The new “Unrivaled” women’s basketball league is thinking big. Caitlin Clark big.
Fresh off agreeing to an inaugural TV deal with TNT Sports, the new league will try to recruit Clark in the coming weeks, sources with knowledge of the strategy tell Front Office Sports.
The women’s 3-on-3 basketball league, co-founded by WNBA stars Napheesa Collier and Breanna Stewart, has been playing the long game with Clark. The fledgling league didn’t want to rush its approach to the 22-year-old after her rookie season in the WNBA, a standout campaign in which she became the first rookie since Candace Parker to be named to the All-WNBA first team. Instead, the new league wanted to give the Indiana Fever star time to recover and golf in her off-season. But with a national TV contract under its belt, sources say Unrivaled plans to approach Clark sometime in the next several weeks.
Clark doesn’t need the money. Her eight-year deal with Nike will be worth $28 million over eight years, according to The Wall Street Journal. Unrivaled is hoping the lure of a financial stake, and the challenge of hooping against the world’s top 30 players, will be enough to tempt the phenomenon, who can otherwise spend her off-seasons training, playing golf, and shooting commercials for her growing list of corporate sponsors that also includes Gatorade and State Farm.
“Get ready for the full-court press,” predicted one source.
Clark moves the TV needle for her sport more than any athlete since Tiger Woods. Adding her ratings power would be a huge boon to TNT, which could lose NBA game rights after this season for the first time in 40 years.
TNT, which is investing an undisclosed amount in the league, plans to show 45 regular-season games during Unrivaled’s inaugural season. They will be telecast on TNT and truTV, with all games also being screened on Warner Bros. Discovery’s Max streaming platform.
Sports media executives David Levy (the co-CEO of Horizon Sports & Experiences) and John Skipper (former ESPN president), led the league’s media rights negotiations. (Both HS&E and Skipper are also investing in the league.) During his prior 30-year stint at Turner Sports, Levy oversaw the league’s award-winning NBA coverage and helped turn Charles Barkley’s Inside the NBA into the gold standard for studio shows.
The WNBA, which Unrivaled president Alex Bazzell says has been “extremely supportive” of the new league, signed a $2.2 billion media-rights deal this year with ESPN, NBC, and Amazon Prime that will start in the 2026 season and total $200 million annually.
In an interview with Front Office Sports, Levy openly fantasized about what adding Clark would mean for the nascent league. He mentioned Paige Bueckers—contracted to join in 2026—and Angel Reese, and said he could see future editions of the league leaving Miami for a handful of games to cater to specific fan bases.
“If we’re lucky enough to get Caitlin Clark, are we going to travel to Iowa?” Levy said.
Collier was coy about Clark when asked directly about her on FanDuel’s Run It Back on Thursday. “I think we might have a couple more rookies in there. That might be a hint,” the Lynx superstar said.
The WNBA Defensive Player of the Year noted the growth that Clark has brought to the league and the money she’s made teams, all while making a base salary of roughly $75,000. “Definitely we want to be a part of that change and that’s what we’re doing,” she said. “I think she deserves that. I think she should be one of the top players in the world just for the sheer numbers she’s bringing, so I think that’s something that needs to change and that’s what we’re trying to do.”
Luis Silberwasser, chairman and chief executive officer of TNT Sports, added in a statement: “Our TNT Sports portfolio centers on premium live sports and our media and equity partnership with Unrivaled deepens our commitment to further expanding the depth of top-tier women’s sports programming we offer our fans and presents an opportunity for us to shape and amplify the continued growth of women’s basketball.”
Margaret Fleming contributed to this story.
