WNBA fans know the struggle all too well: you're ready to catch a game, but first you have to play detective to figure out which streaming service or cable channel is carrying it. And once you find it, there's the sting of yet another subscription fee. Commissioner Cathy Engelbert hears you—she just doesn't think the league can solve it.

In a recent interview with Sports Business Journal, Engelbert was candid about the growing pains of a league riding an unprecedented wave of popularity. The WNBA has a record 216 national games this season, spread across a dizzying lineup of outlets: ESPN, ABC, CBS, Prime Video, Ion, NBC, Peacock, USA Network, and NBA TV. That's a lot of logins to keep straight, even for the most dedicated fan.

"I'm not running one of those media companies, so I can't fix the cost thing," Engelbert said. She pointed out that this isn't a WNBA-specific issue—it's the reality of the modern sports media landscape. "It's the free market that the U.S. has in the media market because there's a lot of participants. That has been accretive to live sports, keeping cable alive, and live sports getting streamers. It's the one thing keeping everybody alive, quite frankly."

Engelbert even admitted, with a dose of self-awareness, that she personally pays for 18 subscriptions and still hasn't cut the cable cord. So she gets it.

But here's the good news: all that fragmentation comes with a silver lining. The WNBA is enjoying unprecedented visibility, outpacing even the NHL and MLB in percentage of games broadcast. "I think it's important to the players that they be shown and their stories be told," Engelbert said. "Look at our shoulder programming. When I joined the league, no one was doing any shoulder programming. Now every single broadcast partner is doing shoulder programming. They are also doing marketing of the W."

So while the cost and complexity might sting, the trade-off is that the WNBA is more accessible than ever—if you know where to look. For fans, that might mean keeping a cheat sheet handy. For the league, it means staying focused on what it can control: putting the game on as many screens as possible.