Caitlin Clark has set or broken over a dozen major WNBA records since joining the Indiana Fever in 2024. Yet, somehow, WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert has never been to a Fever regular season home game since Clark arrived in the league.
Caitlin Clark has been almost single-handedly responsible for raising the league’s entire salary structure, boosting attendance to all-time highs, securing perks players have sought for years, and pushing TV ratings to a never-before-seen level. Yet, somehow, again, WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert has never been to a Fever regular season home game since Clark entered the league.
This is just one of the many reasons why WNBA players like Sophie Cunningham and Napheesa Collier, and media moguls like Stephen A. Smith and Bill Simmons, have all but forced Engelbert to announce she is “retiring” after seven years as the league’s commissioner.
The stat about Cathy Engelbert never attending a Fever home regular season game since Caitlin Clark joined the league came to light recently in a Sports Business Journal report by Tom Friend.
In the report, Friend says he was told by several WNBA executives that the bizarre fact “still blows all of our minds.” He also pointed out that talk about Engelbert never having attended a regular-season Fever home game since Caitlin Clark’s arrival in 2024 (apart from the 2025 Indy All-Star Game) peaked among executives, “with layered disbelief,” during July’s All-Star Game in Chicago. According to several sources, she eventually planned a trip to Indianapolis in August, but it was mutually “unscheduled” and never happened.
Who should be the next WNBA commissioner and what do they need to do?
“In conversations with multiple executives with ties to teams and the league, the No. 1 prerequisite for the next commissioner should be ‘relationship repair’ and/or ‘relationship building’ — and that is in reaction to Engelbert’s perceived disconnect with coaches, GMs, players and specifically Clark herself,” Friend wrote.
Who that person will be is currently the big question. Michelle Obama and Kamala Harris have been mentioned as potential replacements. So have Swin Cash, a former player who once was the Pelicans’ VP of Basketball Operations and Team Development, WNBPA President Nneka Ogwumike, Amy Brooks, a former Stanford player who once ran NBA Team Marketing & Business Operations, and NBA Deputy Commissioner Mark Tatum.
Whoever it ends up being will certainly be set up to succeed. All they have to do is not be Cathy Engelbert.