The WNBA underwent big changes during commissioner Cathy Engelbert’s tenure. Here are the highlights.

Cathy Engelbert was hired as WNBA commissioner in 2019, and upon her retirement in December, Engelbert will have overseen the most critical years in league history, shepherding the WNBA through a period of uncertainty into a period of exponential growth.

The WNBA is one of the fastest-growing leagues in sports, and under Engelbert’s watch, six expansion franchises have tipped off or been announced — including here in Philadelphia — while a new media rights deal and CBA have been signed.

“Over the years, it has been amazing to watch WNBA players thrive and lead the massive cultural surge around women’s sports,” Engelbert said in a statement. “I retire knowing we have built something bigger, stronger and more enduring than we could have imagined. I am grateful to the WNBA and NBA team owners and staff, players, investors, fans and the powerhouse league office staff, who believed in what this league could become. I retire with immense gratitude and tremendous optimism for the future of the WNBA, with the best yet to come.”

Here’s a look at her most consequential moves, and where the league goes next:

Engelbert sold a 16% stake in the WNBA to a group of outside investors for $75 million in cash flow, to be used to fund marketing and infrastructure. Instead of the 50/50 ownership split between NBA and WNBA owners, the split is now 42/42/16.

At the time, the deal was the largest funding round ever for women’s sports, and Engelbert valued the league at approximately $450 million. The average franchise is now worth approximately $460 million just four years later.

Starting in 2023 with the Golden State Valkyries, Engelbert began the process of expanding the WNBA for the first time since 2008. The Valkyries were the first of six successful expansion bids under Engelbert’s tenure, and the team now the league’s most valuable franchise, with an $850 million valuation, per Sportico. In 2024, two additional expansion teams, in Toronto and Portland, were announced.

In June 2025, the WNBA announced the addition of three new franchises, to bring the total up to 18: Cleveland to begin play in 2028, Detroit in 2029, and Philly in 2030. All teams were purchased by the corresponding city’s NBA team owner. Cleveland and Detroit were both home to previous, now defunct, WNBA franchises, while Philadelphia will be a WNBA city for the first time.

“The demand for women’s basketball has never been higher,” Engelbert said in a statement.

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Coming to Philly was personal for Engelbert. She hails from Collingswood, and her parents were Northeast Philly natives. Her dad, Kurt, was a men’s basketball star at St. Joseph’s and is in the school’s hall of fame.

The WNBA last year also announced the sale and relocation of the Connecticut Sun to Houston. The franchise was purchased by Rockets owner Tilman Fertitta, despite competing bids from Hartford, Conn., and Boston to buy and keep the franchise in New England.

The exponential growth of the WNBA began in earnest with the 2024 WNBA draft, which brought college stars like Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese into the league. Other young stars like Paige Bueckers soon followed.

Clark, now a standout for the Indiana Fever, raised the bar for college basketball ratings, setting viewership records in 2023 with 9.9 million viewers for the national championship game, in which her Iowa squad lost to Reese and LSU, and the 2024 national title game, with 18.9 million viewers, was the first women’s national title game to outperform the men’s.

Engelbert took advantage of spiking ratings with the expiration of the WNBA’s media rights deal in 2024, signing a new contract worth $3.1 billion, expanding partnerships with ESPN, Prime Video, and NBC.

“Partnering with Disney, Amazon and NBCU marks a monumental chapter in WNBA history and clearly demonstrates the significant rise in value and the historic level of interest in women’s basketball,” Engelbert said at the time. “These agreements allow the league to continue to build a long-term and sustainable growth model for the future of women’s basketball and sports which will benefit WNBA players, teams and fans.”

The WNBA set viewership records in 2024, with a record 22 regular season games attracting at least 1 million viewers. Fever games were the most-watched on ABC, ESPN2, CBS, and NBATV.

After a tense negotiation, the new collective bargaining agreement was ratified by players and by the league, increasing player salaries, providing player housing, and adding an expanded benefits package.

Amid the negotiations, Napheesa Collier described Engelbert as “negligent” and said the WNBA has “the worst leadership in the world” in her exit interviews last season after officiating controversies.

“This past February, I sat across from [Engelbert] and asked how she planned to address the officiating issues in our league,” Collier said. “Her response was, ‘Well, only the losers complain about the refs.’ I also asked how she planned to fix the fact that players like [Clark, Reese, and Bueckers], who are clearly driving massive revenue for the league and are making so little for their first four years.

“Her response was, ‘[Clark] should be grateful. She makes $16 million off the court because without the platform that the WNBA gives her, she wouldn’t make anything.’ And in that same conversation, she told me, ‘Players should be on their knees, thanking their lucky stars for the media rights deal that I got them.’”

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Engelbert has also faced player backlash for a perceived lack of attention to threats from toxic fans and sports bettors.

“I think as one of the main faces of our league, too, it creates a dialogue that needs to be had. It puts pressure on Cathy, who we’ve been begging to step up for us in these spaces,” Natasha Cloud, a Broomall native and former St. Joe’s star, said.

The league recently has run into conflict with former NBA players like Enes Kanter Freedom and figures like Riley Gaines for lacking a policy restricting trans athletes from competing in the league. There are no active trans women in the WNBA, nor are there any serious prospects to be drafted in the near future.

But that hasn’t stopped figures like Freedom from coming to games and getting into altercations with players on the court, including Cloud. Engelbert said the league is being used as a “political football” by media members who do not watch or cover the league normally, in order to “sow divisiveness.”