Caitlin Clark and the new WNBA, w/Commissioner Cathy Engelbert

This episode delves into the transformative phase of the WNBA, emphasizing the impact of new talents like Caitlin Clark and business strategies under Commissioner Cathy Engelbert's leadership.

1. The WNBA is experiencing significant growth, driven by new talents and strategic marketing.
2. Digital and social media platforms are crucial for engaging a younger, more diverse audience.
3. Expansion and global marketing are key focuses for the league's future development.
4. NIL deals are reshaping the financial landscape for female athletes, providing new income opportunities.
5. The league is actively working to address challenges such as pay disparities and media coverage limitations.

1: Introduction

Bob Safian introduces the episode's focus on the WNBA's new era. Kathy Engelbert: "This is the moment to make sure that you can sell as many tickets, premiums, many fans and then keep them."

2: The Business of Basketball

Engelbert discusses the WNBA's strategies to capitalize on its current momentum. Kathy Engelbert: "We need household names, you need games of consequence, and you need rivalries, because that's why people watch."

3: Crisis Management

The Commissioner shares her experiences managing crises, from Brittney Griner's detainment to the pandemic's impact on the league. Kathy Engelbert: "It's hard for players and the media and everybody to understand what we're building here."

4: Looking Ahead

Engelbert expresses optimism about the WNBA's future and its role in shaping women's sports globally. Kathy Engelbert: "We're pushing it to the top of the hill, and hopefully we're going to experience, I think, over the next decade, kind of the golden age of the WNBA."

1. Embrace Digital Media: Utilize platforms like social media to engage with a younger audience.
2. Invest in Marketing: Expand marketing efforts to elevate the league's profile.
3. Foster Global Partnerships: Explore opportunities to globalize the league.
4. Enhance Fan Experience: Focus on creating memorable events and enhancing the fan experience.
5. Support Player Development: Implement programs to support athletes' development both on and off the court.

We’ve reached a radical inflection point in the growth of women’s sports, particularly the WNBA. As college stars like Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese enter the league, fans are clamoring for tickets and on social media, generating unprecedented excitement and business potential. WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert joins Rapid Response host Bob Safian to share how she plans to capitalize on this newfound buzz, and how NIL deals have transformed the business of sports for players and owners alike. Plus, Engelbert peels back the curtain on how she led the league through the Brittney Griner crisis and the tumult of COVID.

People

Cathy Engelbert, Caitlin Clark, Brittney Griner

Companies

WNBA, NCAA

Books

None

Guest Name(s):

Cathy Engelbert

Content Warnings:

None

Speaker A
Hey listeners, on May 13, we invite you to join us and Reid Hoffman for a new virtual strategy session presented in alliance with Capital one business. You'll hear insights from fellow entrepreneurs about how to be at the forefront of leading change with AI. So go to mastersofscale.com AI strategy right now to register for free. Again, that's mastersofscale.com AI strategy. Looking forward to seeing you there.

Kathy Engelbert
Coming off of that draft, I think Caitlin's jersey at the time was the most sold jersey of anyone in history on their draft night. This is the moment to make sure that you can sell as many tickets, premiums, many fans and then keep them. I start out every meeting with my team with the bold will win. Everything must change. Because we can't think about the WNBA of the past, we have to think about the WNBA of the future.

Bob Safian
That's Kathy Engelbert, commissioner of the WNBA. Women's basketball is seeing an unprecedented boom thanks to recent college phenoms like Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese. With the start of the WNBA season tipping off a week from today, I wanted to talk to Kathy about how she plans to capitalize on the buzz. If there's ever been a time for the business of women's sports to reach a new level of scale, it's now. The former CEO of consulting firm Deloitte, Cathy shares her expansive strategy for this moment, plus, how NI deals have redefined the financial power of young stars, how she's dealt with crises like the pandemic bubble and the detainment of Brittany Greiner, and more.

Let's dive in. This is rapid response.

Erika Flynn
Hi listeners. It's Erika Flynn, VP of alliances in audience development at. Wait. What? The company behind masters of Scale.

My day to day consists of nonstop communication, not only with my immediate team, but with our current partner relationships and with incoming leads from possible future partners. Which is why I rely on the ease of Grammarly to keep my communication clear and efficient. One confusing email can turn into several confused replies, which can turn into an unexpected meeting which no one wants, needs or has time for having. Grammarly on hand as my trusted AI writing partner not only streamlines my extensive to do list, it minimizes miscommunication by quickly and efficiently synthesizing information and carefully curating tailor made responses to specific groups. In fact, companies that use Grammarly to communicate can save 19 days per year per employee.

