparency to our officiating process while continuing to improve the quality of the game.
Obviously our big brothers, the NBA, have had a Replay Center for many years. So we'll leverage some of their Replay Center capabilities and add some innovation of our own and help elevate our on-court product even more so.
We're still finalizing the operational details. There's technologies you have to implement in every arena we are in, every arena we play in. Obviously we sometimes play in different arenas, just for a few games. We're really excited about this project, the value it will bring to the game. We have a lot of people working on it behind the scenes to bring it to fruition for the start of next season. We'll be sharing more details in the coming months.
Let me just close with this. Thirty years ago the WNBA was founded on a bold belief: that the world's best women's basketball players deserved a league worthy of their talent. The first 30 seasons were about building on that foundation.
Today we're building on it thanks to the players who are the best in the world, record investment and the most passionate fan base in all of sport. We'll continue to build on that for the next 30 years.
We have big plans. If the first half of the season has shown us anything, it is that the future of the W has never been brighter.
So thank you again for your continued coverage of our league. With that, I'm happy to take some questions.
Q. Is there anything else you can say about the Replay Center? Is there going to be that Last Two Minute Report that everybody loves from the NBA side? The second part, you talked about playing overseas at the draft. Is there any further movement about a regular-season game or exhibition game played outside the U.S. or North America?
CATHY ENGELBERT: In a capital allocation world, we're looking at basketball operations, which is why we're making significant investments in cap X and op X. For those that are finance people, capital expenditures and operating expenses on the Replay Center. So that's separate from, if there were to be an L2M Report.
We're obviously going to look at it. I talked to the players about it as well. Again, it's another huge capital allocation to have an L2M Report. We know it because we know what the NBA goes through. It's certainly on the list, but nothing to report on it. We're going to hopefully get the Replay Center in first.
On kind of global strategy, so we're continuing, again in a capital allocation world, to look at what is our best way of -- again admired what the NBA has done for many, many years around their global strategy, which includes Global Games as a subset. We're still looking at that and determining what will be right for 2027. 2028, obviously a little more challenging because of an Olympic year. This year a little challenging because of the FIBA World Cup. Then '29, back to kind of a normal schedule with no international competition.
So we are charting out a three- to five-year plan on global to determine what is the best way to make sure our players are not just domestic stars but global stars.
Obviously having the Toronto team and Canada captured. They played a game in Montreal, most-attended game in our history sounded like. Certainly we'll be playing in Vancouver, as well.
So yeah, it's still in the works. We'll probably have more of that over the next six months or so.
Q. Injury reports were made more accessible in a new way this season. What is your perspective on how the league can similarly improve transparency and clarity as it pertains to other areas, like investigations, fines and suspensions? Is there an update on the Aces' investigation?
CATHY ENGELBERT: I'll take your latter question first on the Aces' investigation.
As you know, we've been conducting an independent investigation by outside counsel. So we have wrapped that up for now. The 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. Of course, if new or additional evidence comes to light, we'll continue to investigate.
The integrity of our game is number one. The 2026 CBA had enhanced circumvention provisions in it, as well. That was prospective.
Yes, that investigation has been wrapped up.
Again, when you're in these investigations, outside counsel, attorney-client privilege, you do a lot of interviews and things like that. I know your other question was on transparency on investigations and things like that, but we have processes for all of these. These processes have been in place 30 years. We hone those processes around fines, suspensions, investigations. We have processes where plays are submitted by coaches after officials file game reports. There's all processes for this. I think some people think, oh, we just looked at it because it was on social media or something. No, we have processes for all of this. I can tell you there's processes, procedures, consultation with a lot of parties who have a lot of experience.
Same thing on the player safety stuff. If a player reports to us harassment or something, we have a process for that. We get right out to security. These people, very enormous, decades of experience in law enforcement. We continue to follow those processes. Thank you.
Q. Last year we were talking so much CBA stuff. As we went through, there was a little bit of animosity between two sides. Now that we've gotten beyond all that, I'm curious, how do you view the relationship with the players and where you guys are now?
CATHY ENGELBERT: In a collective bargaining process, it can be contentious. It was contentious. Some of that is negotiations and the way negotiations work. I know I talked about that at draft because, remember at draft, we had just finished the negotiations. It was a little more recent.
Today I can't be more proud of these players, how we were able to have so many players sign million dollar-plus contracts, multiyear contracts. More to come, by the way. So I think we're in a really good place. I know I interacted with a lot of players, whether at WNBA Live or last night.
