What is the Commissioner’s Cup, the ‘cup’ of the women’s basketball league

Between June 1st and 13th, the regular season of WNBA will be interrupted for the dispute of Commissioner’s Cup, a kind of cup between the 12 franchises in the league. The objective of the championship is to serve as additional preparation. In addition, it also provides a special prize and donations to charities.

But what is the Commissioner’s Cup?

The Commissioner’s Cup is a competition that has been taking place since 2021. The idea is to recover rivalries between Eastern and Western Conferences of the WNBA, something that happened until the 2015 playoffs. Since then, the women’s basketball league in the United States has adopted a general classification format, largely due to the low number of teams.

In its fourth edition, the cup has a system that takes advantage of games already scheduled in the WNBA to include the tournament. Thus, there will be 30 games between the days already mentioned, with each team playing five games, one against each of their conference rivals. As a result, the franchises that come first in their respective conferences will compete for $500,000 on June 25th.

Awards

The championship also arose from the need to support causes, actions and non-profit organizations that help humanity. The WNBA already has a positive history in relation to social positioning, with teams and players always using their voices to spread information. In 2024, the W Cup is sponsored by Coinbase, a company that reiterates the duty of collective and social actions in the USA. As a result, it will serve as a platform for collecting funds for conversion into donations.

Champions

The first winning team of the tournament was Seattle Stormin 2021, against the Connecticut Sunby 79 to 57. In 2022, the Las Vegas Aces won the Chicago Sky by 93 to 83. In the last edition, in 2023, the New York Liberty beat the Las Vegas Aces 82 to 63.