Grammarly eases the writing process. It's a writing partner from the blank page to the last word typed before hitting send. Join me and over 70,000 teams who trust Grammarly to work faster, hit their goals, and keep their data secure. Visit Grammarly.com to learn more. That's Grammarly.com dot I'm Bob Safian, and.

Bob Safian
I'm here with WNBA commissioner Kathy Engelbert. Kathy, thanks for joining us. Bob, it's great to be here. So the WNBA is clearly having a moment where a week before the start of the season, lots of excitement and expectations. I saw a report that 2 million people watched a fan's livestream of a preseason game, which is kind of crazy.

How do you think about this moment and how you capitalize on it as a league, as a business, as a sport? I mean, it really is the confluence of a lot of positive elements on both the business and basketball side. Obviously, huge rise of women's sports. But we've been saying that for four years, and we haven't quite figured out how to capitalize on it. And now with generational talent, with big followings because of social media, increased media coverage, increased asset valuations, whether it's a patch on the uniform, a placement on the court, an ad buy, a media right fee evaluation of our teams, and then capital inflows, I think that's what's different.

Kathy Engelbert
We brought in capital in February of 22 that's allowed us to work on expansion, increasingly a global platform marketing. We expanded by 20 times the number of marketers we have at the league since I joined. And the one thing I know, Bob, is that you need household names, you need games of consequence, and you need rivalries, because that's why people watch. And as you think about what happened off the NCAA, excitement, March Madness, they had all three of those. You look back at the numbers for the WNBA, and there was like a high watermark several years back, and then it kind of receded your audience numbers.

Bob Safian
So this moment is as much about the resources that you have around it as it is the talent, or is this really, like, this is Caitlin Clark's moment? And, you know, that sort of sparked all this obsession. Yeah. I think coming off of last year's NCAA championship, where a rivalry was created, right, Angel Reese and. And Caitlin Clark, LSU and Iowa.

Kathy Engelbert
And this year, I mean, the Elite Eight is a rematch of last year's national championship game with both those players and more, and then leading into UConn, Iowa, where UConn, you know, with Paige Beckers, is a great rivalry building. And then Sunday was undefeated South Carolina and Camila Cardoso, really emerging as a star who now went number three in the WNBA draft. So I think it's all these generational players with big followings, with great stories, and it's been, as you said, quite a moment. But it is something that we have to capitalize on. Bring that fan in, that big sports moment fan, that fan that once we know, once we get them in, we know they're going to stay because our data shows that the quality of our game is so good.

And now all the rookies coming in within this generational class. So it's great to have so many storylines to tell, not just one or two. The WNBA draft, which took place in Brooklyn right near where I live, and getting tickets, was, like, nearly impossible. It was like the oscars, but with an orange carpet instead of a red one. Like, how do you think about the off court cultural events as a way to drive attention?

Bob Safian
What was it like to be at that draft for you? Well, first for me, the room I am doing this podcast in is the room I did my first draft in my living room with my two kids as my stage hands. And to walk out on that stage and to read a pic and have fans cheering was extraordinary. And then just the merch sales coming off of that draft. I think Caitlin's jersey at the time was the most soldier jersey of anyone in history on their draft night.

Kathy Engelbert
And then Caleb Williams outdid that a couple of weeks later in the NFL draft. But look, a rising tide lifts all boats, and we're happy to be leading here. There's been a lot of discussion from the draft and onward about the vast disparity in pay between the WNBA and the NBA. So how do you think about changing the economics of the business so that there's more parity there? Like, how patient do you do the players have to be?

Yeah, I think, you know, we try to do business of basketball sessions with the players every year to talk about how sports works from a revenue perspective and expenses perspective. And this is my old life coming into handy. I'm a CPA licensed in three states, and, you know, it's. It's hard for players and the media and everybody to understand what we're building here and that we had to raise that capital to deploy it against things like marketing and expanding the league and working with our broadcast partners and globalization and bringing more fans into the funnel and a digital transformation. So it's hard for them to understand on the face of it why we are where we are.

But we're also only going into our 28th season. You know, the men's sports leagues, most of three, three of the big four are over 100 years old in the NBA, obviously in their 77th year. They have a big head start on us. But we're trying to build something big here. We're trying to drive an economic model that's sustainable and that we're viewed as a legitimate sports, media and entertainment growth property.

And ultimately we're building a revenue model to sustain this league. For many years, when I joined the league, it was, I've been saying we were like just surviving. And now we went from survive to thrive mode. Some of the complaints about WNBA struggles is in part because of the tv schedule that some people say is the worst tv schedule, the dates and times that other leagues don't want. How much do you think about that?