The players know it was a hard-fought battle, as many CBAs are in sports. But I think they know the league is in a really good place. Now they're in a revenue share with the league, as you know, because that was part of the CBA.
I feel like this, the Orange Carpet, at a lot of the partner events, lot of them are getting huge endorsements. 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.
Q. On officiating, to drill down a little bit into it, Cheryl Reeve told us she felt there was clearly progress being made. I would imagine Replay Center was what was recommended from the task force. I know you're meeting again on Monday. How much has it been helpful to see what you've been able to find out from folks who are obviously stakeholders in this?
CATHY ENGELBERT: Yeah, an important part of, again, I talked about it at draft, I knew there would be an adjustment period, but it was the offseason work we did. It was a lot of work, a lot of hours. So you're absolutely right. I saw what Cheryl said.
Cheryl was one of the ones. We had two separate committees: a state of the game committee, which included players and officials and college coaches and GMs, some team presidents, obviously the league office, ref ops and basketball ops. We also had an officiating task force. They had the hard work of reviewing tens to hundreds of combined hours of film. I think it's paying off. Fouls are up. Freedom of movement. I named some of those offensive efficiency statistics, the pace of the game, points per game. I have them somewhere here.
Scoring is at an all-time high, field goals made at an all-time high, field goal percentage at an all-time high, two-point and three-point field goals, offensive pace, offensive rating. That would say the freedom-of-movement aspects, which is what we did. That's important. That's what we heard from players: We want more freedom of movement. We got it.
There's always a calibration and adjustment period. More fouls are being called. Players are getting up there on foul calls and things like that. I think it's adjusting even since the past couple weeks.
Officiating, we always need to be better. Our officials review tens of hundreds of hours of film. Every play in every game, every call and non-call, significant non-calls, reviewed by our referee operations. We've added resources, development advisers and things like that. We're throwing a lot at this to make sure we do have the best officials in the women's game.
Q. On security, in conversations that we've had with folks around the league, there seems to be a general satisfaction with individual security experiences. A player faces a threat, and what follows. Where the gap comes is in communication with understanding the fuller picture. I wonder if you think that is what needs to be most addressed as you think through what's ahead in security in those next steps you talked about?
CATHY ENGELBERT: Yeah, we talked a lot about that in our conversation Tuesday with the players. We talked a lot about, again, we have a technology they could deploy that's very helpful, but not all the players deploy that technology. We also are learning things from language models that could probably be helpful. Obviously the physical security is number one as well. Again, cyber/digital security.
Again, we're going to throw as many resources at it. I'm communicating everything that does happen behind the scenes by our security teams and how security can help prepare our players to make sure not only their physical safety, their home, on the way to the office, the office in quotes here, but certainly kind of in the digital world, too.
It's complicated. The internet is a very complicated place. Someone gave me this term, keyboard warriors - they are very adamant to get their messages through to our players, whether it's through DMs or other means.
Again, we're going to try to attack it and communicate a lot more with the players around that.
Q. Just wanted to ask you directly: Do you expect to be commissioner of the WNBA at the start of the 2027 season?
CATHY ENGELBERT: Thanks. Like your jersey there. And you're losing your voice. Maybe not too many parties over the past couple days (smiling). We've all been at them.
Obviously, I am 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, that they stand for the values that the W has long sought for.
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. So absolutely just love this league and blessed to have had the career I had before and the career I have now.
Mostly the team we've built at the league. I mean, the capability. Remember, I came in here and I've told some of you, there were 12 people working at the league. There's 12 people probably for the 24 years before I got here. Now we have almost a hundred people working full time. We have a lot of others that help us. We leverage off the NBA model as well.
The enormous capability we've built in digital, social. We have engineers and WordPress, marketers and brand. We have data, analytics, data scientists. That's what I'm most proud of. We have built a powerhouse team. That is what I focus on, is leading that team, and 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. That's what keeps me going.
Just having the Nike national EYBL players here is just incredible because I've spent time with so many of them over WNBA Live and in the hotel. Just how they view this league and role models.
I can't tell you how many come up to me and say, Cathy, I want you to draft me in 2033 or 2034. I'm like, Oh, boy. But they're really excited about this league. That's what keeps us all going.
Q. This is the third year season overall that has never been a Black female head coach. Is there a need for a Rooney Rule type of situation in the WNBA? And also can you talk about the HBCU internship program?
CATHY ENGELBERT: So, as I've reported before, we have been doing really well overall in our coaches ranks because we put incentives in around former WNBA players and extra coaches on the bench and things like that. We exploded. I think we have 60% women coaches total.
