WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert on centralized replay, her future, social media hate
· Yahoo Sports
CHICAGO — Commissioner Cathy Engelbert announced ahead of the All-Star Game on Saturday that the league will commission a full and centralized replay center starting in the 2027 season.
The league will use the NBA’s replay center, which is located in Secaucus, New Jersey, to assist on-court officials in all parts of the country with specialized replay angles and additional staff.
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“This is one of the most significant investments we’ve ever made in our basketball operations,” Engelbert said. “These investments of tens of millions of dollars will help bring greater consistency, efficiency, and transparency to our officiating process while continuing to improve the quality of the game. Obviously, our big brothers, the NBA, had a replay center for many years, so we’ll leverage some of their replay center capabilities and add some innovation of our own.”
This launch comes amid consistent criticisms in officiating across the league. Fever head coach Stephanie White was part of an offseason officiating committee to address those issues, but she has said multiple times throughout the first have of the season that she still doesn’t think the officiating is consistent enough.
Engelbert said the league is still mulling over whether they can add a two-minute report; the NBA releases two-minute reports following every game, going over every call and no-call in the most pivotal moments of close games.
“In a capital allocation world, we’re looking at basketball operations, which is why we’re making significant investments in … capital expenditures and operating expenses on the replay center,” Engelbert said. “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.”
Some other notes from Engelbert’s press conference:
- Engelbert swerved away from a question asking her directly if she expects to be WNBA Commissioner in 2027. In part, she said she’s “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 every single night.” She also mentioned making sure the league listens to and communicates with the players, as well as how much the league has grown in such a short amount of time. She did not, however, have a yes or no answer to the question.
- In her opening statement, Engelbert talked extensively about how it was “unacceptable” that players have been receiving threats on social media and have been subject to racism, misogyny, and homophobia in their workplace. She talked about a productive meeting between the players’ union and the league last week to address this issue and said the league is taking more steps, including enhanced security both digitally and physically, to allow players to compete without fear.
- Engelbert said growing the game globally, including playing a game outside of North America, is still in the works. She mentioned the difficulty with the short time frame to 2027, then the Olympic year in 2028 condensing the schedule. She praised the Toronto Tempo playing games in Montreal to grow the game in Canada, but playing games outside of North American, whether it be an exhibition or regular season, are a “three-to-five” year plan. With the Fever’s popularity across the world, they would likely be a contender for a global game.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert on centralized replay, her future, social media hate