Bob Safian
How much is the sort of plan about improving that? Or do you think that's just like excuse when people talk about that? No, it's important. So again, I think in the last few years since I've been here, ESPN Disney has really stepped up, given us better and great windows, giving us more ABC windows, because we find when we're on ABC, because we attract a more lifestyle viewer who may not be watching ESPN all day, that we draw much better and the viewership is much higher. And I think they saw that too, because they put, I think for the first time last year and then repeated this year, the women's final game on ABC on a Sunday afternoon in a decent window at 03:00 Eastern.

Kathy Engelbert
So yeah, we work all the time with our broadcast partners, but still work to do because we compete in an environment in the summer with other sports as well. Right now we're competing with both NBA and NHL playoffs right now and the start of the MLB season. So you're always going to be competing with other sports properties. But again, when I joined the league, I was told less than 5% of all media coverage of sports is covers women's sports. I mean, if people can't find you, therefore you're at a disadvantage.

So I think I heard this statistic the other day is 15%. So we've been helpful in moving that from five to 15, which is a pretty herculean move given the denominator of these percentages is so large. And, you know, the whole media landscape's being so disrupted. And you think about a digital native fan. I was like struck by, I was watching the NCAA on traditional linear.

I haven't cut the cord. And my son was in the other room and he came in at one point, my mom did you just see what Angel Reese did? And he's just watching an eight second clip of that and I'm watching the whole game. So we need to meet our fans and digital and social and obviously linear and streaming, and we have to be very multidimensional in the way we think about meeting our fan where they are because we want to draw in that younger fan, you know, make sure that they're seeing our game, too, and our players. As you're drawing in the lifestyle viewer, it makes me think of the way Taylor Swift has worked for the NFL about, you know, drawing in a different kind of fan.

Bob Safian
Are you looking at sort of Caitlin Clark as like, your, your Taylor Swift? People are lining up for fever tickets, whether they're home or away, moving to new arenas to be able to get more fans to go watch her? Yeah, I think that's an important move by some of our owners to move their, some of their games to bigger arenas. This is the moment to make sure that you can sell as many tickets, premiums, many fans and then keep them. And a couple of our teams have already sold out their season ticket holder allotment and individual tickets are now going on sale, and they're selling really well.

Kathy Engelbert
And again, we have to think differently. So one of the things I'm proud of our owners thinking differently about how to approach this season, and Dallas just announced, for instance, they're moving from UT Arlington, where they play their games in a few years, to downtown Dallas to accommodate more fans. It'll have more seating capacity, and I start out every meeting with my team with the bold will win. Everything must change because we can't think about the WNBA of the past. We have to think about the WNBA of the future.

Bob Safian
Justice Caitlin Clark has to raise her level of play game after game, especially now that she's a professional. Kathy has to get the whole WNBA league to keep raising its game. Its a challenge. Every business has to embrace that what got you here wont get you there. After the break, Kathy takes us through several crises shes had to navigate, from Brittney Greiners arrest in Russia to the pandemic shutdown, plus her lessons in making the leap from Deloitte to the WNBA.

Stay with us.

Jodine Dorset
Hey, listeners, it's Jodine Dorset, the vp of live events at. Wait, what? The company behind masters of scale. I am constantly tasked with reaching out to teams across a wide spectrum of professions and the vastly different personalities that go with them Grammarly helps me quickly shift tones to better communicate what I want to say and saves me valuable time in the process. Our upcoming Masters of Scale Summit event features top tier speakers from CEO's to founders to political leaders, Grammarly's ability to produce on brand writing helps me properly prepare for each and every thought leader I interact with on stage.

It lets me generate the most exciting, specialized content for our audience. In fact, teams that use Grammarly report 66% less time spent editing marketing content, which I've seen firsthand with my Summit team. Join me and over 70,000 teams who trust Grammarly to work faster, hit their goals, and keep their data secure. Visit grammerly.com to learn more. That's Grammerly.com dot before the break, WNBA.

Bob Safian
Commissioner Kathy Engelbert explained how she's trying to capitalize on a moment of opportunity for the league. Now she shares lessons on managing crises, from Brittany Greiner's jailing in Russia to pandemic shutdown, plus the impact of college nil deals and the pipeline of opportunities she sees ahead. Let's jump back in.

You mentioned that you sat down with players to help them understand the economics of the business. A lot of them had to or chosen to play overseas in the off season to be able to generate incremental revenue. How do you talk to the players about that piece of it? How did the Brittney Griner crisis impact you, which was because she was playing overseas. Is that something you had to leave to the US government, or did you, do you get involved in any of that?