I realize we work with our owners, and owners and GMs make those decisions at the team level. There's not a meeting that I'm not with our owners talking about diversity in coaching and the pipeline. I think our pipeline is really, really strong. Ultimately, again, the owners and the GMs make those decisions.
That's a really important question and one that we continue to make sure stays top of mind for our owners, coaches and GMs.
On the HBCU interns, we did this at my prior employer, too, but really important that you have internship programs. You bring diverse talent in, given the diversity of our league.
I'm so proud of the interns we do have. They do rotations through different groups, not only in the WNBA. We have some stars, and they end up as stars outside of our league when they graduate. Hopefully some of them ultimately work for the league. It's a really great program. I'm really proud of it.
Again, we work really hard to make sure our HBCU interns have a great experience. They're doing real, real meaningful work. They have a huge passion for the W. I like we get requested a lot for people to work for the W. It's great.
I wish we were bigger and could have more of them, but we have a very strong internship program. Thank you.
Q. One of the things players have talked about is maybe a lack of communication with you, the more casual text message or phone call. How do you approach that in your role? How do you feel like that plays into the commissioner of a major sports league?
CATHY ENGELBERT: Yeah, that'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 send them a lot of email updates and things like that. They're a generation that doesn't check email as much. We have to get better at a text chain.
When we were in the bubble, we had this texting service because we had to be very quick if we had a positive COVID test or something like that.
Yeah, we have to be better at it. It's something that if a player is getting honored or gets hurt, I try to reach out to them. Yeah, so we need to be better at it, there's no doubt. I need to be better. Everybody needs to be better at communication all the time.
We'll continue to work on that and communicate. That was one thing that came out of Tuesday. They're like, Cathy, you can't over-communicate to us. I figure the players don't want to hear from us all the time. We're going to institute more frequent communications with them when it's appropriate.
Like, for instance, we just announced the Replay Center. I'm going to reach out to the players and say, Oh, by the way, we announced...
They don't see all the news that you all report, believe it or not, because there's so much. That was something they brought up on Tuesday night actually. They said, We didn't see you talked about that. I said, I just talked about it publicly. They don't always see it. There was articles about it, but they don't always see it.
I promise when we're talking about important things, like for instance the Replay Center tonight, I will make sure I get to them and communicate in a way that they want it. I don't think they want us texting them all the time either, but we'll get it to them in a format and platform that makes sense to them.
Q. You've talked about this meeting on Tuesday, the cyber hate we'll say and communication. What were your other major takeaways of that meeting? How do you go from there in terms of addressing those, whether that's sending more texts or calls or actually infrastructure that has to be put in place?
CATHY ENGELBERT: Yeah, it was obviously mostly on threats and safety. I talked about, like, all the resources we have. I'm not sure they even remembered that we had all these resources available. I think some of the rookies did because we just had rookie orientation where they all signed up for our No Space For Hate Platform, our social protect technology. We have a lot of rookies on that. The veterans never signed up, they forgot about it, things like that.
We also talked about other ways we could help them. I did have our head of security on the call, as well, who again has many, many years of law enforcement, to make sure they know what they're doing behind the scenes.
They're doing a lot of monitoring that the players don't see. In some ways, you don't want that because they're doing monitoring trying to identify threats, trying to see if those threats are credible.
I think it was very helpful, at least the feedback I got from a few players on the call. It was very helpful to hear that, that that activity is going on behind the scenes.
Obviously when anybody reports any threat to me or we see it on social or anywhere, if a home address gets posted, we're constantly, like immediately, on it with a response, very quick response.
Anytime a player tells me anything, I go right to the head of security. It goes to the team. They work together with local law enforcement, in some cases with local prosecutors.
Again, the players have to let us know. So the one kind of dialogue we had, You have to let us know as soon as you're getting these threats and things like that.
We talked about a variety of other things. It was a long call. We talked about officiating and other things. I didn't tell them about the Replay Center because we wanted to announce it tonight. I told them we're going to make significant investments in that.
Those were some of the other issues besides the player safety issues.
Thank you, everyone. Enjoy All-Star tonight. 30th season.
Women's National Basketball Association Stories from July 25, 2026
- Gabby Williams Scores 18 Points, Hits Four 3-Pointers in 2026 All-Star Game - Golden State Valkyries
- Mitchell and Clark Combine for 45 Points, 10 Threes in 2026 WNBA All-Star Game - Indiana Fever
- Transcript: Cathy Engelbert WNBA All-Star Media Availability - WNBA
- WNBA to Launch Replay Center Beginning with 2027 Season - WNBA
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