MINNEAPOLIS – WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert addressed the media during halftime of the Aug. 15 Minnesota Lynx-Washington Mystics game at Target Center. Here is a transcript of that media session in question and answer format.
Q: Now that the media deal has been announced, is there anything else you want to say about it?
WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert answers a reporter’s question during her press availability at Target Center at halftime of the Aug. 15 Minnesota-Washington game. Photo by Abe Booker III/Sportspage Magazine
Engelbert: So the media deal, at least what I call Tranche 1, there’s going to be two tranches, Tranche 1 is done as we announced. Historic for this league to have certainty in your long term revenue streams. Like I said at All-Star when I answered the question, it’s a great thing for the league because it brings you a ton of credibility, as a professional sports league, to have a long term deal like that. I’m really excited. We do have the option in three years to look at that one. And then Tranche 2 will be in high demand because I think there will be other media properties that want the WNBA. So as you know, today we have Scripps-Ion, our Friday night appointment viewing, and we have CBS. They were not in Tranche 1, so look forward to discussing with them and others that have shown interest as well.
Q: Are you concerned about the RSN’s? The Lynx and Twins were both off for at least three months because of Comcast’s dispute. Are you concerned about that going forward if they don’t resolve the Bally Sports thing?
Engelbert: So yeah, the regional sports networks. I mean, look, the entire media landscape is being disrupted, as you all know better than anybody. I’m responsible for obviously negotiating the national deals where teams do their local deals, their regional deals. Yeah, it’s concerning that, obviously our Tranche 1 is 105 games we’re going to have, especially when we get to expansion, when we expand up to 16 teams over 300 games. We want as many games as possibleon linear and on streaming. It’s something that we need to see evolve. I think there’s some cases where they’re working through it, and other cases its concerning if we can’t bring our games to the fans in the local market. We’ll also have our own version of League Pass, whatever that looks like in the next generation. We’ll have that as well, hopefully available to focus as well.
Q: Speaking of expansion, you’ve got two teams coming on board, what is the plan for the future? Where is the league at with that?
Engelbert: Yeah, so we’ve announced, I announced at Draft I think it was, this year, we’re expanding up to 16 teams, so obviously we announced 13 and 14, Golden State and Toronto respectively. It’s kind of fun, Toronto’s running a little contest with their fans right now, and the brand. They haven’t announced their brand yet. Obviously Golden State is the Valkyrie. Team 15 is in the works and then we’ll look at who is coming into Team 16. I will tell you we have a lot of demand and low supply. When that happens your valuations go up, so we want to actually be very thoughtful about how we bring in these latter two teams.
Q: About these expansions, I’m coming at it from the Missouri angle. A lot of your teams, a good handful of them, are not teams that have the NBA, and they’re doing quite well. Any talk of expanding to St. Louis or Kansas City?
Engelbert: Yeah there’s always… there’s that middle part of the country out towards Denver – Kansas City, Denver – that we don’t have a team out in the middle of the country out there. I’ll call it the Mountain Time Zone, although I know that Kansas City is in the Central Time Zone. So yeah, we’re always talking to different ownership groups. I’ve stated before, we’ve needed a few things. We’ve needed the right ownership groups, long term commitment, great arena, practice facility, obviously an investment in the player experience because we want these teams to be successful so that players want to play there because it’s a great experience. So Kansas City is certainly on the list but there’s, again, probably ten cities on the list right now.
Q: One last one on the media deal. Now that it’s all secured and everything is over, what are your thoughts on having negotiated with the NBA as opposed to having gone individually?
Engelbert: I want to clarify. We’re an LLC. We negotiated the deal. We went to market with – there’s a big difference between negotiating with and going to market with – because going to market with the NBA was very favorable for us and them because we’re the only two sports properties that play opposite seasons. We’re May to October, they’re October to April regular season then May/June playoffs. We can give a streamer or a streaming service of a linear, like a Peacock, 12 months of live programming. There’s not another group of sports that can actually give 12 months. We became a lot more valuable by going to market with the NBA. I’m thrilled. It brought us a lot more value and then NBC coming in, we were able to split the playoffs too, because the media companies highly value the playoffs.
Q: With next year’s All-Star Game in Indiana…
Engelbert: Big announcement today.
Q: First time for them. What excites you about that market and how you see the game next year and into future years? Is Minneapolis in consideration?
Engelbert: Minneapolis is always on the list. I think the Lynx are such great partners with Becky and Glen and the whole team here, Ethan and Ryan etc., such great partners. Indy, never having it before. I went to NBA All-Star in Indy this year, they killed it. Obviously our All-Star game in Phoenix is such big shoes to fill for Indy, and it’s the Hoosier State, after all. It seemed to make sense at this time, with this elevated attention, and obviously they’ve had two first round picks the last two years with Aliyah [Boston] and Caitlin [Clark], so I think it was a good time to pick Indy for next year. But yeah, Minnesota is definitely always on our list.
Q: Speaking of Minnesota, this year the Minnesota Lynx won the Commissioner’s Cup, even though the news is old already.
Engelbert: Amazing. It’s not that old. The banner’s up already and there’s also a graphic with all the players and the Commissioner’s Cup. I think the players are finally realizing how great an in-season tournament can be, how it can bring them extra compensation, another championship for fans to follow. I think what we did this year with the new format really worked well, doing it in a two-week period, playing with a different ball so you know it was a Commissioner’s Cup game. We’re not going to do the Court thing that the NBA does but yeah, I think it was a huge success this year. For Minnesota to go to New York and bring it home was great, especially with New York’s record at the time. It continues to be a valued asset by our media partners as well – so Amazon, as we were negotiating with them (said) ‘We want the Commissioner’s Cup championship as well.’
Q: Cathy, you’ve undoubtedly seen the Hamby lawsuit. I get why you and the league probably can’t talk about the specifics but perhaps you can talk about the fact that this appears to be that some of the allegations appear to have violated respective workplace policies. On a personal level, how do you feel about a team that doesn’t appear to have learned its lesson?
Engelbert: I totally agree with you on respect in the workplace. It’s very important. When this originally was investigated by the league, we found, I mean, we disclosed and found disrespect in the workplace policy violation. Obviously we discipline Las Vegas. We disciplined Becky Hammon, as you know suspended Becky, etc. So yeah, I mean as a Mom of two kids, obviously I had a, you know, great career while raising those two kids before I got here. My kids are older now. It’s very important to me that we show respect for all of our players, so diverse, and obviously for our players who are Moms, and players who aren’t Moms, etc. I literally was flying back from Paris when the complaint came in so I know. Then I came here yesterday so I know the lawyers are working on reviewing the complaint, whether there is any new information from when we originally did the investigation back, I don’t even remember when that was now. Was it last season? I think it was last season. We’ll take a look at it and I know the lawyers are looking at it right now.
Q: Did you get a chance to look over any of the additional reporting from the Nine yesterday on the agreement between the Aces and the LVCVA?
Engelbert: I did. So that was via a Freedom of Information Act request. We’ve hired outside counsel in that case. Different case than the Dearica case. That was requested through a FOIA request. Outside counsel is working on that information as well.
Lynx PR: Anything else?
Engelbert: Alright. Glad to be back. Thank you everybody.