Kathy Engelbert
Oh, we were hugely involved with the State Department, the special presidential envoy of hostage affairs. I always tell people when you're managing in a crisis, the lessons you learn in that you'll be talking about for a decade, and that was the case in the financial crisis. When I was at Deloitte, that certainly was the case during the pandemic and certainly in the Britney situation. So you just never know where these roles are going to take you and who you're going to be talking to. And we would get off the phone with the state department where we had a call once a week.

And, you know, there's certainly that narrative out there around why Brittany was there. Now, we're never going to tell our players what they can do or not do in the off season, so certainly it's their prerogative to play. And many of our players who may not get a lot of playing time in the w during the season want to develop and they want to make a roster the next year, and they know they need to improve. But for stars like Brittany, you know, it did provide an opportunity for her. I think the tide is changing, given nil in the college ranks and what players are able to do with building a big following and getting corporate partners before they even come into the professional ranks.

So that's changing a little bit. But we're. We're never going to tell players they can't do something in the off season. We do have the opportunity now and have taken advantage of that to pay players in the offseason marketing dollars from the league. It was collectively bargained back in 2020.

We have players like Enrique and Gumbo Ale and Jewel Lloyd under those agreements. They're getting a lot of exposure to our corporate partners. You see them in, in commercial ad spots, whether it's for at and T or State Farm. So really excited about what's happening with our players getting a lot more endorsements. The new nil rules, the name, image and likeness rules.

Bob Safian
It means that some college athletes can make as much as professionals, or even more, given that the, the size of the tv audience and live fans for the games are so enormous. Do you have to think about that differently? Like you're competing with it? Or there may be players who are sort of earning less when they're becoming professionals than when they played in college? Or is that not necessarily happening?

Kathy Engelbert
Yeah, that's not happening because nobody ever looks at just a base salary and a proxy of a CEO. You look at base plus bonus plus stock compensation plus other, and the endorsements. All nil is in the pros and endorsements. And Aaliyah Boston has said this. I think Caitlin and Angel and Cameron Brink, who were big nil wage earners, are seeing more opportunities when they come into the professional ranks because, again, they have a more national and global footprint than they even had before.

And without playing professionally, they don't carry those into their professionals. So I know you probably know that Caitlin just signed the reported deal with Nike. She already had State Farm, which was signed last year, during her last year at Iowa. And I always wondered why our players didn't have a lot of endorsements when I first joined the league. And I think the marketing angle of a WNBA player is very powerful, especially if 80% of every household consumer purchasing decision in the United States is made or influenced by a woman.

Why wouldn't you want an endorsement with a woman and a professional athlete who is a great role model for both boys and girls? I mean, watching the NBA and NHL playoffs, you look at the ad buys by these brands. A lot of WNBA players are showing up. You took on the WNBA commissioner role coming over from Deloitte. That transition, I imagine, was fun, exciting, complicated.

Bob Safian
How has the journey been what you expected? How did you go about making that transition? Yeah, it's a really interesting question, and I've been very reflective of what I walked into where we are today, going from running a firm of 100,000 people, where I had all the resources I could ever want in capital, human and financial. Coming into a league of 144 with very little human capital and financial capital was a little bit of a shock to the system. However, I will say sports is big business.

Kathy Engelbert
Big business is about relationships. So the business side of this building a business, a revenue model, sustainable economic model, is not that different. The difference is the stakeholder groups are different. There's a players association, and then we have owners, now 13, with Golden State media, fans, officials. So the stakeholder groups are very, very different, but the business side is not that different.

So it is different, though, again, hitting the pandemic right after I started, then George Floyd, a racial crisis in this country. Then we got thrown in the middle of a political battle in Georgia with one of our owners, then Brittany Griner. And now it's like, now it's basketball. It's basketball. It's the players personalities, it's the storytelling.

And I'm thrilled with where we've come from. When you go through that list of crises over the last few years, are there things that you learned that were different than what you had learned in your time running Deloitte, or were you applying the things that you learned at Deloitte? Yeah, really good ad there, Bob, because I think one of the main things is, um, in a crisis, all your weaknesses get amplified, but it's also a time to fix them, because everybody else typically, is dealing with their version of whatever crisis is. But you definitely learn things. You.

You learn that it might be a time to invest, it might be a time to do things that are counterintuitive. And I was so blessed to have a 33 year career at Deloitte and learn how to scenario plan. I'll never forget when the pandemic hit, my team's like, well, we can't have a season. I go, oh, no. We're going to put five different scenarios together.

