As the Phoenix Mercury and Las Vegas Aces have battled in the WNBA Finals, the rapidly deteriorating relationship between the league and its players has cast a long shadow. The current CBA expires on Oct. 31, and there appears to be an enormous gap between the league and the player's association.
This was all highlighted by Napheesa Collier's incendiary press conference last week, where she accused commissioner Cathy Engelbert of massive failures of leadership — addressing serious concerns about inconsistent officiating by saying "well, only the losers complain about the refs" and responding to a question about pay equity for young players driving new interest in the league with "Caitlin [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".
Current and former players responded quickly and loudly, showing their support for Collier, and tepid follow-up comments from Engelbert did little to cool things down. Collier then canceled a planned meeting with Engelbert, pushing the commissioner even further into the spotlight.
A lot of attention has been paid to WNBA player salaries over the past few years, but with so many new eyes pointed at Engelbert, it's worth looking at her own salary, both as context for the ongoing labor negotiations and as another reason why she may have a hard time earning the trust of the players.
What is Cathy Engelbert's salary as WNBA Commissioner?
Cathy Engelbert's exact salary as WNBA commissioner isn't public, but we can use some other known data points to at least get a ballpark estimate.
- Adam Silver reportedly makes $10 million per year as commissioner of the NBA — Engelbert is almost certainly well below that number.
- NWSL commissioner Jessica Berman's salary is not known, but, according to a database at ProPublica, she made just under $300k as deputy commissioner of the National Lacrosse League (NLL) in 2023 before moving to the NWSL.
- The most recent commissioner of the NLL made well over a million, and it seems likely that would be the floor here — as the WNBA's revenue for 2024 was almost 20x that of the NLL.
- In addition, Yahoo has reported that Engelbert's salary at her previous job, CEO of Deloitte, was $3 million per year.
It seems unlikely that Engelbert would take a pay cut to move to the WNBA, but even if we allow for that possibility, we're probably looking at a salary range of somewhere between $2 million and $5 million per year.
Cathy Engelbert is making a lot more than any WNBA player
Even if we take the smallest number in that range, $2 million, Engelbert would be making about 7.5 times as much as the highest-paid player in the WNBA last season — Kelsey Mitchell, whose total cash compensation was $269,244, according to Spotrac. At the high end of our hypothetical range, $5 million, she'd be making 18.6 times as much as Mitchell.
That $2 million number would be19.6 times as much as the average player salary for this season and 30.2 times as much as the minimum player salary. Jump to $5 million, and we're at 48.9 times the average and 75.7 times the minimum.
It's not rare to find enormous pay disparities between executives and average workers in most industries, but these numbers are striking. In the WNBA, the commissioner makes considerably more than even the highest-paid players.
In the NBA, Silver will make about one-sixth as much as the highest-paid player next season, according to the publicly available figures. He will also make just a little less than the average player salary (about $11 million) and just about four times as much as the minimum salary for a veteran with at least three years of experience.
In MLB, commissioner Rob Manfred reportedly makes about $25 million per year, with bonuses. That's less than half as much as Juan Soto, who had the highest salary for this MLB season, and only about five times as much as the average salary.
Obviously, the financial underpinnings of each league are different, but a commissioner who likely makes considerably more than the highest-paid players — and exponentially more than the least — is just one more area in which the WNBA appears to be a huge outlier.