We're going to present it to the players, the owners. Obviously, it was existential for us to have a season that year because we don't have a season, and we're out of the sports landscape for 20 months. We may not be. I may not be the commissioner right now. We may not be around at all.

And there's nowhere for Caitlin and Angel and Cameron and Rekia to play. So, yeah, in the middle of this crisis, you draw on everything you ever learned. I always said, those first couple months right after the NBA shut the sports world down, I never worked so hard in my life. Working so hard. You know, you pull all nighters when you do an IPO or some kind of big transaction with your clients when you're at Deloitte.

Yeah, this was like that, but for two straight months. And not a hugely emotional person, but pretty emotional about what's going on in women's basketball today as a result of now giving these players a professional sports platform here in the US. And, look, it comes with great responsibility to be the longest tenured women's professional sports league in the United States, the WNBA double any other entering our 28th season. So, yeah, I didn't really process it at the time, but, yeah, that was pretty big. And when you talk about, like, the.

Bob Safian
The existential threat, you know, it almost sounds like you're. You're a startup, even though you're around for 28 years. And I know that that was a pandemic moment. But in general, do you think about the business of the WNBA being, like, on that cusp, that you always have to think about survival, that you can't necessarily take anything for granted? Oh, I still do.

Kathy Engelbert
My team knows I'm never satisfied. We'll have a great financial year, a great business and basketball year. But I'm like, oh, no, let's keep going. Let's stretch. Let's make sure we're not resting on anything, because when I joined the women's sports, someone said to me, Kathy, this is.

It's like pushing a big boulder up the hill, and you're going to inch an inch and inch, and you're going to feel like you never get it to the top of the hill. Well, we're pushing it to the top of the hill, and hopefully we're going to experience, I think, over the next decade, kind of the golden age of the WNBA. And by the way, it's not just Caitlin angel in this class. Think about next year. We have Paige in her class, then Kiki Rice of UCLA in her class, and then Juju Watkins and Hannah Hidalgo and whoever else emerges over the next three years who were freshmen this year breaking records at their respective universities.

So I am so blessed to be in women's basketball, to see this pipeline, because I do see the next decade being, you know, a total moment for this league to continue that momentum and to continue to bring in more fans, both here in the US. And we have a lot of low hanging fruit globally, too, especially for young girls to see role models like WNBA players playing professionally is a really important thing. Cause we know the one thing I I know that, you know, I played two sports in college, lacrosse. I was recruited for lacrosse. That was a walk on for basketball that, you know, girls who play sports end up being leaders.

I think there's a stat out there that 90% of the Fortune 500 female CEO's played organized sports, at least through high school. It builds your agility. It builds your ability to team, you know, it builds leadership skills. It builds. And mostly because now I see this 38 years into my career, it builds confidence in young women to again compete in an otherwise very male dominated world.

Bob Safian
Well, Cathy, this has been so great. Thank you so much for doing this. Thank you, Bob. Tip offs coming up May 14. I'm really rooting for the WNBA.

It's amazing how far the league has come, but also how fragile it still is. Every business, every brand can struggle with making the most of an opportunity can find themselves reliant on a handful of key talent. But those moments of liftoff are also often the most exciting. Im sure going to watch a lot more wnba this year and well see what happens. Im Bob Safian.

Thanks for listening.

Rapid response is a wait what? Original Im Bob Safian. Our executive producer is Eve Tro. The production team includes Chris Gautier, Alex Morris, Masha Makutonina, and Brandon Klein. Mixing and mastering by Aaron Bastanelli original music by Eduardo Rivera and Ryan Holiday.

Our head of podcasts is lital Molad. Visit mastersofscale.com to find the transcript for. This episode and to subscribe to our email newsletter.

Hi everyone. It's Jeff Berman, CEO of wait what? And co host of the Masters of Scale podcast. Like many of you, my to do list changes by the minute. Whether I'm working with partners or hashing out legal documents or brainstorming with our team, there is never a shortage of tasks that require attention and constant communication.

Jeff Berman
Like Masters of Scale co host Reid Hoffman. I know artificial intelligence is a huge part of our future, and Grammarly is an enterprising leader in AI. With Grammarly, what used to take a few hours only takes a few clicks. It's like having a collaborator for my writing, helping me generate better first drafts, and tailoring messages to our specific audiences. It's not only a superior AI tool, it is a safe AI tool.

And as a CEO, security is always top of mind. Grammarly has 14 years of experience and a business model that never sells our data security has been a priority since day one and continues to be integral to Grammarly's values. Today, join me and over 70,000 teams who trust Grammarly to work faster, hit their goals, and keep their data secure. Visit Grammarly.com to learn more. That's Grammarly.com.